Escape Room

Hello

Today I just found out this new game in Viet Nam called 'Escape Room '. I didn't know what it was so I asked people there and they told me it's a mind game - ( I was already thrilled at this point ) and you entered a room, they locked you in, and you have to find all the clues and code to get out. I have to do everything to play it because I thought it was a very good experience for me and it would inspire my graphic novel so much. Since my graphic novel has the same kind of ideas. where all the students go into a maze and the teacher locked them in. The only way to get out is they have to solve all the codes to find another way to escape. Since I was stuck with my ideas and writings about the code and what should come next in the maze, I thought this experience would help my story block - and it did. The gallery room has inspired me to draw the idea in chapter two, where the group of student go inside the tunnel and they entered a completely blank room with no other way, except a painting with a note underneath it.It was essentially what we were in the Escape Room, and I think it's great how I can interpret that idea to my graphic novel. Another thing I really like about this is that is another type of sources, rather than reading off a book or the internet about mystery or solving crimes, you experience yourself and it's easier to translate to the characters because you interact with the information itself, and you use all 5 of your senses in a 3 dimensional room.

Inspirational Manga

Popular and mainstream mangas nowadays have a tendency of going to the same direction, which is an innocent hero who's always optimistic in life saving the world from troubles
                       
( One Piece )                                                    ( Naruto )
( a boy wanted to be pirate king )                   ( the story of a boy who wanted to be a Hokage )
However I want to go with a different approach with mine: unique and irony 
This is what people thinks manga art is like:
 ( I hope this shows that manga actually has alot of variation of drawing and styles )

It's true, they are mostly like that however I have been reading alot of mangas and for my preferences, I wanted to go with these manga art style more



Oyasumi Pun Pun                        Tokyo Ghoul or                      Full Metal Alchemist
( psychology )                                          ( shounen )                       ( shounen )
What I'm intending to do with my project piece is that my artwork will look very dark and gloomy, yet the story is actually light heart and very optimistic. I took the same approach as Fullmetal Alchemist, this is one of the best manga ever in my opinion and people in decades have agreed. Whereas it took the most serious and underlook issues ever that made into something so simple yet so srong and positive. I also admire the way it has the most diverse range of characters with religions, ethnicity, respecting both male and female, and the two main characters are actually the two most imperfect human beings not as glamorizing some sort of heroes in other comic book.

Interview with tvm

Interview with TVM Publisher:


November 2nd 2014 

[ I have arranged an interview with the design, manager and pr marketing department of TVM comics the day before, asking if I could ask them questions related to graphic novels. They were happy and book me at 4 the day after]

Me: Hello I'm Kieu Minh Anh. I'm here because my school has a project that related to comic book, and I was very thankful that you guys can help me with that. Firstly can I ask you what type of comic book do you guys usually publish, and what genre do you guys tend to go for.
Interviewee : You can see we sell mostly manga, however we have other type of comic book and books too. We usually tend to go for Shounen manga ( boy genre, this includes action, detective, mystery, ... ) rather than Shoujo manga ( girl genre, romance, comics that revolves alot of heavy emotions ). We think this is because with Shounen manga, both boys and girls can read and enjoy it, but with Shoujo, boys usually dont want to read these love and deep romantic stories. However, we still publish both shoujo and shounen, and we always want to make the same balance out of it.
Me: Can you tell me specifically the process of publishing a particular comic book? What are the steps to get there.
Interviewee: Firstly we would see what's trending, and we will decide what graphic novel we would want to publish that we think it will sell out here or the customers will enjoy and buy ( because Vietnamese audiences are different than Japanese audiences ). We would also depends on the statistics of what sell out before and make a comparison. Then we would have to buy the copyrights of it from the company that publish it ( for example Full Metal Alchemist from Square Enix ), we will corporate with that company and they will send us the materials for us to translate in Vietnam and then we will print off the comic.
is the process and how is it done when you publish a particular comic book
Me: How do you guys translate and print off the comic?
Interviewee: Oh we have another department to do that, they usually do it on Adobe Photoshop. For printing the comic we send it to a printer shop to do it, we will choose the papers though. We use very high quality paper for our comics such as Australia paper or Dutch paper, for the edge of the book we glue it with milk glue. To make the pages connect well to each other, we need a clear order of the pages, and then we will arrange it as first page with last, second page with the second last page and so on..
Me: Have you ever considered printing Vietnamese comic books since all of the books you have published so far are mostly Japanese and foreign comics?
Interviewee: Yes we have been recently we think it's a good thing to discover new talents and bring Vietnamese comic to surface. We think it's an amazing thing to encouraging more graphic novel artist in Vietnam and support our own country.
Me: If you ever do would you reach out to the artist first or the artist have to to come to you guys
Interviewee: We would reach to them first, since we have never been published any Vietnamese comic before so they wouldnt know how to reach to us anyway.