100 ARAW ng KOMIKS: The Beginnings of “Karma”

As part of the ongoing 100 Araw ng Komiks (100 Days of Comics) campaign to promote Philippine Comics, I would like to talk about my very first attempt with manga, “Karma”.

Karma was a story that came from a horrible experience. During my third year in Fine Arts, our professor was angry with another class, and decided that she would fail our class’ final grades. I was striving for the honor role, and getting the lowest passing mark from her class would have landed me a Cum Laude at least, but alas, her mind was made up, and with it my dreams of ever being in the honor role.

That summer, still angry with what had occurred, I picked up the latest issue of Culture Crash, which was calling for entries for one-shot comics, 8 pages long. My initial thought was “that’s impossible! How can a story start and end in 8 pages?” But I decided I needed to take my mind off of my professor and my school work, and this was the best way to focus on my real dreams: to become a comic book artist.

This was in 2003, and I didn’t own a computer then, but that didn’t stop me from trying! And so, Karma was created; drawn in oslo paper, inked with UniPins, lettered in the same way, and colored with watercolors. I was warned that watercolors are one of the hardest media to master, but the soft shades were all I needed to create the effect I wanted.

Sadly, perhaps thanks to my constant pestering in the CCCom Office, Karma was never chosen to be part of the historic comic-magazine. However, in 2008, I decided that hey, this is my first work, and I am still proud of it, so I might as well post it online.

I translated the original Tagalog script to English to cater to the international audience. Although the current version’s computerized lettering looks… terrifying… it is still a learning experience! And now that Chapter 2 is currently being worked on, I plan on re-drawing Chapter 1 and expanding it so that the story makes a little more sense!

That’s it for now! Come back tomorrow and I will tell you more about the characters and some random trivia about the series!