Here is another homage to one of my favorite films Akira. This time its the character Kaneda. This piece was a total pain in the ass the whole time I worked on it. I find it incredibly difficult to hold that line between fan art and creating my own vision. I am such a big fan of Otomo’s work that I don’t want to just replicate his style but bring my own sense of things but not push to far away from the world it was created. Sound fussy? It really is. Another challenge I had was creating the likeness and attitude that he brings to the comic. He has a certain demeanor that is very strong but can be hard to capture unless you find those subtle cues and accent them.
Anyways. It was a total challenge with this one but I am happy I stuck with it and figured it out. To me my work is never finished but I just decided that its time is up and move along to the next challenge.
Some of my less well informed friends have asked why the film is called Trainspotting. I shall tell them, and you. In Leith there is now a Scotmid store and Waterworld where once there was an unused and decaying railway yard. Heroin addicts would use this yard to shoot-up and the local joke had it that they were ‘trainspotting’.
quoted from Counter Culture No.7 (1996), Published by Third Way Publications, London.
