MortMorrison is an artist of varied skill. His portfolio ranges from CG to pixel art and from traditional pieces to animation. Although Morrison is rather humble and always believes his pieces can be improved, anyone who looks at his art will be amazed at the technique, time,  and imagination that is put into it. The characters he brings to life are a joy to behold and each new artwork is a relief to those waiting to see what he comes up with next.

ToonariPost (TP): How and when did you first start practicing your art (are you traditionally trained or self-taught)?

MortMorrison (MM): I have been drawing and painting ever since I can remember. When I was 9 years old I stumbled upon my first influences, manga and anime series. At this point I was drawing just for fun. I was fascinated and inspired by the new impressions. Not until I was twelve years old did I began to exercise my art skills seriously. I bought some “How to Draw“ books and learned for first time about topics like proportion and perspective. From this point on I was addicted to learning as much as I can.

Nowadays, friends of mine don’t understand why I still buy these “How to Draw“ books, but I think I can still learn something new and if not they’re refreshing my mind and I like to look at them. I just never considered visiting any art classes because I was satisfied the way I was learning already.

TP: What mediums do you use for your art work?  Which is your favorite and why?

MM: I started with traditional methods like colored pencils, watercolor, and acrylics. I analyzed my idols’ works and tested different techniques. After a while I stumbled upon alcohol based markers like copic markers. I also tried airbrushing and colored ink. The result was that my traditional works become a mixture of markers, crayons, watercolor, colored ink, acrylic paint and airbrush. Every time after coloring a piece my room looked like a mess. The markers are still my absolute favorite of the traditional methods. I love how they work and their color range.

I did not bother to paint digitally for a long time – not until 2009. Still insecure, I blindly took my chances with the new tool. Suddenly, I grew an awareness of the differences between traditional and digital drawing and I noticed the advantages of digital art, like being able to redo everything for improvement over and over again. This is, by the way, another reason why my works took around 3 weeks to accomplish. Even today I need at least a week to finish a picture. It is indeed a double-edged sword.

I appreciate both – traditional and CG equally. My traditional work is fast paced and the smell of the materials reminds me in some way of my childhood. CG granted me new possibilities to visualize my thoughts – I consider it a new stage of life. But it also turns drawing into a long and exhausting process.

In 2010 I finally colored the first time a piece with a detailed background

TP: Which piece of your artwork are you most proud of?

MM: It’s hard to be proud or satisfied with my pictures and to overcome the feeling that I could have done more. There is always something I want to improve afterwards. I feel like for the time I spend on the piece it should come out better. I still have to learn to appreciate my work, but I am equally proud of all of my pictures.

TP: When you first started did you ever hit any bumps in your art process? How did you overcome them?

MM: Absolutely. I had and still have, sometimes, motivational issues to overcome. It’s a nasty, but natural part of my working process. When it happens, I lay down the pencil and let time go by. Part of the problem is my attitude, wanting to solve a problem when I see one. Working around it is not an option. If something does not work I will try and try again until it does.

TP: Who or what are your inspirations and why?

MM: My inspiration is also my first memory of a manga. My father sat down with Dragonball Volume 22 and I luckily got my hands on it. I read and bought volumes 1 through 4 the very next day and I continued to buy them (only hindered by my pocket money). I was fascinated by the drawings and the story and most of all, the humor. I admire Akira Toriyama for those books and for the impact his art has had on my life as an artist.

After that I turned to the anime Sailor Moon. It was broadcasted on television and I remember drawing lots of Sailor Moon fanarts. To this day, I am inspired by their art. Its amazing. Further, I have to mention artists like Eiichiro Oda (One Piece), Yusuke Murata (Eyeshield 21),Takeshi Obata (Bakuman, Death Note) and Masakazu Katsura (I”s) which are great inspirations for me. I still look at their work with great admiration.

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Hakumo is a brilliant and amusing artist. While this artist’s gender remains a secret, this mystery is nothing but a trivial circumstance. It also adds one less layer of bias to any viewer lucky enough to stumble upon Hakumo’s gallery of digital artwork. Hakumo also creates traditional artwork, but because of the lack of a scanner at opportune times, these pieces rarely find themselves in an online gallery. You can see the delicately and passionately drawn original characters, fanart, and other pieces in Hakumo’s DeviantART gallery, Tumblr, personal website, and even buy them at the online store.

ToonariPost (TP): How and when did you first start practicing your art (are you traditionally trained or self-taught)?

Hakumo (H): It started as a hobby, drawing when I was first exposed to the (art) comic world; Disney’s Mickey-Donald, The Smurfs, Tintin, Asterix and Obelix, then the initial boom of Japanese manga like Sailor Moon or Candy Candy. Because of the culture of where I lived at the time, being an illustrator/comic artist didn’t occur to me at the slightest. It was when my friend introduced me to anime in high school that made me realize there are people who draw and make that as a living out there. That anime, and later the manga that was first introduced to me, was Rurouni Kenshin – which I have loved until this day.

I am mostly self-taught, manga and anime took a greater part of me, which led me to embrace Japanese culture itself. It really influences my subject and style of drawing. When I realized art might be the path I wanted to pursue I was lucky enough to be able to go into art school. They did not teach me 100% of my skills as I expected BUT they taught me exactly what I needed; techniques, tips, and tricks.

TP: What mediums do you use for your art work?  Which is your favorite and why?

H: I use quite a bit of everything actually. As for recent works I have explored more on the digital side. I don’t have a scanner with me most of the time so I hardly show my traditional works. I like to experiment with many mediums, but my favorites are pencil, pen, and digital. If I have to pick again from the 3, I think pencil takes the lead.

TP: What piece of your work is your favorite and why?  Which one are you most proud of?

H: Hm, I’m the type of person who gets attached to their works. I like them all, each has the sentiment of why and how I made them. Let’s see…I think elaborate pieces with details or background took my attention the most. They look great when you imagine the full piece in your head but actually creating it is harder! Ones like “It’s better BLUE” or several pieces that I did for art books like Kingdom Carousel, GAIA, and Rising Sun, are probably my most memorable. “Let’s talk it nicely” and “Bookman Jr.” are also my favorites because of the perspective and inking trial-error. But for personal reasons, I always like “Paper Blue” and “Playground: Fish”.

The one I most proud of…is probably the recent piece for Kingdom Carousel. It was quite detailed and different from what I did so far. I can still feel the process and the feeling from when I did the last touch and declared it was finished.

TP: When you first started did you ever hit any bumps in your art process. How did you overcome them?

H: The first time I encountered DeviantART, it was a really great culture shock; I learned about things called “digital art”, “tablet”, and “illustration”. My background started with comics and I was not as digitally adept. It was practically the first time for me to hear those terms. I was absent from dA for about 2 or 3 years because I thought things weren’t being too well-received and I want to focus on school instead. But my curiosity just needed to see what other art and artists are out there. So eventually I came back, learned how to draw and use my first Wacom tablet, and I just kept drawing from there.

TP: Who or what are your inspirations and why?

H: Aside from movies, art books, and ogling at other artists’ works, my inspirations also come from daily life and experiences. Things like dreams, animals, patterns, scenery, food, regular things you encounter every day. They never allow you to stop thinking of what to create or draw.

Recently I found myself really attracted to ‘rough’ things like Studio 4C’s pencil works, Miwa Shirow’s pen works, Vagabond or One Piece; their line works look really attractive to me. Oh, and Gintama because it never fails to make me laugh and cry at the same time.

Image Courtesy of  Hakumo

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Considering the recent demise of Bandai’s North American anime licensing branch, and the closure of Tokyopop’s North American manga licensing offices in 2011, that old Western cliche seems still to hold true in America: There ain’t enough room in this town for the both of us.

In place of several publishers, licensors, and distributors that once offered a selection and variety to the translation and quality of the Japanese-imported anime and manga, the landscape now features two sole skyscrapers: Funimation for anime, and Viz Media for manga.

Unlike the North American comics industry, which has a “big two” of DC and Marvel, along with several notable smaller publishers such as Dark Horse and Image, the manga scene has steadily been thinning out since the early 2000s, and today, Viz is really the only big name in the business.

The easy answer is to blame the bad economy, but escapism into a fantasy world never gets old, and that is exactly what manga and anime sell. North American comics are more or less stable, and the video game industry is now even larger than the film industry in North America.

Escapism booms during economically tough times, but manga is busting. And on the anime side of things, Funimation’s nearest competitor, 4Kids, is now in bankruptcy. What have Funimation and Viz done that other companies have not?

For starters, they did not make stupid business decisions like Bandai’s North American wing, and they went with safe and solid titles. Funimation and Viz were both able to acquire several properties during the late ’90s that would each have been flagship titles for lesser companies.

So is it a simple matter of strong-arming the competition into destitution? Selling established North American comics such as Batman or X-Men to North Americans is a much easier task compared to importing Japanese media. A certain level of cultural and linguistic empathy bolsters the potential sales of DC and Marvel’s comics in America. Add a familiar name to that, and by comparison, half the marketing is done before you even start to sell an issue of Spider-Man.

That creates a larger market for those titles. Dragon Ball, on the other hand, had several failed attempts at being introduced here before it caught on like wildfire, because it was a very Japanese title.

Take some characters from the Journey to the West (a story that would be instantly recognizable within Asia), add in a Shaolin monk and ubiquitous references to ladies’ underwear (some of which, such as Bulma’s name, didn’t even carry over), and you have a mixture of nonsense that turns out as popular as green tea in Asia, and as popular as, well… green tea in North America, at least at first.

Companies cannot afford to follow the model of Dragon Ball. They need to create something familiar and established to give it appeal, and that ends up meaning one thing: a lack of innovation.

Viz and Funimation are successful because they play it safe, licensing only the most popular titles and then holding on to them for as long as possible. At the same time, Japanese content creators are realizing the same thing, and putting out nothing but the same familiar archetypes season after season, year after year.

Remember the original GameBoy, with its blocky grey body, its green screen, and its inexplicably purple buttons? Who said the buttons on that thing should be purple? Who knows? It was a weird decision, a silly risk, but it made for one of the most iconic handheld platform designs to this day.

Anime needs purple buttons. Just a few weird, innocuous twists to pull it out of the ordinary, make it interesting, and make it iconic. Dragon Ball would probably be too risky and foreign to introduce into today’s market, but surely something like 2008‘s Kaiba would have been warmly appreciated stateside.

Playing it safe results in diminishing returns at best. Funimation and Viz may be doing well for the moment, but when the mediocrity reaches a fever pitch and fans are aching for something novel, plucky risk-taking little companies will be the ones reaping the rewards.

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The “Warriors” games have a long and varied history; From its humble start as a fighting game to spawning a multitude of spin-offs. So in addition to the loosely historical offerings of Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, people now are able to enjoy “Warriors” games based off some of their favorite anime.

There are warriors games for Gundam fans and then there is the game set in the universe of “Fist of the North Star” while the latest anime infused warrior game offering is based on the extremely popular “One Piece.” So knowing that pairing popular anime with their beloved “Warriors” formula isn’t something Tecmo-Koei is afraid of, their is a question that is every fan of the series head: Whats next?

Here are our take on the top 5 choices:

5. Yu Yu Hakusho

An older anime, but it would be fun none the less, with a decent size cast there would be plenty of different ways to smash, slice and incinerate your not-so-friendly neighborhood demons.

The great thing is, with “Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage”, Omega Force showed that not every ‘beat ‘em up’ game they make has to be the same exact “Dynasty Warriors” clone, allowing a variety in concepts, features and gameplay within their various spin-offs. For this reason, even anime series with less “mass murder” are still very eligible choices for a spin-off.

4. Rurouni Kenshin

Rurouni Kenshin has it all! Interesting story? Check. Colorful cast of characters? Check. Lots of cool weapons, crazy swordplay and intense fights? Check, check and check! While this anime is a little past its prime, there is no doubt fans of the series who are also interested in video games would love a chance to revisiting Meiji era Japan to step in the shoes of some of their favorite protagonists and antagonists.

In addition to this, Samurai Warriors is all about armies clashing on huge battlefields during the Sengoku period of Japan and Rurouni Kenshin’s setting is more so urban environments and takes place during the Meiji period.

3. Cowboy Bebop

Another perfect opportunity for a brawler. This critically acclaimed anime masterpiece saw great success both in Japan and internationally so there is already a pretty large fanbase for it. The anime also features some of the most interesting characters in all of fiction, all with very complicated backgrounds which caught the intrigue of viewers all over.

So it only makes sense that an anime as beloved as Cowboy Bebop deserves to be paired with a game by the masterminds at Omega Force. The game would probably feature a lot of chases and brawls in a variety of environments with gameplay similar to the aforementioned ”Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage,” but could quite possibly become one of the greatest pairing since Oreos and Milk.

2. Naruto

It only makes sense to combine two incredibly popular and amazing things to form something that appeals to a huge audience. This is exactly what a Naruto “Warriors” game would be. The anime probably has one of the largest and most diverse casts on this list so the game would provide a large variety in choices for players.

Not to mention there is plenty of opportunity for a full-on ninja war mode since there are different villages and they could act as different armies such as how it works in “Dynasty Warriors” and “Samurai Warriors.”

1. Bleach

Not only is Bleach insanely popular at the moment, but it features tons of flashy moves and swordplay and that is what “Warriors” games are all about. Bleach is probably the most likely choice for the next spin-off just because of how easily it would translate into a “Warriors” game and how insanely popular it is at the moment.

Also, many Bleach fans were left with a bad taste in their mouth after the mediocre that was the last attempt at a ‘hack-and-slash’ Bleach game. The one big hurdle would be acquiring the rights to such a game, but that is always the problem with licensing.

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