"But what to leave out?" The editor said.

Enjoy what you're doing- I believe that's an important part to doing anything well. So what Director Kazuya Tsurumaki, of FLCL fame, said makes double sense.

If you want to enjoy something, put things in it that you like. Of course, as soon as you start thinking along these lines, you get another problem- removing the excess.

This is a lot easier if some element of your work is defined. In my case, the text defines the sort of story that I must tell with the imagery- something that conveys the essential story contained within “The Anatomy...”

Being a graphic novel, this doesn't preclude giant transforming robots....Although the fact I want the text to be accessible to everyone does.

Not everyone likes giant transforming robots.

<...sob...>

The visual story needs a gentle touch, sensitivity and a sense of beauty. As well as contrast. These thoughts left me thinking of cherry blossoms in spring. I took this idea, put it in the centre of the page, and started springing ideas about it.

And then began drawing pictures....

First character sketch for "The Anatomy..."

Copyright BT Cassidy 2008

So what's it all about?

The reason I need to present the final version of “The Anatomy...” in a graphic novel format is to prove the pudding.

You see, it's fine and dandy for Stephen King to write about how to write- he's one of the greats.

Me, well, I'm not Stephen King, let's put it that way.

So I need to prove, if only for myself, that I know, or at least am learning to know what I'm talking about.

The tricky part is the idea of keeping the text in the speech bubbles that of a traditional book while letting the images tell a story (different but identical?!) without relying on the speech bubbles to tell the story of the graphics.

So what is the visual story to be?

I thought and I thought. I wracked my brains. I wracked my legs, and finally, I wracked my spleen, until I thought I'd just watch a movie.

A manga, actually.

The Manga I watched was FLCL- If you've seen it you'll remember it as the series with a scooter riding, (chainsaw pull-start 1968 Rickenbacker) bass guitar swinging girl, a robot with a television for a head (which squidged out of the protagonists head), some of the most surreal animation, and a giant steam to iron out the wrinkles in people's brains.

It is a genius piece of work.

So what's this got to do with the price of fish?

Well, in the commentary the director was asked, “Why did you put the robots in a 'boy meets girl' story?”

“Well, I like robots,” was his answer.

He liked robots, and guitars and scooters and had just given me all the material I could ever need to write my little graphic novel.

-To Be Continued-

Tom