Behind The Scenes: Mission Kissin' by Hien Pham

Hien Pham brings us this behind-the-scenes peek at how he made his Mission Kissin' comic for us! Take it away, Hien!
-The OJST Team

Hey everyone! Here's a HUGE collection of the various stages Mission Kissin' went through! I had a LOT of fun with this one! Romance and comedy are my wheelhouse, especially slapstick shenanigans inspired by 1/2 Ranma which I grew up with!

Art-only

The colouring of this one took a lot out of me, since I have to do shading for two different lighting set-ups PLUS a bunch of stylistic panels that I had to recalibrate my brain for (I'm not very good at transitioning quickly between tasks, alas...).

Something I've noticed for a while now, is that due to the way I do my lighting, sometimes it's hard to make sure the cheeks have proper forms in the light without obscuring the heavy blush underneath. Took me a while to get the panel below feel right, but I wanted to put in that extra effort because it's a big moment in the comic!

You can also see that, to differentiate between the realistic outside world and the more cartoony abstract inside world, the latter doesn't have an extra layer of highlight (for areas lit directly like the curve of the cheek or my bald head)! This makes everything looks more flat (as opposed to the fuller look of the outside world). Plus, the cartoony style looks better with minimal shading!

I don't remember where I picked up the coloured panel borders, but incorporating that into my style alongside coloured gutter has helped heaps in separating inner / outer worlds on the same page in comics like this!

Pencils

During the making of this one, I randomly decided to revisit one of my biggest comic influences and inspirations: Hunter X Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi! My themes and genre are more... gentle than what transpires in HxH, but I just absolutely LOVE what Yoshihiro Togashi does with his lines. They're just so full of life and full of motion!!! Especially the way he uses negative space to emphasize how immense something in a panel is - so powerful that it obscures the characters' linework!

I also wanted to go back to my manga roots and how artstyles can switch on a dime to change gear from something serious to something comedic. Re-reading the more... relaxing arcs of HxH (Greed Island, as opposed to like... Chimera Ant, haha!) made me realize how much I missed goofing about on a page with cartoony, chibi characters. The below is from 1/2 Ranma!