NOW FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT. I did all the art (including the flipbook and the sketchbook) for Bamboo's latest music video, "Muli":


Cool, no? I spent an entire afternoon talking things over with the director, Marie Jamora, who was an absolute delight to work with, full of energy and ideas. She needed a comics artist for this particular project and tapped me to provide the framework for her vision. We came up with tons of ideas and plans, less than half of which made it to the screen. To Marie's credit, it's still ended up an impressive video.

Working in film, at least tangentially, proved to be a huge learning experience for me. I was able to attend most of the shoots, so I had a front seat in the making of this video. In comics, I just have to sit down, lay out a scene and start rendering it. In film, you've got to acquire the location, assemble the crew, the camera, the actors, and do multiple takes before you get the shot you need. The shoots took hours and dozens of people to set up, and by the end it seemed like everyone was in the grip of fatigue. It really made me appreciate the medium of comics more, because the execution of it requires little budget and manpower compared to film. I had a lot of fun talking to some of the actors and crew, though--turns out, most of them read comics, which is really cool.

I feel that the most painful part about working in film is the editing process. I know for a fact that there was a lot of material that didn't make it to the final cut, which is amazing considering the cohesiveness of this video. Even from my end, I wrote, illustrated and colored an entire 16 page comic for this project, and you can see only half of it up there. I'm thankful to have the copyright though, because I'll probably be putting the whole thing up sometime this year, so that people can see the story from a different angle.

Overall, this was a really cool project to be a part of. I don't know if I'll be doing this sort of thing again--it's a little hectic and stressful compared to the monkish comic-making life I lead--but I guess once in a while would be okay. Ultimately, the experience was worth it, and I'm glad to have been a part of this. :)