mangaseries

Zack’s New Color Scheme

| Peter Ahola

So a simple spoiler for the new bio picture and the fact that… he’s got a new hoodie. So yes, on previous covers that featured Zack, he was sporting a blue hoodie. However while I was coloring this and put down the old color scheme, I felt Zack looked pretty dull and monochrome, didn’t really stand out at all. So he got a hoodie makeover.

Storywise I feel this is kinda fitting for the character. Zack’s overall story arch is that he is a complete wimp, who has always needed his sister to bail him out, so he strives to better himself and become a stronger individual. So the red hoodie can symbolize his ascent to a stronger more independent character, or at the very least, show that’s he’s gone from a minor character in the background to stronger character in the future. Anyway, wanted to give an update on that.

Page of the Day

| Peter Ahola

A REALLY old page here from chapter 8 featuring Kalwa’s fight with one her most “hated” rivals Rachel. Looking back on the whole experience, Rachel was really fun to draw in battle because her whip really made the fighting fun. The fun part about whips is their flow which is always a blast to draw, they just make hours of entertaining drawings and not to mention fun on with action figures if you have them. The only really issue I had with Rachel is that her hair was a little too complicated on a panel by panel basis. I do have some future plans for the character and hopefully by then I can better formulate a way to draw her hair by then.

To read the rest of the chapter, make sure to click the page down below.

All Japanese arch concept art thus far!!!

| Peter Ahola

So I’ve been posting concept art to the Japanese arch a little sporadically and I do have more coming up. My general problem with concept art is making the time to do it as I’m usually working and drawing other material so much that at the end of the day I’m a bit tired, and don’t usually have the energy to draw up at the end of the day. Usually I have the character and designs in my head but have to draw them up in order to have something to consistently refer to when doing the final drawing in the comics. So the only way to really do concept art is to usually work on the them on a day off when I got nothing else going on. Anyway, here’s actually a gallery of what you can look forward to seeing the upcoming japanese story arch.

  • Kalwa Hair Sketch

Miki Colored Sketch

| Peter Ahola

Meet Miki, who is the sister of Toshiro who was just uploaded to the website a few days ago. Like her brother, Miki will be making her debut in the next Kalwa chapter. This was kinda of work in the dark as I have not done a single character sketch of her since starting this modern comic. I have always had her idea in mind because there were old sketches of her in the old comic pages of Kalwa that I had drawn in high school. So this was kinda a work in the dark with only that old knowledge in my head. I did do several tweaks along the way, and she actually looks pretty unrecognizable compared to her old design. I think she actually looks a little less like a Tomboy compared to her old design. As a reminder, the script for chapter 23 has been submitted to my co-writer. The actual chapter should start debuting either by the end of this month or the beginning of next month. But don’t forget to check back for more updates as they come along.

Wedding Dress Kalwa

| Peter Ahola

A pretty little project that will hopefully help viewers get their mind off of an election anxiety they may have. I actually came up with the idea to draw this sometime ago, after I stumbled across the 28th ending of Gintama which featured the cast in the wedding outfits. I thought it would be pretty fun to draw Kalwa in such outfit. Plus it’s a happy and pretty sight to help in these rough times. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys this.

Bathhouse

| Peter Ahola

So yes, it’s been a little while, since we had something new here on the website. But I am proud to present after quite a while of work, this large bathhouse illustration. I got the inspiration to work on this after watching the Naruto Bathhouse episode, which was actually a prelude to Road to Ninja. I kinda had the idea to do a large scale illustration that featured numerous Kalwa characters in a bathhouse, similar to the large pinups that you see in Shonen magazines. You could kinda consider this a tribute to how far this comic has come. There’s some more stuff coming in the near future so stick around everyone for what’s ahead.

Page of the Day!

| Peter Ahola

This emotional page from chapter 14. I’ve really credited this page as being a major turn around for the story as this is the first page in the series where we see Kalwa emotionally break down in tears. The second to last panel was the major vocal point which was a vitally important part of the page. I think when drawing it there were about three versions of this particular pattern before settling on the finished one.

Johnathan and Adrian Sketch

| Peter Ahola

So today I’m posting the sketch work to two characters who played only a bit role in the Whitechapel arch. Adrian is off course the bum who kinda attacked Kalwa when she refused to give him money and wound up getting beat up by the police. Really Adrian played his part there was really nothing else for him to do really.

Johnathan on the other hand was a character that I actually didn’t get to develop as much as I wanted. Johnathan was really meant to be an obvious player that readers were supposed to instantly affiliate with the being the killer. It’s pretty common in mystery murders for the least obvious person to be the actual killer, it’s almost entirely obvious. So not wanting people to catch onto who our real suspect I actually put Johnathan in there as a way for the reader to lock on and instantly suspect him. I even set up a fake clue in the way he clumsy bumps his elbow on the lamp post which is the same way the killer bumps his elbow in the very next chapter.

However as I said earlier there is an entire character to Johnathan I was unable to portray on screen due to page limits and a need to tell the rest of the story. Initially there would’ve been more clues pointing to him as the Ripper such as him being very sexist and have a strong dislike towards women. Though in reality it would’ve been revealed that he was actually gay. This possibly the first character I had a backstory to that I was never actually able to tell. However that’s kinda the point of these behind the scenes post, to be able to tell what we unable to convey in the actual comic.