mangastyle

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.

Colored Toshiro Sketch

| Peter Ahola

Finished character sketch of Toshiro Sato, a major character that will debuting in the upcoming Feudal Japan arch. Not only will he be a major character in the next arch, he is actually set to become a major character in the remainder of overall Kalwa story. Toshiro is the son of Hideyoshi Sato, a powerful swordsman who fled his own village during the Japanese Fedudal Era. Hideyoshi started his own village where he trains runways in the art of weapons, in attempt to give them the means to survive in the dangerous world outside of noble rule. Toshiro serves not only as his sone, but assistant in training these runways and is a powerful warrior when it comes to swords. He also has a cute little sister named Miki who will also be getting colored portrait as well.

Page of the day!

| Peter Ahola

An early page from chapter 10 which illustrates a bit of tensions between Kalwa and her mother. I should confess that shortly after I moved to my current house shortly around the time this chapter began, though that really has nothing to do with the tension between Kalwa and her mother. Actually the conflict was a little inspired by a few tensions my mother had with her mom. Don’t know if it was as hostel as seen in the comic, but that was a source. This also was kinda a plot I opened up without a real idea of where it was headed, but I can promise that you will see this going in a direction in chapter 23!

Click the page to read the rest of chapter 10 below.

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

A call back to chapter 4. This was really the first time staging a real action scene and need for coordinated movement. Rachel’s whip in particular was a unique experiment to play with drawing it in various positions and trying to draw in ways that could feel natural. I seriously don’t have that many comics where people use whips (or at least I didn’t back then) so a good portion of the portions came from either videos about whips or imagination.

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.