Animazement - Friday - Kia Asamiya

Kia Asamiya's art style underwent a big change when he switched from the finely-detailed drawing of Dark Angel and Silent Moebius to the nearly cartoony style of Steam Detectives, his current project which also is his current favorite. "I wanted to target a younger audience, so I made the characters cuter and smaller," Asamiya said at his Friday Animazement panel. He added, "I'm very fond of Batman. I do think the animated Steam Detectives has influence from the animated Batman and Bruce Timm's style."

Asamiya created a manga version of the Star Wars - Episode One movie, and he had to make up a lot of it as he went along. "LucasFulm was very protective of the movie. They weren't inclined to show it to me...when I drew the first half of the manga, I hadn't seen the movie...in the beginning I had only the script and 200 reference photos."

You've probably heard that Asamiya had Blade Runner in mind when he created Silent Moebius, but you may not have heard that Asamiya also likes American-style color comics. That explains the colorized version of the original Silent Moebius manga that Viz released, and the color Dark Angel that Image will release in May. "I do have foreign readers in mind," he said.

Editors and artists usually shape manga plots, but what about readers? "I may make modifications to the stories if there's feedback from the readers, but the ending is always how I want it to end," Asamiya said. He also pays close attention to the animated version of his stories, insisting that the first episode of the Silent Moebius TV series be completely redone before it was released on home video.

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday