Palace in the Sky Webcomic News

Comic Title: Rune Master: Tales of a Demon Slayer
Comic URL: http://www.rmtoads.com
Creators: Briana Higgins (that’s me) and Carissa Palazzo
Genres: Fantasy/Action/Adventure/Humor

1) What is your comic about?
Rune Master essentially follows the (mis)adventures of Diyero Rube, a 22-year-old demon slayer and alcoholic womanizer. He is accompanied by: Kogeru Yubi, a skilled bushi (samurai) with an eyepatch and bandaged hands that he refuses to talk about; Mushin Kido, a young girl in Kogeru’s care and just recently getting over her extreme shyness; Myron Zorba, a Ziegun (think satyr) archer with a stuttering speech impediment and laid-back attitude; and Hikari, a shinobi with a quick hands and an odd demeanor. The comic shifts between goofy humor that is the odd group’s dynamics, and the more serious/violent world that is demon slaying. It’s set in Ehrdi, a fantasy world of my own creation that’s full of much more detail than what’s covered in-comic. That’s what wikis are for.

2) How did you get started making webcomics?
I started back in high school with a comic called Samurai BANZAI! It was set in the Sengoku Jidai – Japan’s long and bloody civil war period of the late 1400s to the early 1600s. The main characters were based off my friends and myself, but I lost interest in the project for a variety of reasons: Wanted to cover characters completely of my own imagination, no real direction for SB, wanting to stray from a manga-style art to something more western… And plenty of others. Basically, it was a typical first-timer’s flop. I don’t care for how it ended up, but I am glad for the lessons I learned from making it: Namely, draw ahead and at least plot out a basic storyline first!

3) Five years from now, what do you see your comic becoming? Will it be over? Will it have grown larger?
Provided I’m able to keep up consistent updates after graduating from college this fall, I expect Rune Master to be somewhere around Book IV in 2014. Currently, it’s nearing the end of Book I, and I have six books planned out.

4) Tell us about your main character. What are his/her motivations? How did he/she join up with your other characters and why?
Diyero is a tall, tattooed and dark-skinned demon slayer. He’s skilled with swords and rune magics. However, outside of battle he tends to come off as stupid rather than intimidating. For the last few years, he’s had a bad drinking habit that also led him to womanizing. Fortunately, a newer character to the series – Kalanu – has helped him break out of this habit and let his true self shine. The real Diyero is goofy, playful, somewhat lazy and (book) smart, with an enthusiasm for storytelling and history. He’s also impatient and generally has the attention span of a flea if he’s not engrossed in one of his passions (demon slaying/storytelling/history).

5) Who is your favorite secondary character and why?
Hm… Hard to say. I like many of RM’s characters – some of whom I can’t mention yet. If I had to pick between who’s currently in the story, I’d have to say Kalanu Aduladi. She’s an Illphi (think American Indian) barmaid with a sharp wit and sometimes an even sharper temper. Generally, she’s good-natured and friendly, but her pride can cause problems sometimes. Kalanu isn’t afraid to defend herself, and apparently has the ability to cast magic – though she’s never demonstrated such in-comic yet. Though independent female characters aren’t new, I like to think Kalanu’s a nice balance: an assertive woman who’s not afraid to be feminine, yet doesn’t view her actions as either masculine or feminine. She just acts as she deems fit, and is completely comfortable with who she is.

6) What is your favorite comic page?
Couldn’t say. Once pages get old enough, all I can really see are the artistic errors and they bug the hell out of me. Even if I cast that issue aside, there’s too many laughs and serious moments that I fully enjoy from a story standpoint. Generally, if it involves Diyero being especially expressive (in both face and body), I’ll probably like it more than others. Diyero’s one of my favorite things to draw, as are gestures and expressions… So it’s really nice to see them all together when they come out in a page.

7) Is there a storyline you’re really looking forward to? What is it about? Give us a spoiler warning if necessary!
Actually, there’s about three story arcs coming in the next book that I’m really excited about. I won’t give out any major spoilers here, but I will say that you will learn a lot more about character backstories, including: how Diyero broke his nose; what drove him to alcoholism; and what happened to Kogeru’s eyes and hands. Some minor characters from Book I will also be making reappearances. Of course, there’ll be plenty of new faces as well!

8 ) Can you give us a short explanation on how you make your pages? If you have a tutorial or anything, please link it.
I do have a tutorial on my Extras section, but it’s pretty outdated. I plan on updating it when I have time, but for now I’ll just briefly sum things up:

• 1. I draw on a 9×12 Strathmore sketchbook with blue/red/purple/green/or orange pencils. One sketchbook page equals one comic page, and I generally lay out everything at this stage. I do rough sketches before refining, but I don’t do thumbnails. I just don’t have the time, and my roughs kind of work as a thumbnail stage anyway.
• 2. I ink with brush/graphic/micron pens, depending on how thick the lines need to be.
• 3. I scan the page into Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 at 300 dpi. Here I crop the page up into several files by groups of panels (usually pairs).
• 4. I open up the panels in Photoshop CS3 and fix any minor inking mistakes.
• 5. I drag one panel file into Flash CS3 and color it – just the characters at this stage. If there’s any more line art I need to fix, I do it here.
• 6. I export the Flash file as a .png and open it in Photoshop. This I drag into the original Photoshop panel file. I go back to Flash, delete the content and bring over the next panel set to color.
• 7. Once all the panels have the characters colored, I draw the backgrounds in Photoshop. Effects like blushing, runes glowing and whatnot are done now as well.
• 8. When the panels are all finished, I drag them into a page template file and format them the way I want them to appear on the final version. I then save this file as whatever page number it is, but in .psd format.
• 9. Next I import this file into Illustrator CS3. I add dialogue and speech bubbles, then export it back to Photoshop.
• 10. Lastly, I resize the image for the web and save it as a .png.

9) Be your own critic! When it comes to your comic, what are you looking to improve upon?
Oh, lots of things… Mainly art. I’m not disasstisfied totally, but it’s just hard to look at pages that are 6+ months old and see how bad the art is. However, that also means I’m constantly improving, so I’m happy with the general flow. Some later chapters are being rewritten because I think they could flow better than they do now. Also, I wish I was better at pacing things. To me, half the time Rune Master feels like the pages are either flowing too slowly or too quickly. Perhaps I’ll find the right balance one day.

10) How do you manage to put in the level of detail into the world setting that you do, and why is so much of it absent in Rune Master?
I’m a big history and literature nerd, so I actually find it quite easy to create all the intricate details. Social studies and how different cultures interact always grabbed my interests – by high school, I’d forgotten more about ancient civilizations than most people know in their lifetimes. Therefore, I draw from history and, to a lesser degree, mythology, for inspiration when creating aspects of Ehrdi’s people and world. In a way, the extra information helps me keep track of things.

For some reason, I just can’t leave things at, “This is FantasyLand. A great evil encroaches upon it, but the elves/dwarves/humans can’t get along well enough to stop it. What will happen?” I want to know why the races don’t get along, where the evil first began, how these people all live, and everything in between. Luckily, creating all these details is lots of fun for me to do. It’s why I created a wiki for Ehrdi.

However, I realize that not everyone shares my interest in world depth, so I try to keep Rune Master as easy to follow as possible. There are still plenty of world details in it, but I hide them or use them in ways that they’re not important to know. For instance: Diyero’s hair is red because in his culture, all the men dye their hair red to represent the blood they must spill as hunters/warriors. If you read the wiki and learned that, then that’s a nice little bonus for you. If you didn’t know that, it wouldn’t affect the plot or anything else integral to enjoying the comic as-is.