Thinking inside the box (random notes)

Nov 2, 2021
3 min read

Updated: Jun 4, 2025

I have done a lot of thinking this weekend over a project that I have around the story of a ryokan and how I could combine a 3D box with a comic.

I figured if I imagined my boxes as a theatre stage, which they kind of are, I could use the comic as a curtain that you have to lift for the story to begin. The comic would be in a sleeve that would reproduce the "noren" at the entrance of a ryokan or restaurant, with the name of the "scene" on it. It would be placed between the second and third layer so that you would see a bit of the "stage", and lifting the noren would unveil the most interesting bit, creating a narrative effect. For example for the new employee we could see her on the front, actually standing in front of the ryokan, and lifting the noren could reveal the lobby where the boss would be greeting her. You would have to pull a little string placed on the sleeve to lift the noren. Once you would have lifted the curtain, revealing the setting and a situation, you would then dive into the story with the comic. Along with this stage idea I worked on the format. I wanted a reference to the cinema, and after hesitating for a while I decided to go for Ozu's ratio - 1,37:1 - , as he's the one who's inspired me these lilttle scenes and even my first character for this project. I like the idea - even if I'm the only one to know - that I'm somewhere mixing cinema and theatre.

I started developing two other characters, the owner - a middle aged woman who has lost her husband and whose daughter lives in the city - and her stepmother who still lives with her. More characters seemed to become alive and have their own interesting stories, promising and complicated relationships, and so I though I could do only 5 boxes with a story each : Tomoko, the owner, the stepmother, the cook and the cat. Looking for names for my characters, I thought about the seasons, sent to my friend Brice a message to tell him that his daugther would be called Akiko (Autumn child) in Japanese. The seasons started to make sense in a series, and I realized my female characters were the interesting bit : a spring, a summer and an automn. A triptych on women at different stages of their lives. Each of these season has amazing festivals, which could bring great visuals : hanami in spring, O-Bon in summer and kôyô in autumn. Each of these have a meaning that relate to my characters' stories and character. And since seasons have such beautiful names, why not give my characters the names of the seasons? Spring : Haru --) Haruko Summer : Natsu --) Natsuko Autumn: Aki --) Akiko

Yesterday and today I tried to make a lot of notes on my concept, gathering information and ideas. I am thinking each of the three comics should reflect the personality, rythm and age of its main character. The sets will then serve as a unifying element, the neutral 3rd person. I can even adopt different approaches in terms of pace, size of the images, narrative perspective (dialogs only for the youg one, internal monologue for the oldest?), add elements of their life like a letter Haruko could write to her parents, a picture of the deceased husband and Natsuko at their wedding with a few words, tree leaves gathered by Akiko between pages, etc... I could either draw these elements or use pictures and scans, which I like better but I'm not sure I'll be able to make them look good enough.

Today I worked on the last stage as I was inspired by automn. I still need to put it together woth a transparent background and figure out the comic and sleeve. I'd like to show that for my tutorial. I'm enjoying this project a lot.

A little step by step below. I changed the background as I was not happy with the shapes and colour. For the 4 first layers I used gouache and coloured pencils, for the orange trees I used watercolour, gouache for the trunks, and coloured pencil on top of it all.