The brightly colored glass ceiling in this space station is inspired by Nishiki Market in Japan, which we visited last year on vacation. I’m not sure if this particular space station will show up again, but if it does, I want it to be instantly recognizable so I included that distinctive feature. That’s true of most environments I’ve designed for RUNNERS, be it the green speckles in the rock wall of the Cove, the horn-shaped buildings of the Jondhi city-station in Volume 1, or the tube-cluster plants and tree trunk orbs on the planet that Sky and Jayd crashed on in this volume. It’s important to me for each place to be distinctive enough that a single panel can orient readers as to the location should I decide to revisit it again in the future.
Again, I would have loved to have a more extended fight here, with Hiura taking on the three adversaries and holding her own. Plus, I had designed a side pouch full of various knives for her (and boot knives), which can be seen in some previous panels throughout her appearances. So it would’ve been fun to showcase that side of her skill set. But again, I wanted to keep this entire sequence as short as possible to not throw off the pacing of the last three scenes together.
I think the quick pace also makes sense from the villain’s perspective. Escape is priority number one, otherwise Azarek could have considered injuring or even killing Hiura.
When you have enough material, a Runners Universe book showcasing all the locations we have seen would be a fun idea for a Kickstarter.
A lore book would definitely be cool. Especially if it covers races, key historic events, groups/organisations etc. Really helps to place where the characters fit in with the wider universe that they inhabit. Terrible sucker for that kind of thing.
That sounds even better than only the locations.
Definitely would love to do some kind of book on the universe, but I think it would end up being more of a “vague” art book rather than a lore book. I’ve been asked about doing an RPG a few times over the years but I always come up against the same concern…
While I definitely have a lot planned story-wise and character-wise, I don’t necessarily have all the races, cultures, and backstories (for secondary characters) figured out in detail. A lot of that ends up being the fun part of each story: figuring out what I want to flesh out more as I get to it. That seems to be the case often with world-building writing, where it’s good to have some things firmly established in mind, while leaving a lot open to “play with” as the story evolves.
So the idea of a very fleshed out RPG book has always felt more like deciding on background info before it is actually relevant to a particular story or event, which then feels like possibly boxing myself into a corner later. For instance, with Roka, I have his backstory and full character arc settled. But I have no idea what his actual race is or its culture! I never fleshed that out because that wasn’t a big part of his story. But maybe one day it will be, at which point I’d rather develop it then, rather than putting something down in print now just to have background material for a character entry.
Anyway, I’ve always found this to be an interesting element to writing for the RUNNERS universe: how much to figure out now and how much to leave open for future storytelling options. But again, I’ve always thought it would be fun to at least do some sort of visual compendium of aliens, cultures, architecture, and worlds.
She is mostly a lefty except for 1 panel on previous page? Or ambidextrous? Must be a pain to keep such things consistent …. or maybe it is fun. Dunno.
I’d like to say ambidextrous, but to be honest, I don’t keep track of left- or right-handedness in characters. I think a lot depends on how I draw a particular pose and which hand works best for the composition. At least I do try to not have a hand switch happen in the middle of an action scene, although I’m guessing I did do that in at least a couple occasions in the past, if I wasn’t paying attention.