Trivia of Boichi’s Ghost in the Shell oneshot part 3

Innovative techniques for manga backgrounds

One of the features from Shirow Masamune-sensei’s Ghost in the Shell manga is the use of innovative techniques for manga in his works.

The first volume of <Ghost in the Shell> was published before computer graphics were available, but we can still see very odd techniques in the building walls and guns’ textures in its backgrounds.

As I heard, Shirow Masamune-sensei used color copy print for manga backgrounds impact.
After that for the second volume, he used fully CG in his works as other artists do.

Therefore, if I have to show the Ghost in the Shell universe, then I must use innovative techniques or new techniques unknown or not much used by other mangakas.

I believe that is how I’ll be able to show my respect to <Ghost in the shell>.

However the answer is not CG.
I don’t think 3D or CG is the new way to go for manga techniques.

What’s more, I’m not much of a fan of 3D graphics.
If I try to use it somehow, it’ll end up being low quality.

Hence what I chose to do was to process photos.
It’s not an innovative technique but at least it’s a technique hardly seen in other mangaka’s works.

1. Expression of cyber network

I decided to use a picture of my bookcase (where I keep my books and DVDs) for the scene expressing the entry into the cyber network.

I shook the camera and took a long exposure shot.
Then I layered and digitalized the pictures taken.

I used a bookcase for the cyber network backgrounds for two reasons.
To give the impression of a flowing structure and because books are the symbolic source of the ocean of information.

These are the pictures of my bookcase.

Actually I used a bookcase with DVDs and Blue-Ray.

2. Night view of the city.

Two kinds of photographs were used for the night view of the city in my oneshot.

One is a night view of Tokyo that I took from an airplane and the other one is an image of a building wall.

I was in agony about what kind of photos should be used to express the windows and lights of the skyscrapers and the chisels.

When I re-read the original work, its city night view backgrounds looked like a modest fake.
It looks more like an image of something rather than a building window.

So I went around looking for the right texture to create a fake-ish look to build the texture.

This is what I found, an image from a picture I took of a hot spring spa hotel (onsen) in Hokkaido.

It is the hotel’s wall.
I shot it and processed to create a building wall for backgrounds.

Here’s the wall texture from the onsen’s walls.

Then I combined them to create a wall from the night view of the city.

<Ghost in the shell> doesn’t thoroughly pursue realistic drawing but it uses new manga techniques and shows a moderate mix of reality and fake. I think these were shown to us as the main theme of <Ghost in the Shell>.

I thought the city shown in <Ghost in the Shell> looked like real city but it is not realistic, so I tried to draw my own way for the image of the city from Shirow Masamune-sensei’s <Ghost in the Shell>.

Seburo’s gun, new manga techniques, and unrealistic textures. These are what I thought of <Ghost in the Shell>.

– Boichi