Part 1: Research

In this section I will post all the research and inspirations I have used throughout the project to create my manga.

Understanding the Project:

In order to make a start on this project I had to revisit the Predator movies to familiarise myself with the character and the main plot of each movie.

In order to expand my understanding of both the character and the format of this project, I also bought some existing comics of the Predator.

Once I had the basic knowledge of how the Predator is presented and how it behaves in both film and comics, I had to place it in a specific time period that I had chosen when making the brief. However, I had to research the time period I had chosen in order to gain a better understanding of the time period and how I could naturally place the Predator in a convenient spot.

While there is a Predator from feudal Japan already in existence, I could not find any material that went into a story about the Predator itself. There is a customisation for the Predator in the game Predator Hunting Grounds where it can wear samurai armour in its own style, and also possess a Katana sword, also in its own style.

List of research:

https://www.military-history.org/feature/samurai-wars/timeline-of-the-sengoku-period-japans-age-of-war.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sengoku_period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sekigahara

https://www.swordsofnorthshire.com/blogs/theblade/famous-samurai-clans

https://www.toki.tokyo/blogt/2020/5/27/sword-of-the-samurai

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cnin_War

https://www.worldhistory.org/Edo_Period/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mikatagahara

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Noda_Castle

https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5783/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_shogunate#:~:text=The%20Tokugawa%20shogunate%20(%2F%CB%8Ct,%E5%BE%B3%E5%B7%9D%E5%B9%95%E5%BA%9C

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattori_Hanz%C5%8D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattori_Masanari

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattori_Masashige

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Odawara_(1590)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotomi_Hideyoshi

https://www.thebioneer.com/real-ninja-training/

Not only did I have to do a lot of research for the time period I also had to research different clothing and armour people wore back then, even looking at examples of the Predator in the same kind of stylisation.

I decided to get an actual half mask to help with any sketches and character designs to understand how it sits on the face.

Referring back to the format I revisited Scott McCloud's books of making comics to familiarise myself with the fundamentals of creating a comic and techniques used to make them.

Extra Research:

While I have the majority of the main research for this project, I had looked at other things which I thought could be useful in terms of presentation and storytelling.

Since my project will look at a science fiction character I thought it would be best to look at other science fiction characters that fit a similar narrative to the Predator. My first recommendation was the Alien franchise, as it follows a similar narrative to the Predator and the two characters have been used together as well.

The reason I looked at Alien in the first place was its use of darkness and mystery, via not showing the Xenomorph as much and keeping it in the dark, killing the characters one by one without ever seeing it much. The setting was dark, and you could not see the Alien, as it moved throughout the ventilation systems of the ship. The film would intentionally leave clues as to what the characters were dealing with by leaving abnormal and dangerous characteristics of the Alien, revealing little but important details. The same thing had been used in the Predator films, however, the main difference between the two was that we could see the Predator's point of view through its thermal vision of its helmet. You could see the hand of the Predator and showing that it was watching the characters from a distance, however, Alien I feel was better at the suspense and horror aspect of its character. I want to incorporate more of that in my adaptation of the Predator.

I looked at various different manga to gain a better understanding of how the flow of the story works and how to use the panels to work together with the images and the typography.

Vagabond is one I specifically wanted to look at as it follows a similar narrative and characters as my project. I wanted to see how the characters were drawn, the action scenes and the different brush strokes and use of halftone being used on the characters. I also looked at the environmental scenes in the manga to see how I could use those as inspiration to use in my own manga.

I also looked at a game that came out a few years ago called The Ghost of Tsushima, which focuses on the story of a young samurai fighting to take back his home from the Mongols.

While my focus is to make my manga as accurate as possible, which this game does have some inaccuracies, I was more into looking at the different stances of the main character, the armour sets you could use and what other characters were wearing. The game is also inspired by legendary filmmaker Kurosawa, with the action scenes even being inspired by Kurosawa's work. In order to draw samurai characters I had to look at the different types of armour each clan would've worn. This game also features many different armour sets that can be set apart very easily. Using this and other references I can design samurai characters in my manga.