How this Video Game Artist Turned His Drawings Into a Book (Emerson Tung Interview)

[@cameron2538]

I always love the ‘takeaways’ segments of video interviews when the effort is put in to making them, so thank you. Sometimes ideas get lost in the conversation and I find it hard to realise them once I stop watching. ❤

[@_aiborie]

I love how there's an outline and takeaway section, I felt the ease from watching the video. Thank you!

[@ReaganLodge]

Heck yes, I love Emerson's work! I'm a few minutes in and cool to see you handle an interview format like this.

[@_aiborie]

17:46 That's really a good reminder from Emerson's mom regarding mistakes. Needed to hear that

[@mr.babichslessons7279]

Jake, I just love how you present information! Thanks for this video!

[@nuclear_robot]

Great video. Well edited and I appreciate the recap. Thanks!

[@Alfred_the_doodler]

So damn cool to put a face over tank head now lol, been following him for years but never seen HIM haha. Also Jake great touch on adding those “take aways” moments. So good!

[@RiaanMarais]

Thanks, Jake. Great video with useful insights. I love the summary you give at the end.

[@rawls101]

Emerson is awesome!! Great video brother! 🤍

[@Juan_Richard_Feliz]

Mom teached me colors. That's a good one!

[@albertomorales7579]

This is a great video,I follow both you guys but this is the first time hearing from Tung himself.Keep up the good work homie.😁🤙🏼

[@chriscox3227]

Thanks for this, Jake. Really insighful interview and the takeaways are great 👍

[@AlexHuneycutt]

I really want to make a book of something, but find that I have a wealth of projects and ideas that I like to create. Smaller, different worlds that I make for portfolio, and move on to the next. I like elaborate keyframes, design lineups, comic panels. Is it common for there to be books that collect a series of unrelated projects with different types of work in them? Thank you for the Key Takeaways sections, too. I like this a lot. The chat with Emerson was nice, too. You can tell he’s excited about the book he created : )

[@jakeparker44]

Good question. The person most likely to buy your book that collects all your different projects into one place is a person who is a fan of YOU. That's probably the smallest niche you can market it to. That niche is going to be a smaller audience than the one that will be interested in a full comic book based on one of your ideas. Example: If one of your projects is a fantasy comic about talking animals you'll be able to market the book to people who like fantasy (broadest audience), people who like comics (broad audience) and people who like talking animals (niche audience). What I would do: Keep working on your ideas, until you have enough material for one of the ideas to make a finished book. Repeat that until you've made a few books based on individual ideas you have.

[@AlexHuneycutt]

@@jakeparker44 Thank you, Jake, for pointing this out! A book that collects ‘The Art of Alex’ means that you’re having to market yourself, rather than the product. Your suggestion is encouraging too :) Can keep building out smaller projects of different stories, until there’s a critical mass of any one of them and then build it out. I’m a concept artist by day, so I’ve spent the better part of the last few years building a new design project every few months as exercises. The thought of committing to one for a long period of time is a little daunting, as there’s a lot of ground to cover elsewhere and I get held up by that thought. But like you suggest, holding onto a few different core ideas and building them out will be good. Thank you for your time, I appreciate it. Been a fan since I first started learning in 2018

[@WARLOCKIKITCLAW]

Like the video, considering I preordered Emerson's book I really enjoyed the early look at part of it ^^

[@michaeltemple6695]

Thanks for sharing and making these videos 👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿

[@jeremyrandall8282]

This is so cool and well made

[@stephi3690]

PROTECT THESE MAN

[@detaylz]

Great vid!.. stupid question (I'm old and from Australia).... but what's 'poster colour' I've never heard that term... is he just talking about painting with acrylic paints?

[@erlson]

I've been consistently falling off the blender market since 2018! 😅

[@ChristainMecha]

Pre ordered half way through. Super excited. Great interview on both ends. Going to subscribe so I’m now connected to both of you guys in some way to see what you create in the future :) 🤙

[@couchpotato100]

thanks :)

[@MartinOetting]

I really enjoyed listening to this and found it very insightful … until I saw and heard what the Tankhead Story is actually ABOUT: someone inventing a never-ending first world war. And I cannot help but wonder: What on earth makes people imagine and - most importantly: enjoy something like that? I am writing from Europe, and as a European I know that WW1 was a horrific slaughtering of millions of innocent lives, ravaged landscapes, and horrendous implications for everyone who suffered through this period of absolute disregard of human lives. Or for culture. Or … for anything, really. It was the first war in which any remnants of honour or decency were entirely discarded. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories. But taking WW1 and extending it to 50 years (or more) … I honestly cannot fathom why anyone would want to spend their time on that? I am trying to find an equivalent that may make sense from an American POV. How about this: You take the places in the US that were hit worst in the civil war, that suffered the most destruction and death. And then you imagine a world in which that would go on perpetually. Would you?

[@sordorel]

Let me answer that as the writer of the book. Note that I am dutch, so while I don't have a huge cultural heritage related to ww1, ww2 was an ever present even in my life growing up. Farmers would dig up bombs on the regular, most grandparents had siblings they lost etc. But back to the actual book. Tankhead takes place in an different universe, the world is not our own. This was a deliberate choice to distance ourselves from the realities of history. But its undeniable that Tankhead takes all its inspiration from the machines of the first and second world wars rolled into one giant conflict, we have walking sherman tanks and ships and aircraft, its very much a twisted mirror version of our own history. But there is also a lot of silliness, mecha shaped like chickens and crabs for example. The world Emerson and I created diverges from the real world in many ways, though there are many parallels as well. The truth is war in any form is a horrible event, and we don't try to make some deep statement about this while you are looking at a funny duck robot, a better writer may pull that off but not me. The actual story elements in the book all focus more on the events surrounding the specific mechanical design it acompanies. And any student of military history can tell you, there is a lot of comedic stories to be found there. Serious generals with their fancy uniforms and medals throughout history have made the most stupendous and idiotic decisions and demands. Mistakes have turned out to be unexpected boons, and inspiration for technological innovations can come from the strangest places. Just like the robots of tankhead are larger than life exaggerated versions of real world tanks, so too is the world of tankhead. Now one could argue; should you ever make a piece of media about war or combat at all? I don't feel equipped to argue either way truth be told. All I know is that whenever I see a new design from emerson these silly little stories pop into my head, and I cant help but put them to paper. I do know that some of the most moving pieces of media ever produced tend to focus on our darkest hour. Drama and tragedy for sure, but also comedy. Shows like 'Blackadder goes forth' take the girmness of the first world war and use it to focus in on the human element, and the absurdity of it all. Now I will never claim to even come close to the genius of that show, but I hope that in some way people will find that kind of entertainment in my work.

[@MartinOetting]

Dear @@sordorel , first of all, I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer. I see two things here. One is that I understand your point about war being part of the human experience (no matter how deplorable we may find that). As such, it provides us with material that we can produce culture from. People have done so in the past, and they will continue to do so. And I agree - a chicken-shaped tank robot is probably more a way to make fun of the absurdity of war than to indulge in it. Secondly, it also comes down to cultural background and how that is baked into language. More than once have I observed Americans use the term 'war' as something almost quotidian, banal, simple. I am German, and our word for it - 'Krieg' - rings much differently. It does not lend itself to inspirational or funny stories. It is a word that communicates darkness, pain and suffering. As a Dutch person, you will know like I do that Europe has known war on its very soil in the bloodiest of ways. And that kind of an experience with war lies much further back in American history (which is why I referenced the civil war). It often seems that from an American viewpoint, war is something that happens in the distance. Not at home. Which made Pearl Harbour and 9/11 so traumatic. So if you tell stories in (US-influenced) English, you are accessing more of that other universe of meaning and emotion. Again, thank you for taking the time.

[@sordorel]

@@MartinOetting Ofcourse! This is absolutely something I've been thinking about while working on this project, so I am glad to share my thoughts. The linguistic background gets a bit mudled in truth. The book is published in US English, as that's what UDON uses and their proofreaders etc have expertise in. From a writing point of view, I very much wrote the texts in the character of a old stuffy brittish professor of history. The brittish did not have war on their main island, but they did lose a tremendous portion of entire generations in the war. I would also like to note as an aside that Emerson grew up in Malaysia, a country which suffered under armed conflict during and well after both world wars as well, we are however a bit hobled here by Enlgish being the modern lingua franca.

[@MartinOetting]

@@sordorel I love the "stuffy old British professor". :D Yeah, he might have a romanticised (Imperial!) vision of war - which he may have never fought in. Or he's Tolkien and writes big tomes about war thinly disguised as fantasy. ;) It is interesting that the language so informs the way we speak, imagine, write about things as profound as war. We tend to think that people will increasingly stop learning other languages as AI translation systems jump up everywhere - but we do need those varying cultural view points that are embedded in language, in the future more than ever. Particularly given that the large AI models all come from the US ... and their biases will run accordingly. And now we are truly digressing from a video about fun drawings of imagined war machines ...

[@adamarcher7847]

great vid!