Issue 1

Interview with Afro Samurai Co-Producer Eric Calderon

SEE ME MAGAZINE

Works from emerging artistsat CSI

Photo: Brian Gonzalez

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See Me MagazineIssue 1 All works contained withinthis publication are theproperty of its creator(s)and is protected by copy-right law. No materialswithin this publication maybe reprinted in part orwhole, in any form, withoutthe permission of See MeMagazine. Opinionsexpressed herein are thoseof the writers, and are notnecessarily those of SeeMe Magazine staff or theCollege of Staten Island.

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STAFF

CONTRIBUTORS

Editor in Chief - Elisain Pena Assistant EIC - Anthony Panayiotou Business Manager - Brian Gonzalez Arts Editor - Shaun YnosencioEditor - Ra’Chaun RogersEditor - Michael Miley Staff Advisor - Omar Hammad

Keith Jacobsen Tara Milone James O'Loughlin Mike BrinkElizabeth TilelliRose E Maklari

http://seememagazine.wordpress.com

6 - Anthony Panayiotou

10 - Keith Jacobsen

15 - James O’Loughlin

20 - Tara Milone

22 - Interview with Eric Calderon

27 - Elisain Pena

30 - Elizabeth Tilelli

33 - Rose E Maklari

36 - Mike Brink

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Anthony PanayiotouDrawings

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Summer Trees

7

Nu Person

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Bedroom Skylight

9

Symboite

Keith Jacobsen Paintings

10

Meeee

11

Parsonage

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Picaasso nono bull

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The Lioness

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Tom & Jerry 2006

James O'Loughlin Drawings & Digital Art

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Bok Choy

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Cherries

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Polar Ball

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II Infinity

Tara Milone Digital Art

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Buildings

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Church

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Baby

Interview

An interview with Afro SamuraiCo-Producer Eric Calderon

BG: Did you have any idea ofwhat you were looking for gen-erally?

EC: When I started working forGonzo in 2001 and the basicarena was to create fusionanime which was Japaneseanimation that fused westerntaste and storytelling. So actu-ally they had given me a list ofshows they had in develop-

ment and you know weworked on them for a whileand I just happened to coinci-dently find Afro Samuraiaround that time.

BG: What made you decide tostart/work on the Afro Project?

EC: You know its intuitive youknow I’ve been in the develop-ment world for about 14 years

and you know when you’re outthere looking for what youthink will be the next big thingyou have a lot kind of indica-tors in your mind of what youthink would work and thensometimes something justappears in front of you andjust every signal just fires offin your brain and you starttelling yourself this is the thingI’ve been looking for. Whatactually foreshadows AfroSamurai was an exclusive toy.I just looked at it and therewas a really cool design and Iturned it over on the backside[the figure had] a couple ofthings about the charactersomething like “this manknows no fear” “this manknows no love” and I thoughtwow this is really cool and ofcourse it has the name AfroSamurai and that’s when I firstsaid, “Wow we should do thisas an animation this is prettycool.”

BG: What was it about theAfro Samurai figure that yousaw in the Gonzo office thatcaught your attention besideswhat the box had written on it?

EC: I think it was incrediblycreative it definitely wasn’t akids toy, it was marketed morefor adults. I guess you can callit urban vinyl in a way. And ithad this kinda Jimmy Hendrixlooking face and a very coolnon samurai pose but then thecharacter was dressed in asamurai outfit and he actuallyhad a I think interchangeablecigarette butts that you couldput in his mouth and he hadthese big gold bracelets

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Ninja Ninja from Afro Samurai

“Afro Samuraibegan as an exclu-sive action figure! Itfeatured Afro as acharacter who wasdressed in a samu-rai outfit and hehad like inter-changeable ciga-rette butts that youcould put in hismouth and he hadthese big goldbracelets aroundhis wrists and heactually had a biggreen afro. “

Epilogue

Afro Samurai Figure

around his wrists and he actu-ally had a big green afro in theoriginal toy but you knoweverything about it was just sovisually striking you know Ithink that’s what mostly caughtmy attention.

BG: What was your experi-ence working with Okazakiand the rest of the Afro crew?

EC: When I first met TakeshiOkazaki he was incredibly shy,he was very nervous, he hadnever really had anyoneapproach him you this directlyabout making afro samurai intoan animation. He was actuallykind of really skeptical of me.I’m just an American executivebut luckily I’d produced an ani-mation in 2002 he had saw onthe web so he was kindaalready open to hearing whatmy offer would be. I quicklyfound out literally the firstmeeting I said “hey, hey,Okazaki do you have the storyfor Afro samurai or is it just afigure?” And he pulled out atimeline on a piece of paperand that timeline had some-thing like a thousand years onit and he kind of make a ges-ture of this thin slice of time inthe middle of this timeline likethese 40 years here this iskinda the main story and I saidwhoa you got a thousand yearepic here. But like the 40-yearrevenge story is the main part.I was pretty impressed andfound over the years that I’vegotten to know Okazaki and Ican really call him one of mybest friends and I mean he’sjust so incredibly creative andso international in his tastes

that I thought that I was likethe cool American executive,but he teaches me all the timewhat is cool so I really learn alot from him.

BG: Did you think that Afrowould become such a big hitwhen you started the project?

EC: Of course I alwaysdreamed it would be, but Ireally thought it would be moreof a cool underground thing. Ithought we would really bekind of ballsy and make thiscool unique product and itwould be my dream that youknow [about] five [or] ten yearslater someone would say “Ohyeah. I remember some coolstuff like you ever see thisthing called afro samurai?” Ithought it’d one of those likedtalked about undergroundthings you know but it just gotso huge so quick so really likeit was really a dream cometrue.

BG: When you began the Afroproject where did you see itending up?

EC: Originally I thought wewere going to do a independ-ently financed feature film ani-mated. So I thought we’d dolike one 90 minute film thatwould be really cool and reallyviolent and have hip hopmusic. And I just thought we’dkinda be sailing on dvd salesfor like years but never reallyanything like that big orinvolved that many people onthe outside that was my origi-nal vision.

BG: When the Afro Project24

The Afro Samurai Universe has a timeline of about a thousand years. In thatperiod we are introduced to a thin slice of time in the middle. In that 40years period the main story unfolds.

Overview

was started did you face anychallenges in fusing the cul-tures of East and West?

EC: Yeah definitely. I meanthere was a lot of really tensemoments when you’re trying toput Japanese culture upagainst urban culture upagainst hip hop culture upagainst African American cul-ture up against samurai cul-ture. When it all flows togetherits like the best internationalparty you’ve ever been to andwhen it doesn’t work its likepeople have really deep reallystrong opinions that you knowcan be violable against eachother. So it was very delicateto try to find the right peoplewho can get all those thingsand kind of balance it in oneunified vision.

BG: How did you approachthis idea visually?

EC: Luckily Okazaki had allthe visual inspiration alreadysketched out I mean he’s anillustrator by trade. So all thecharacters that he designedeveryone followed instantly sohe had a really unique portfolioof completely creative charac-ters that yeah we wanted tofollow instantly we almostchanged nothing about it.

BG: Did you and Okazaki face

the challenge of avoidingstereotypes in relation to boththe Japanese Samurai Cultureand African American SoulCulture?

EC: Yeah definitely. I thinkthere are some versions ofstories that people wanted totell that definitely fell into a lotof areas that could’ve beenvery bad but what I think weended up doing is that decid-ing that Afro Samurai is aSamurai and the story is asamurai movie and once weset that bar everyone was real-ly excited about following that.You know cause it wasn’tabout making shaft. It wasabout making a cool AfricanAmerican character drawn inthe samurai world that prettymuch acted like a samurai butjust has a different design. Ithink that is the way to reallyfuse it because as soon asyou start to cater directly tolike making him somethinghe’s just not as a samurai hestarts to kind of sell out. In away we have this ninja ninjacharacter who could be a lotmore mainstream and use alot of current slang, butbecause he’s really a charac-ter that supports afro you canhave a character that sells outbut you have the main charac-ter where everyone respects.

BG: Whom did you originallyhave in mind to be the voice ofAfro and the rest of the char-acters?

EC: We actually didn’t haveanyone in mind. We were justgoing to start to make it so wedidn’t dream to think that wecould have celebrity talent. We[are] just a small productioncompany that just wanted tomake a cool animation. Youknow because I live in L.A. Ithought it’d be fun to show alot of people in my communitythe pilot [when it] was finished.I made about 50 copies on mymac laptop and like burned abunch of dvds and just mailedit out to everybody I knew andthat’s when through somemagic Hollywood networkingprocess Sam Jackson’s officecalled us and said we’ve seenit and Sam wants to be themain character. We were like“Oh My God we had no idea ofcourse you can be the maincharacter.”

BG: Do you think that AfroSamurai was successful inusing Traditional SamuraiStorytelling and fusing it withUrban culture?

EC: I think what we did waswe made a samurai movie thata great African American actor

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wanted to be in and so hebrought a lot of sensibilitiesalong with it. But you knowwhether like it wasn’t like wewere that thought-out in ourplans. Cause that the rightpeople wanted to get involvedso their personalities got natu-rally infused. Like when theRZA from the wu-tang clancame on board to do themusic we asked him what hewanted to do. Of course hewanted to put a lot of hip hopbeats, urban flavor, sci fimusic, orchestration, and oldstyle eastern sounds. So Ithink that was the best way.We let the artists and the cre-ators put their stamp on it.When Samuel Jackson was

doing the voice recordings wehad lines that we thought hewould say for Ninja Ninja butthen when he got in therecording booth he made it hisown and he changed it on hisown.

BG: It seems that there are anumber of animation projectsthat are utilizing 3D animation.Many Gonzo shows such asSamurai 7, Basilisk, and TrinityBlood to name a few do this.why use Cell Animation forAfro Samurai?

EC: Well all the projectsyou’ve just mentioned areactually cell animation, butthey have 3D elements. So for

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example in Samurai 7 all themain characters are drawn in atraditional 2D format and yousee a ship or giant robot theyhappen to be 3D. I think withTrinity Blood you know all ourcharacters are there. I meanit’s a funny question. I meanthere’s a lot of argument thatthe 2D medium is obsolete,which may even be the case.We just happen to be a wholestudio full of 2D artist and youknow and I think that AfroSamurai seemed to be easierfor us to make in 2D and that’swhere our expertise is so wejust basically are doing whatwe’re good at.

Afro Samurai and Justice

Elisain Pena Photography

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Cityscape

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Contemplation

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Untitled

Elizabeth TilelliPhotography

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August

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America

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Mother & Son

Rose E MaklariPhotography

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Untitled

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Untitled

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Untitled

Mike BrinkPhotography

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Fan

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Houses

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Untitled