Welcome to this months chatty, chatty, chat, chat. For those international readers please accept my apologies, I’m a brit and we have a rather insane sense of humour.
Well the month has been busy and it started off perfectly.
The phone rang.
“Hi, is that David?”
“Yes.”
“Oh good. I’ve been given your name and you come highly recommended.”
Always a dangerous opening.
“Who is the target?”
There was a pause.
“Target?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I thought this was something else.”
“No, no. I’m calling about samurai armour.”
“Right. My misunderstanding. How can I help?”
“I’m calling on behalf of National Geographic. We’re making some television programmes about the samurai, and we need real armour for actors to wear.”
This is where the conversation began to wobble.
“How tall are the actors?”
“Oh, around six foot.”
“They won’t fit.”
“They won’t fit?”
“No. Edo-period armour was made for Japanese samurai of the period, not modern six-foot actors.”
“Ah, I see. Never mind. We can get shorter actors.”
A bold solution. Historically flexible, at least. I also notice a post appear on the MK Japanese Facebook Community group reaching out for peeps to be actors - same guy.
“What exactly are you filming?”
“A scene with Tokugawa Ieyasu in camp, directing his generals at Sekigahara. We want them all in full armour.”
“Well, there is a slight problem with that.”
“Oh?”
“He wasn’t on the battlefield at Sekigahara in the way you are imagining. He was at his headquarters, not marching about like the lead in a trailer.”
“Oh right. We didn’t know that. Perhaps we can move him to the Siege of Osaka.”
“There’s also an issue there.”
“What issue?”
“He was dead.”
“Dead?”
“According to one tradition, Sanada Yukimura killed him during the Osaka campaign and he was replaced by a double, he then died officially a year of so later.”
Another pause. Did he realise I was winding him up?
“Maybe we’ll just film him in armour and not place him at a battle.”
“That brings us to the next problem. Ieyasu’s armours are famous. The gold armour, the Nanban armour, the brown armour. They’re all recognisable. I don’t own any of them as they are national treasures.”
Silence.
“Oh. I see.”
And that was that.
We never spoke again. I’m happy too
So I suppose I will not be working with National Geographic any time soon. To be truthful, I am rather relieved. After the guy giving me a Wikipedia account of Japan I nearly choked to death sucking a box of duck eggs.
Next..
As you can see, I am really starting to get to grips with the AI.
I have now digitised around thirty actors and have also begun to understand how to build convincing armour within this process. It is slow work, because AI alone simply will not do it. I still have to photograph reference material, study the original pieces, and then spend hours making everything fit, sit correctly and look authentic.
For example, the above image is a model of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The armour is now close to the photographs I took in Japan, but I still need to make and add the hanpō face armour. After that, I will have to make a real small plate, gild it, lace it in kebiki and sugake odoshi, and then photograph it in the correct positions so that I can replace the generated lacing in Photoshop.
That is the part people often miss. The finished image may look like AI, but the process behind it is much closer to photographic reconstruction. It is a combination of real photography, AI and Photoshop, each doing a different job.
For me, this is taking samurai imagery to a new level. More importantly, it is creating visual material to support the books in a way that would never have been possible on a small budget.
Hmmmm, that given me an excuse to go to Japan and get some more photos for book projects.
The SAMURAI book is finished.
Now comes the dangerous bit
My book is finished. I’m happy about that as well. It was bloody hard work.
Yup. Done and dusted.
Which means I now enter the strange and slightly painful stage where the book stops being a romantic creative project and becomes a pile of boxes that I have to lift, sign, pack, label and carry to the Post Office.
For the limited edition, I am buying the full print run in one order, which means I get a discount. That sounds sensible. It is sensible. But it also means I have to be sensible about something else.
No more free books.
In the past I have given away more than a thousand books. I know. I can hear some of you already saying, “That was very generous, where was mine.”
Yes, it was.
It was also financially ridiculous. But I did it at Art Fairs in the attempt to hook peeps into our lovely katchubunny world.
There is very little money in specialist publishing, and my time these days has to produce some kind of return. So this time, there are no free copies. Not for friends of friends, not for people who “might mention it somewhere”, not even if you happen to be the actress who played Mariko in the new Shōgun series.
Although, to be fair, I would probably pause for a moment because she is rather sexy.
But no. Still no. She earns enough money doing that Godzilla thing on the side at AppleTV. Goodbye Anna Sawai, it’s not happening.
The limited edition will be handled by me directly. I will receive the printed books, match each one with the limited edition print set, package everything properly, and post them out. I will charge a flat postage fee, because some destinations will cost more, some will cost less, and with luck it will all even itself out rather than punish everyone individually.
The odd thing is that I expect the signed hardback limited edition may end up around the same retail price as the print-on-demand softback version. The POD softback will not be signed, and it will not include the limited edition prints. So, if you are choosing between the two, the limited edition from me is really the best route.
Each copy will be signed. There will also be an insert card if you want a personal message.
I prefer doing it that way, because I have never liked dedicating books directly inside the book itself. I know people like it, and I understand why, but I have a lot of books in my own collection dedicated to people I have never met.
“To Wendy, with best wishes.”
Who is Wendy?
Why is she in my library?
And why has she lowered the value of my book?
Years ago, I sold a used copy of Arms and Armour of the Samurai by Bottomley and Hopson at an arms fair. It was priced at £10. Ian Bottomley was sitting at the table with me, and the buyer asked him to sign it and dedicate it personally.
Ian kindly did.
I handed the buyer £5 back.
That, I felt, was only fair.
The new website is alive
My new website is now rolling, and I have to say I am genuinely surprised by how well it has been received. I also enjoy making up these crazy product mock-ups.
So, thank you.
Really, thank you very much for supporting it. It makes my day when I hear a shopify bell ding.
I work long hours and do pretty much everything myself. I am not a major brand with a marketing department, a content team and someone called Hugo who “handles socials”. It is just me, trying to build something worthwhile, while also answering emails, packing orders, photographing objects, writing books and occasionally remembering to eat something that did not come out of a packet. Oh and my wife, I think she still lives with me.
On a side note, I have also been road-testing the Katchubunny T-shirt.
This has produced mixed but interesting results.
I wore it to a Japanese community event, where it was very well received. That was encouraging.
I wore it to a restaurant with a mate, where the waiter immediately assumed we were a couple. That was less expected, although the service was excellent, so perhaps we should have gone with it and snogged it out until the police were called.
I then wore it to my local MMA gym, where nobody cared at all, because everyone there is dangerous and far too busy trying not to be folded in half. Apart from Dan. Why are you there Dan?
June
The next month ahead will be a mixture of me working on restorations and listing items. I’m going to change my way of selling, I will offer items here via the Curators Corner and on a few other platforms, if they don’t sell I am going to put them into auction at the end of each year. So items Ive had in stock for a long time, they need to go to new homes.
I will also re-vamp some of my other books with additional photographs and get them listed on my website. So the year is about downsizing, and working efficiently. I do have something up my sleeve for a new venture for next year which could bee a real game changer, if it comes off.
Thats it of this month, thank you everyone. I do hope to bump into many of you at the Arms Fair in Brum next month.
Please feel free to throw some questions.
Loved every word of this, Dave. Never apologise for your humour. We internationals will just have to deal with it. And never disappoint Anna Sawai!
Dave, great news re book.
Please put me down for 2 limited editions with prints.
Thank you for all the free books in the past! They did their job and hooked me!🙂