About October 2011...
There was a huge flooding in my province in Thailand.
I and my family have evacuated in a day before the water flooded our house to the safe hotel nearby for almost a week. Then we moved to my paternal aunt's in the east of Thailand for a week. After that, we moved to my paternal uncle's in nearby province.
I was a 4th year university student at that time. The last semester's first day was postponed and I had to finished my final university project at my uncle's shelter.
During the break on making my final project, I went to Youtube and found Disney's "House of Mouse" version of "
The Nutcracker".
The cartoon was fun in the Disney's style till I look for the ballet version of The Nutcracker! :D It was a fantastic show. The music and the performance was so really great!
Honestly, the first time I know what the Nutcracker is was in 2010. I was play the Facebook game called "Pet Society" (now the game was closed down.) The game was release new items and costumes from "The Nutcracker"
here. Later, I found House of Mouse version of this one and checked it out what it was about.
....and then...my weird idea was happened.
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| The earliest sketch of the Roxette version of The Nutcracker |
I fused the story of The Nutcracker with my favorite band,
Roxette, and figured out which band members got which roles especially Marie and Per. Coincidentally, the protagonist's name of original nutcracker story by E.T.A. Hoffmann is "Marie" :D , while the ballet one named "Clara".
Hoffmann's original one story is different from the ballet's story. The original one is quite more intense than the ballet's. The ballet's story sounds happy and festive. House of Mouse's one is totally different from them. XD Since House of Mouse's "The Nutcracker" has their variation of the story. Then created my own variation of the story based from the ballet's story.
After I and my family went back to the province we live and cleaned up our house after the flood had gone. I did some little research of The Nutcracker during the break of university's final project. Finally, the first page of "
The Roxette Nutcracker" comic was uploaded on my comic site on the middle of June 2012, a couple weeks before my graduation ceremony.
This is my variation..
There was a little Christmas party in an orphanage at the Christmas' Eve night. Marie and about 16 children celebrated Christmas together. Then the godfather stopped by the orphanage with loads of present for the children and a special one, the nutcracker, for Marie.
After Marie took the children the bed, she went to see her present again. Unfortunately, she lost into the strange place where was full of toys. The presents in that place were looted by the mice army and the army leader, the greedy mouse king. Then, Marie saw the nutcracker, lively nutcracker, lead his army to controlled the situation.
It sounds like the rest of story will goes like the original one, but it could be boring if I left it like that. ;) It's not ended up like that for sure. You have to stay tuned on that.
I planned to submit couple pages per week for giving a space of time to do the other things especially "go to work at the office" and wished to finish before Christmas 2012, but it was not I had planned. ^^; The comic was going on until today, almost a year since the comic began. By the way, the story is almost reaching the climax. I will speed up myself as soon as I can. Hope the comic is done before Christmas 2013!
Here are some of the concept sketches of the RoxNut :)
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| Marie F. is Marie herself! |
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More Marie
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| Per G. is The Nutcracker Prince |
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| More Per and the mice minion design |
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| Mikael B. is the godfather. |
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| Clarence O. has been surprisingly chosen as the villain, the Mouse King... |
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So Christoffer.....Russian Christoffer...
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Early design of Chinese Magnus B. and Arabian Pelle A.
(Pelle is looked quite thin here...) |
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| More Mr.Magnus! |
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| Shocking Marie and the early design of Sugar plum fairy princess Helena J. |
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| And a lil' bit Winter Queen Dea N. |
The rest are the extra concept sketches :)
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"Gotta grab a pen and paper
Gotta write a tiny note to you..." |
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| Marie's children at the orphanage. |
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| The fun and the touching one |
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| One of my favorite... |
And these are the final characters artworks!!
So, that's all for this time. I've gotta go back for the rest and finish some of the pages soon.
Oh yes!
Marie has just turned 55 yesterday!!
Happy birthday to you, Marie!!!
You are so fantastic!! I'm so happy that you can survived the trouble.
It was incredible! You made it possible.
I always love your voice and creativity.
Moreover, you give me strength!!
I wish you'll be healthy, wealthy, and beautiful as always!
From a little fan from Thailand, Maew :')
