Avatara creators David Thomas and Angel Andrés Zerpa won the Excellence Award in prestigious yearly manga competition, Silent Manga Audition 2016 held by Coamix corp in Japan. The winning title is “Clowning Around” where readers are first taken into the fantastical world of sci-fi warzone as the story unfolds revealing the actual event and an eccentric character of an animated old lady. Mr Negishi, one of the jury for SMA 2016 commented, “Didn’t I mark this one with the highest score? THAT grandma may possibly be the best animated character of SMA6. Why not try creating a story with just her?”.

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​Andrés on winning the award; “I cannot express how happy I am, I dreamt to win the SMA since its first round! Thanks to The Lord after so many years of effort and sacrifices I was able to win the third place alongside David. Next year we will get the top spot!”

​Writing for this SMA entry gave David some ideas for future graphic novels, which might involve a blind girl who sees dead people.

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​David’s craft in story writing teamed up with Andrés’ highly expressive and unique manga style creates a highly dynamic combo of great manga creators. Their affinity for eccentric characters is also seen in the pilot episode of Avatara featured in Manga Big Bang! Prototype Book where the villain Byron Grimm, a corrupt politician is pictured as a pervert who drools and licks a doll made to resemble the female protagonist, Grace Flowers.

David who had been a horror novelist and script writer had derived the inspiration for Clowning Around by imagining what a hard core 12 year old gamer would be doing in 50 years time, where they would be playing games with their grand kids. “When David came up with the idea of a gamer grandma, I remembered a video of a whack old lady playing GTAV like a pro, and boom!! Everything started to flow,” commented Andrés.

Before the script for Clowning Around was finalized, there were 4 to 5 scripts that didn’t make it, though it contained something good in them. After much brainstorming, some parts were included in the final script. According to David and Andrés the old lady character is completely fictional and is not based on any real person. David has no intention of reusing this character in the Avatara series but Andrés might include her in the background as extra so watch out… she might appear anywhere!

​The Avatara series is in production at the moment. The second and third story is already mapped out with the help of editor Ricky.

Reference: http://www.manga-audition.com/sma6-2016award/