Frequently Asked Questions
If you have a question not answered here, feel free to post it on the 10K Update LJ... but check here first, na.
About the Website... About the Characters & Story... About the Tournament...
     
About the Website...  
First question, What's the point of this site?  
  10K Commotion is one of Yukon's hobbies-- a way to improve drawing and painting. This started as just an extention of the Yukon Makoto Online Sketchbook. After drawing DDR players at home, arcades and different tournaments, then the script for the TenKay episodes started evolving. So now, to practice drawing everyday, Yukon is assigned to finish illustrating the entire script. That's what's on this site.
So, what's going on then?  
  The whole story is already written but the manga has just passed the (approx) 90% drawn mark...

After it's finished, the 10K Commotion graphic novel should be available in print and Yukon will start drawing a different story entirely. That manga, Miyachi's Paper, will have its own website probably after school starts this year :)
Alright now , why isn't it updated every week anymore? Or even every M-W-F like other cool webcomics?  
  That's because her schedule changes all the time. There could be a new page uploaded every couple of days, but that would be silly and wouldn't make sense when you read it. So to do 10-15 pages per update, it sometimes takes longer than a week.

There's always a post in the 10K LJ Community whenever it's updated so people who would rather wait to read the whole chapter at once when it's finished can do that too.
What media is used to make 10K Commotion and how are the pages created?  
  10K Commotion is all drawn with mechanical pencils (usually the cheap ones or the free ones found lying around the school office) and then painted in digital watercolor.

The best way to get answers to specific technique questions is to post them in the online notebook-- There'll be a new process page showing how 10K Commotion is made soon, but it's not ready yet. Also the process for 10K Commotion is variable each week. It's all about experimenting...
Can someone get 10K to link to their webcomic? Can they get a banner to link back?  
  Networking is good stuff. But be patient since the main site isn't updated everyday or anything... the links now are all found in the Guest Artist Gallery, so when I receive guest art, I always make sure to link back to it :)
So who is Yukon Makoto? In the comic , it's a little boy but... I heard Agent K was actually a girl and...  
 

Yeah, it's confusing if you've just dropped in on 10K, but here's the deal-- the artist is a girl. The character in the comic named after her is a boy. Everywhere else online, she's called Yukon or Makoto, but now that 10K is more widely known, she's pretty much called Agent KINESIS so people know to keep her separate from the characters in the comic.

Last then, whatever happened to the 10K Message Board? What's the forum status now?  
  Now that Dreamdestiny has retired its forums, the 10K Commotion forums are gone also. Unfortunately Tenkay doesn't have the extra resources to host & manage a forum so in the meantime that means they're gone. Anyone who used to chat on the forums is welcome to stop by the updates page or email... and anyone wants to leave comments or questions should leave a note in the 10K Update LJ.

About the Characters & Story...  
Can someone borrow your characters to appear in their comic? And can someone borrow your storyline and tournament stuff?  
  Tenkay characters show up in lots of places and I'm happy to see them :) (you can let me know if you see one by emailing me too). No doujin artist owns exclusive rights to DDR so just like anybody can make a comic about basketball, anyone can do their own DDR comic too. Especially if they aren't trying to make money, no one will be stressing about it.

The 10K Commotion is my version and I've organized the rules to work with the story I'm telling. So if someone wants to do a comic about a DDR tournament, they should make up their own rules and stuff. Every real life tournament head who creates DDR or Bemani tournament has to plan the rules and regulations for it, and most aren't like Tenkay so you can go to a real tourney and see how they do it. Forums and websites list tournaments happening all over the world (and often their rules) based on region, so if you can't get to one, you can just research it online.

If anyone really wants to put time and effort into making something like a comic, it should be their own-- they way the write it to be -- as opposed to copied from someone, na :)
Can I get a picture of Dyna's tattoo? and also Is it based on Hyde of L'Arc-En-Ciel?  
  Yes, you can, but not today :) Jun has a tattoo on his back that reaches around both shoulders just a little, but it hasn't been drawn clearly yet and that's on purpose for now. There will be a clean drawing of the design posted along with the actual design on his backpack (which is different) but it's not up yet. In words, Jun's tattoo is a set of wings and three loose feathers just barely wrap around his shoulders.

Some people sent me links to the pictures of Hyde's tattoo of angel wings, but actually I hadn't seen that when I started 10K. (In real life Jun Ishibashi doesn't have a tattoo but) Dyna's tattoo was inspired by a a strange dream I had of Jamie from ZOIDS New Century. He was the kid that flew the Pteras.
What's up with the scores? If the Qualifier was Candy Lyrical, Heavy... the Trick Division scores look kinda fishy...  
  Yes, the truly freaky DDR geeks like me will notice that the scores for Trick Division (as they were lettered on the scoreboards in the comic) are off by almost 200 points-- I'll have to go change them because Cowboy's score should be 648, since he got 6 greats, Candy and Breakdown both got 7... all of their scores need to be recalculated and I just haven't gone back and done that all.

The number/score issues in the lettering of 4th-5th Stages are my mistake, so gomen na ... The script has the scores already written in, but at the time I was writing it, a friend and I were both doing the math for every match and totalling scores for every player on every team. Things got confusing when we made changes so now I know that I have to go recalculate a LOT of the numbers... but that hasn't been done yet. However the rankings are all correct and that's what's important to the story, so I'm still drawing the next update and moving on.
Is [chara name HERE] based on a real person and if so, can I marry them?  
  How much the tenkay players are similar to their real life counterparts varies a LOT from case to case, so there's no one answer to that... waaay later at the end, when the whole manga is finished, there might be a page put up with photos of some of the real life people who inspired the comic... but till then, just take it as it is:

Many of are inspired by real people but not all are literal representations of them. They started based on the artist and close friends but as the story evolves now, the characters act and look less like them now. Some characters look like the real people they're inspired by but may not act like them or vice-versa.

HOWEVER any similarity between a real person and a character referenced in 10K Commotion is cleared with anyone involved BEFORE it's added, so any other resemblence is purely coincidental.
Can I be in it too? Or Can Yukon draw me being all cool and draw me pounding some punk on a song like Paranoia Survivor while dribbling a basketball and eating a hotdog?  
  The scripts are already written so even if that might make a great side story, um... no. ^^;
Where can I get a backpack like Dyna's?  
  Sorry, but none of us know of any place that carries them anymore. It was originally an old CardCaptor Sakura backpack (old = circa first movie), but since that series is over, those aren't easy to find now. Winged backpacks are easy to locate, but the actual bag Jun carries was originally bright red vinyl/plastic (that's faded to a kinda orange-y color now). And the logo was already torn off, now the Platinum Mark logo covers the space on the back where the heart/star logo was... (thank goodness, since Dyna doesn't need to seem any LESS manly)
Are Candy and [guy from the Platinum Mark] a couple or what?  
  Candy is definitely close to the guys on her team, but not in that way. Most people write to ask about her + Dyna or + Breakdown but neither of those can work right now, each for different reasons.
So is Jun a player? Or Is Jun homosexual? Or Why doesn't he have a girlfriend?  
  No and no and Dyna likes ladies quite a bit and ladies like him back... There are a few reasons why he's single now, including (but not limited to) the fact that he moves a lot and that he's got other things to worry about right now.
If everyone in the world writes to say they love a character (for example, Spectator #6), will Yukon change the story so he wins instead?  
  Nope. All the events in the 10K Commotion are important to how the characters relationships develop... which is important for the next part of that story after the tournament. Lots of people have written saying, "It'd be great if [Team Wang] won", or "It would suck if [Team Psyclone] won" but those don't matter anymore at this point.
What color is Jun's hair?  
  As a real person, Jun Ishibashi has naturally dark brown hair that gets a little bit lighter in the summer from the sun and ocean. Then the summer before 10K, he lightened it to a bright gold color, and by the time 10K Commotion started, it had grown out a bit... which is how it's drawn on his ID badge, and in the First Stage. (gold with dark brown at the base)

But that makes Dyna look darker and more neutral than he should, so now the character, Dynamite is painted to have hair that's almost void of any color. It reflects the colors around it which makes it a kind of light champagne color.

About the Tournament...  
Is the 10K Commotion based on a real tournament somewhere in the US?  
  No, none of us know of a real DDR Tech tourney worth $10,000. But the rules and events are based on many different tournaments that took place over the past two years. Between all of us, we probably hit a tourney at least once or twice a month.

All other events are fictional and rights to the story, text, character designs/other images and translations are all reserved. Of course (That means you should NOT copy or use the story or characters for your own work. That's just not right and no good for your karma.)
How come the Qualifying Song for Trick Division was Candy Lyrical? That's too easy/hard...  
  It should be clear that the term "Trick Division" determines who they play against, but it doesn't mean they play on Standard Mode all the time... The Qualifying Song for Trick Division was Candy Lyrical-- Heavy, with no modifiers. That being said, it's not too difficult either for the kind of tricksters competiting here: It was chosen because it's a solid 7 footer that everybody knows but is more interesting to PA than Sobakasu Freckles.

For play within the 10K Commotion Tournament, the difficulty is considered part of the song selection. (as opposed to being a mod)
In the First Elimination Round, how did Dynamite still outscore everybody, even when other players (like Lori and Josue) scored Triple A's and Dyna didn't?  
  The AAA medal is given if someone gets all perfects on a song, but the score = perfects x 2 + greats + okays. Take for example, if Josue AAA's After the Game of Love, he totals 207perfects x 2 which scores him 414, but then if Dyna AA's V for Extreme Oni with 1 Great, he totals 447perfects x 2 + 1great + 4okays that totals 899. You can do the math at home if you want to guess all the songs all the players play in every round, but that's not as interesting to draw, so each individual score will only be mentioned in the manga when it's important to the story.

Or in 8.5th Stage, where all of the scores leading up to the Grand Prize Round are written out. One day those'll be typed up nicely so true geeks can cross-reference everyone's PA 5killz.
       
   
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