Hello everyone. We’ve got an exclusive interview with Ivan, one of our circle members on Magical Stage, about his latest illustrated novel The Pantomime Showbiz, which follows an aspiring peppy spoiled child actress and her unforeseen consequences striving for greatness to be the star of her own motion picture. It (may) is one of the most anticipated illustrated novels releasing this autumn.
In this interview, Ivan talks about the production behind the novel, it’s many ideas and concepts over it’s two-and-a-half-year development cycle, it’s influences from turn-of-the-century classics to pompous comedy manga, and what exactly the future holds for him, Funtastic Studios, and beyond.
Let’s get reading this one! Mii-chan will be asking the questions.
Mii-chan: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with Magical Stage. It must be exciting to have two illustrated novels come out in the same year. How do you feel about that?
Ivan: It really is. I also had a four-panel comic begin serialization this year, Suncoast Strawberries, in the So Diva magazine. It has certainly been a year for me. The Pantomime Showbiz is my sixth Funtastic novel, which stated back in 2022 with Okies. This time around, I wanted to use the motifs of film and acting to tell a story that really, could only be told using what I have learned about them. At this stage in my career, I feel I have gotten better at doing these novels by each passing release. Of what has been released so, I can definitely say this is the most proud I’ve been of a production. As a work that lasted for about two-and-a-half years, it’s thrilling to see it almost ready for the world to see. Even when I had self-doubt after I wanted to go through with developing, I struck through.
Mii-chan: How did this project actually get started?
Ivan: In the summer of 2024, I was getting into western cinema. There would be times where I would be watching half-a-dozen movies a day. This was right around the time where I was trying to get into film. Some of my fondest memories are going to the now-defunct AMC at Downtown Disney and being so taken by both the atmosphere and quality that felt cinematic, and in a way, magical. I was also studying a lot about the human mind at the time. During that period, I was developing A Few Good Gumshoes and Cocofolk and the Mushroom Hourglass, but I already started to get an idea of what I wanted my next novel to be. I started work on the project on July 18, 2024, which is also the same day that the title was created. Now that part was the easiest to go ahead and make.
Mii-chan: What was the original vision? Did it stay the same?
Ivan: No. My first pitch was going to be a father-daughter story. It was about a psychologist father and his successful child actress. She would become possessed by spirits of the dead, and he would need to do everything to save her before she was killed for good. I remember I had just seen The Exorcist right before I came up with the idea, so some influence obviously spilled over. Then there was going to be this mad oil prospector villain who wanted her blood to access the spiritual world, and a group of spirits of the dead to aid her. The name of Pantomime Showbiz was supposed to be that world. I may revisit the idea someday in different lens, but it just wasn’t working out back then. I only go as far as a teaser visual, but design wise, it was a very short-lived concept that I toyed with. I do remember that I wanted it to be more horror-based on the phycological approach I landed on.
Mii-chan: How did you land on the story you wanted to tell?
Ivan: It kinda all came together. In late summer 2024, I felt I woke up every morning where the pieces I needed slowly came together. I kept the child actress idea, and I did briefly consider just making it a ghost story between the real and spirit worlds, but I started to go back to actually going back to the theater, more than ever, and I remembered that sort of special atmosphere you can’t find anywhere else. One of my favorite things is to archive the posters, to get a glimpse in time of what the world looked like when Rock Dog released, as PatMac famously said. Then I thought about developing the premise around a child actress who wants to be the star of her life but has been stuck being the supporting character. She then discovers something mysterious in her movie theater, and well, once it enters her mind she can cheat the system, she refuses to stop, until…
Mii-chan: We don’t have much trivia for Butters. Give me some:
Ivan: Well, she is a kid in over her head. It is true she is in pursuit of greatness. She wants to be one of the greats, if not the greatest. That’s the problem with never telling her no. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and she knows it. She lacks the parenteral or educational guidance, as she skipped them to have a full-time life in showbiz. She clearly wants to be the adult in the room. Her discovering this secret gateway that nobody else knows is like giving your kid unlimited access to playing video games. Once you put the idea into them, it’s going to be impossible to make them stop. She wants to improve her acting, but does she want to improve who she is? I thought even if the protagonist is a child, her journey isn’t far off from what many people face in the real world. I felt I needed a lead who was as versatile as the best actors and actresses working today.
Mii-chan: Who inspired Butters Grace?
Ivan: She was inspired by the titular characters of Pompo: the Cinephile and Eloise, as well as Penny Lane from Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, and Elle Woods from Robert Luketic’s Legally Blonde. And an iota of the Kristen Dunst version of Marie Antoinette, which is Sofia Coppola’s best work. When I was developing, I thought a spoiled and bratty personality would be a rich source of humor and drama for the lead, especially given what happens to her over the course of the story. I figured a peppy-eyed child actress would be the way to go. She could also be someone you would find believable in their strengths and weaknesses. Interestingly enough, her design was basically the same from when she was created. She used to have a regular film hat, but then I thought to make it fancier and smaller. Honestly, I think Butters might be the best character design I’ve done.
Mii-chan: What films influenced The Pantomime Showbiz?
Ivan: The work of Charlie Kaufman comes to mind. Around the time of the novel’s creation, I had seen films such as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, all of which he wrote. I was so compelled by how he approached surrealist fantasy with the human mind, which by coincidence, I was really into studying and also was a driving basis for how the novel came to be. Aside from Pompo, there were also the films of Ed Wood and Mulholland Drive, to either get a sense of Hollywood from a unique perspective and producing a movie, or what it’s like to be among the stars from Hollywood hopefuls. I did try to keep it to a minimal about how many films I was inspired by. I tried to avoid making The Pantomime Showbiz too similar to a film you may have seen before and didn’t want to emulate one movie in particular. Why would I make you read something if you can already watch it, you know? I wrote it in a sense that you wouldn’t be able to get from throwing on a movie from your physical media collection, and you would need to read it.
Mii-chan: What about the other characters aside from Butters?
Ivan: In the story, there are three other pivotal characters; Weir S. Miller, who is the director of the actual The Pantomime Showbiz film they’re making, in addition to Fanna Wood, who is small and a grade school actress with a hot-tempered attitude, and Cine Bijou, a French-born actress that appears apathetic, but has more than meets the eye. They both play Butters’ sisters. There’s also a pet pig Miller has, Mr. Nooan. He was a thrill to draw, for as little he appears in the novel. Given his name, Miller is the most elderly, artistic Australian director you could ever dream for. Because the two most recent director marathons I had at done at the time were George Miller and Peter Weir, I felt I needed to honor the roots of this project. I view Fanna and Cine as the sisters Butters never had. I felt Cine was the cool girl everyone knew, while Fanna is the annoying sibling you still care for. I also had Brute, this animal zoologist who was Butters’ only friend she talked to via fan mail, who was later scrapped, because I simply didn’t know how to organically include him into the story.
Mii-chan: How did anime influence this project?
Ivan: I’ve made it no secret I owe a lot of this novel’s existence to Pompo: The Cinephile. For the longest time, it was the only movie in the 2020s I had seen. It was among the first manga I was really into. I particularly thought about that series every day in spring 2022. It thought, and still thinks, it’s one of the most compelling film-based stories we’ve ever gotten. In many ways, I like to consider it a companion piece to it’s themes and ideas. I see the difference of making the peppy little girl who loves movies be the one who goes through then her editor is much different, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think back to the series when I tried to write about movies. It was my gateway to truly admiring the art of this medium. In addition, for the art design, I was drawn to gag anime, as those tend to be very poppy and expressive with how they portray their locations and production.
Mii-chan: How many film references and Hollywood in-jokes are in the novel?
Ivan: I would say the amount that’s expected. Think of a movie like, The Player from Robert Altman, where there’s a ton of things you only get if you really know the film world, but also enough to where you can still read it without being too into the medium. If you look closely, I feel there’s one that will be a surprise to any viewer. Without going into detail, one of the in-jokes was influenced by The Men Who Would Be King, which is a book detailing the history of DreamWorks SKG. When I heard about a certain scene from Austin the Brimstone, I knew I had to include it, even if it was the last piece I included during development. Never doubt how helpful the niche YouTube scene can be. In short, you will probably smile if you catch things so specific, because yes, they are that specific. But at the same time, I tried not to make it so on the nose that it would take you out of the actual plot.
Mii-chan: What were specific things you knew you had to include in a novel about films?
Ivan: At first, my original plan was to cover every era of film history in one novel, but when I was writing it, I just didn’t like where it was going, so I settled to make it lose moments that can be from any era, in terms of what Butters actually sees. I also knew I wanted to model the theater in the novel based on one of my favorites. There was a specific moment in my life, around a year ago now, that not only made me reshape my existence, but was so pivotal that I knew I had to use it for this story. All I’ll say is it happened right after I saw Apollo 13 in IMAX for the first time. I had about two years of working on this novel, and there’s a ton of little things I experienced that I threw in, chiefly related to what it is to go to the theater. I got so annoyed by a Real Estate Action Hero AD so many times over the last year, so I alluded to that also being something Butters also deals with too.
Mii-chan: How did studying the brain help into the production?
Ivan: I view The Pantomime Showbiz as a story that explores the five main stages of functional brain types through a young child’s experiences with them, which is something I didn’t even realize while I was already writing the novel, but the journey of Butters pairs together with what goes inside our brain, even when we may not be thinking about them. As I had established earlier, I wrote the concept around having studied the human brain. Butters is a girl that does represent the core elements of a functional brain type, and in the novel, you will see them unfold. Of course, there’s the obvious ones of Butters representing what it’s like to be spontaneous given how much she craves excitement and is impulsive about things going her way as an actress, but then are moments that are shocking in how they correlate back to this concept. The mind still played a big part in the novel.
Mii-chan: What was the hardest part of the novel?
Ivan: Without a doubt, how I was going to approach Butters’ gateway. I struggled with that for so long that I thought it was going to kneecap the novel from being made all together. I had ideas in making it where Butters would go inside the actress’ bodies or having her recreate the moments of the pictures in real time to when they were made. It was a real struggle that took up way more time than I like to admit. When I saw Eternity late last year, a film I liked way more than I expected, one of the concepts it had was this idea of having a build to show an individual’s life, in this stage-like format. Then I realized that the murals at Butters’ theater could very well be what is discovered to be in motion in this gateway, and then everything finally came clicking together. The idea of the pantomimes are the lives and moments of humans presented in stage-like plays sounded cool. I also owe some inspiration to how I used to think life might actually have always been a show. As I thought about it further, I liked to link the concept of a stage to that of your home or workplace.
Mii-chan: What was your favorite part of illustrating and writing?
Ivan: The expressions, as with most of my novels. Still, I continue to be most influenced by the work of Yoshihiko Umakoshi to emulate emotion. Ojamajo Doremi and HeartCatch Precure! have to be the two animated shows where I have visually studied how their character designs and facial expressions the most, from how scrumptious and stylized it is. Another source of influence I had was the Disney animated series The Ghost and Molly McGee, for similar reasons, but also to push the work further. I love it when art can push the visual potential of how the language of someone’s body can tell so much on it’s own without words, and well, this is a novel that is all about that. As I came to design the characters, I ensured they only had significant film motifs to correlate. Butter has a little film reel hat. Fanna wears 3D glasses. Cine dons a soda-inspired pin for her hair. Etc.
Mii-chan: Any future ideas you are creating?
Ivan: In 2027, I have the follow-up to Most Popular Marquee in the spring, which I am currently working on now, and then a new original entitled Furocious Frenemies, which releases next autumn. It is the story of two girls on the opposite spectrum of everything possible, who due to their refusal to end their rivalry, are cursed to be cats from a slumber party incident and must become friends if they want to ever become human again, especially before big personal events in their lives. I’m also developing a remake of Mahou Shoujo Alley’s Inferno, which was my 2023 magical girl release, but one I feel needs to be redone to be a better work. Then, in 2028, there is Happy as a Harvested Autumn, the 10th Anniversary project of Funtastic. I will refrain from any further details other than yes; it is a Yuri between two artistic girls in love. Who knows what stories may follow them next?
Mii-chan: Do you think The Pantomime Showbiz or any Funtastic releases will ever be adapted?
Ivan: As much as I would love to see one of my titles be adapted into an animated series or film, I don’t think it will ever happen, at least in the near future. I tried to get some things going, but none of them ever got close to going somewhere, and I simply don’t have the connections to make any of it a reality. But right now, I’m not really focused on trying to think about if the miracle dice will work in my favor. I’m trying to make a series of illustrated novels that I will become proud of, for all of time. I feel The Pantomime Showbiz would work for an animated adaption, but yeah, there are no plans. If I wanted to see Butters’ tale in Dolby Cinema, this life is not where I’m going to find it anytime soon.
Mii-chan: What do you want people’s takeaway from The Pantomime Showbiz to be?
Ivan: In a way, I felt I accidentally made it at the right time, at the right place. Once you read the story of Butters Grace, I hope you are left with a message as touching as what she went through, and what I developed over the course of two years. It is a little bittersweet I have finished it. The best way to approach this novel is to go into with only knowing the logline, or honestly, be aware of only what Butters’ character design is. To date, this is my most complex narrative, both from an artistic and writing standpoint. Whenever I show it to people, there is more anticipation than I could’ve thought. I wonder how many will ask how far they would be willing to go to be the very best, no matter what may happen to them, once they get their hands on meeting the newest star.
Here is the summary of The Pantomime Showbiz, set to release on October 20th, 2026.
“In the heart of North Poinwood, precious little Butters Grace is a child actress on the rise to stardom. For a kid her age, she has everything. A prestigious acting award, commercial success, acclaimed supporting roles in motion pictures. The only thing she’s missing is to star in her own feature film. When she is given the opportunity to be the lead of the surreal fantasy picture “The Pantomime Showbiz”, she’s so happy to no longer be the supporting character in other people’s lives, but rather, to be her own story’s protagonist.”
“She couldn’t be any more excited for a day she has been dreaming of since birth, but after a lackluster first day of shooting sends her into frustration into a day at the movies to relax, she discovers a strange gateway beyond premium screens and concessions. For a brief time, she can see periods of film history that surpass anything she could’ve ever imagined. When she becomes encouraged to take advantage of the past as the perfect picture is on her mind, she is left with an experience unlike any picture she’s seen.”
