HANA PART 1: I eight Hana

I think it was Curlymarie in the last comments that mentioned the transitions from one panel to the next. This is an aspect to comics that I really love. I get to create incredible visual effects without having to know all about lenses. My camera's focal depth is infinite and hell, it's a lot faster too.

It's not incredibly evident here on this page as this is more of a "vignette" page - a series of loosely related scenes. But I'm going to talk about it more on the pages where it's really relevant. The only logistical story to this page is that I lost the original 300dpi artwork. What you see is a recovered 150dpi version. Basically, while I've redrawn chunks it's lost about 20% of its quality. =(

The notorious page 8. Notorious for so many reasons.

First up, after scouring the 9th Wonders boards I became aware of a wave of dissention about the "classic" way that comic book artists portray sexy women. Huge boobs, tiny waists and inflated lips that would make Angelina Jolie jealous and clothes that resemble nothing more than two band-aids and a cork. I constantly try and ground the comics in the same world as HEROES and I wanted Hana to dress right. But I'm a guy, therefore I have no sense of fashion. So I ran a competition asking the 9th Wonders forum members to nominate dresses and outfits after I loosely described the scene.

Vanessa's original sleek design won the day and the competition: to dress Hana herself.

This page is rife with "easter eggs" and injokes so let's get into them.

PANEL 1: As I've mentioned before, Ryan Gibson Stewart has tirelessly supported my quest for the perfect details. His research on this project was thorough and unbelievably helpful. I asked him to find me a Nathan Petrelli ad. He listed every episode featuring Nathan's political campaign, a bunch of websites and eventually the grail: the Nathan Petrelli For Congress tv ad. The ad you see on the cab is a screen cap from that. I also wanted to add another injoke and Ryan directed me to the Corinthian website where I put together a billboard ad. As thanks I mentioned to him that I would put an "easter egg" into the comic for him. He jokingly asked if it could be green with blue stripes. So I named the nightclub after him, "RGS" and it has green and blue stripes. =)

PANEL 2: As mentioned in a previous post, thie panel features the winning dress as well as all the runners up. I didn't want to just highlight the winner. So many people had put so much effort in.

PANEL 3 & 4: So the script says Hana is drinking with some guys. In the next panel she kisses one of those guys. I was going to run a competition for the guys on the 9th Wonders getting them to compete to kiss Hana. Then I thought, "Bugger that! I'm winning that!" Hell, it's the most action I've seen all year. Later this year I'm heading to New York with two mates of mine. I figured if she's drinking with me, chances are that she's going to be drinking with the guys too. So the big guy on the left is Mitch and the guy pulling the "face" is Simbo (also model for Sonny from Zero G).

HEROES SIGIL: I almost forgot. It's funny how you guys all loved the HEROES symbol on Hana's earrings and ring. The note I received from NBC asked me to remove the earrings. The page I've uploaded here shows the page with the new earrings. For some reason I kept the ring. For some reason they used the old page. I hope no one got into trouble over this.

The last thing I've done is shown you my tonal layer. As you can see, it's not just tracing photos. Skilled Potatoshoppers out there will be able to overlay the art over the tonal layer and see what I colour over.

Lastly: People on the 9th Wonders forums have mentioned Greg Grunberg's tireless work for Pediatric Epilepsy. If anyone can put me in touch with him, I would be happy to donate the artwork for the final page of part 2 for his cause if he can clear the legal issues.