Tuesday, September 11, 2007

BLACKOUT page 5

The big final page 5.

First up, it's become night. Getting to play with a whole different slice of colour was actually kinda refreshing. You gotta remember, you guys take SECONDS to read each page, and it takes me up to 10 HOURS to draw each page. I gotta keep myself amused some how. The only way I keep myself from staying off the bell tower with the rifle is by rationalising that if each person takes 10 seconds per page, then 600 people have to read it to make my time worthwhile. I'm pretty sure there's 600 people reading this bad boy. Oh, and the phat deposit from NBC into my bank account keeps me weighing in on this side of sane too. =)

Anyway, back to the comic.

I wanted to go warm in this top panel for two reasons. One, I wanted to illustrate that it was a scene where these two characters are comfortable with one another. It's a nurturing atmosphere. Secondly, I also wanted it to contrast with the third panel as much as possible. Warm/Cold. I'm a genius like that. I mean, who else woulda thought to balance blue with yellow? Get this boy a Nobel Prize!

Sorry. Colour theory is probably not the talent of mine that's going to set the world ablaze.

In the script, the blackout panels are supposed to be flat black. There's also a little sound effect: SZZT which got replaced with SHOONK. If a vote was taken, I'd vote for SZZT only because he didn't inhale and knows how to treat an intern.

So instead of just filling the blackout frames black, I tried to make sure a window was in the frame each time so that we had some light. I basically just copied the frame above and repainted the lighting without the internal light from the room.

But the real money shot is panel 3.

As people who have read my previous comments on my HEROES work would know, I'm a big believer in trying to make the extraordinary look believable.

The arc-up by the patient in panel 3 was especially challenging. It was the first display we had of any powers in the story. It needed to be exciting enough that you'd want to come back and find out what happened in the second half. But I didn't want it to be insanely over the top either. The kid's not Electro and Mohinder ain't pulling on the red and blue spandex.

A big part of it to me is Mohinder's reaction. The dialogue that I was given for Mohinder is a little different. In fact, in my script he says nothing. I tried to tell the story with his shock and his body language. But again, he's not diving for cover or doing anything over the top. It was an interesting choice by Mark (I assume) to chuck this line of dialogue in.

I'm eagerly anticipating the reaction to part 2. I'm much happier with it than part 1.

By the way, I hope I didn't offend anyone with my last post. I was just trying to find an amusing way to highlight some of the... less substantial theories on the boards.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have my dream job.

I enjoy the line art--I love the minimalist look both in and of itself and because it leaves room for the coloring process to fill in details. You don't seem to vary line width much; is that a stylistic choice or is it a result of working within tight deadlines? Ages ago when I used to draw, I spent a lot of time rendering line art just-so, and it might have impeded the creative process some.

Thanks for giving such detailed insight into the process of creating your illustrations.

Anonymous said...

What extra line from Mohinder? On this page, he has a line in the first panel ("I don't get it! This worked for Molly..."), but there's no dialog on the rest of the page...at least not in my version.

I have to say, I love the moon you included in the window. Sure, it provides a nice mood and a good source of light, but "Chandra" is also the name of a Hindu moon god. In fact, there are pictures of the moon in Chandra's Brooklyn apartment. It's very nice, if unintentional, link.

MoMo in spandex. Hmm.

Laurence said...

hello, i'm french and i really enjoy your art. you really do good job

Anonymous said...

Ok, I loved both of these. Your Mohinder is so.... so.... Moh like! You capture him really well :)
And congrats on your Parkman, Bennet, Hana, Mohinder, and Micah beeing on the cover of the GN collection that NBC is releasing! That's entirely awesome.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jas, you and the rest of us who follow your blog can catch the transcript of Ryan Stewart's Heroes Wiki interview with you and Mark Stable at http://heroeswiki.com/Interview:Blackout
It appears to have been a fun interview for you.

If you don't mind answering more questions, several of us other Heroes Wiki users helped to supply some that went unasked. If you're tired of "Blackout" questions, we'll understand, but here's some of them, just the same:

Any idea when Blackout occurs timeline-wise? Is it days, weeks or months after Nov 8th, 2006?

Does the Primatech agent actually fire or just point his gun? The gun is blurry when he is pointing it. I can't tell if that's supposed to be it going off.

What brand of rental car was Mohinder using? And is Mohinder now stuck in the middle of nowhere or does the car have OnStar?

Lastly, inquiring minds want to know if the agent from Walls could be father, brother or close-cousin to this electricity-absorbing teenager?
---------------------------
Again, nicely done on "Blackout". We're looking forward to your next work!

Anonymous said...

Re-posting the Blackout link as clickable:

http://heroeswiki.com/Interview:Blackout