1000 Words

THE TRIP part 2 page 2

2010-05-07T04:42:00.003+10:00

BOOM! Yeah! Another post! Take that tardiness! Post by post trying to re-establish communication and some regularity. I'm also warming myself up because when my announcements go live I will be posting ALL THE TIME. Hopefully because people will want to know what I'm doing... but definitely because I love hearing the sound of my own typing.

Ollie and I have some stuff in the pipeline that is beyond exciting. And I mean more than just the tabletop gaming we're doing. That's right, I've started running an old skool roleplaying game. Ollie is playing a Cleric, his wife Abby is a Ranger and we have two other buddies, Tony and Matt playing a Druid and Bard respectively. It's old skool nerdiness hopefully done really well... (as made more obvious by the fact that we're playing Dungeons and Dragons without a Fighter or a Wizard) but you can be the judge because we've been recording the sessions for podcasting.

When my OTHER announcement goes live I will make up a site to release these podcasts for anyone that cares.. Even if it's just for the players.

Bring on the nerd!

But why roleplaying? Because I believe it's one of the most genuine (and inexpensive) ways to get people together while actually enjoying each others company. It's like watching a film where you're all allowed to commentate (Mystery Science Theater 3000 style) over everything. Unlike getting together to watch a film in silence, this is actually interacting and enjoying the company of the people around you. Apart from the time it takes me to prepare sessions, it's so much bang for your time.

And I just miss creating these shared worlds. Some of the most fun I've had hanging with friends has been in roleplaying sessions. Now you may think that I need to get out more (and maybe I do), but I think I have a pretty exciting life. And roleplaying still ranks as consistently the most fun I have while hanging out with people without alcohol. Ok, maybe a bit of alcohol.

When the site and podcasts go live I will let you know and I hope you enjoy it! I plan on furnishing it with a fair bit of art so that should tempt you through the virtual gateway.

I've also uploaded some more art on my deviantart site:

http://jasonbadower.deviantart.com/

Look for the pieces SILVER JONES, PUMPKIN and STAR.

Anyway, let's talk some HEROES.

Page two of part two.

Again, I tried to keep mirroring the layout of scenes familiar from panel to panel (eg. panels 1 and 3) so you know what it is that Hiro is seeing and what is actually there. I thought things could get confusing and disorienting otherwise.

Apart from the card guard from Alice in Wonderland in the first panel, a better look at Jim and Foz in the fourth panel, there's really only the silhouette of The Joker in the fifth panel welcoming Suresh into Arkham Asylum.

THE TRIP part 2 page 1

2010-05-06T04:25:00.003+10:00

And we're back with your regularly scheduled programing. I'm working with a new company now and it's incredibly exciting. I can't make any announcements yet, but rest assured you will be the first to know. But it means that I'm in the office for meetings a lot and not by a computer to do some blogging. So if you can forgive the periodic interruptions, I'm pretty committed to getting this back on track.

The website I've been working on should be live by the end of the month. There should be a big announcement. We will start by only issuing invitations, but anyone who is reading this can considered themselves invited. More details as they become apparent.

All I can promise you is that between the site and the new company, I think we're going to take over online comics. I can't wait!

But let's talk some HEROES.

This is yet another collaboration with the inestimable Jim Martin. I think Jim runs second to Ollie Grigsby for the number of HEROES comics we've done together. I always enjoy his scripts. First up, it's really obvious when you read a Jim Martin script that he's having fun and he wants you to have fun too. He wants you to have fun reading it and drawing it. That enthusiasm and care for his collaborators is infectious and helps take the project to another level.

On panel two of this page, I decided to make the two orderlies Foz McDermott (on the left), writer of part one, and Jim Martin, writer of this part. They're good buddies, and I couldn't pass up the in-joke. I'm sure it's become obvious to anyone reading the comics that it's all about the in-jokes. Characters are often named after crew members or friends and friends likenesses are cast as supporting characters. It's fun and when the fans are let in on the joke I hope they realize the fun that everyone is having creating these.

I again want to point out Annette's stunning coloring. The way she communicates the two different worlds is fantastic. I love seeing her versatility exercised on the page and I feel these stories really show off her ability and the breadth of her talent.

THE TRIP page 6

2010-04-30T05:05:00.004+10:00

Three days in a row. I rock. Well, a little bit anyway. But given how bad I've been it's like patting someone on the back in commiseration after you've shot them in the foot.

POP CULTURE REFERENCES:

Panel 2: That's Kang and Kudos from the Simpson's Halloween special. It's fun turning cartoony things into more realistic renditions. It's such a great exercise to add texture and a sense of depth to things that are just beautiful clean linework.

I guess that's the advantage of having a reasonably unique style, when I draw something, no one knows what it's going to look like... Least of all me!

Panel 3: And Mohinder is wearing the face muzzle/mask from Silence of the Lambs. We're not supposed to know it's Mohinder here, but I thought it would be fun for readers to get a bit of a clue what's going on. I think it lends the story a nice pay-off too. Suddenly we see that there's been a purpose and a focus for this crazy adventure. It brings it right back into the realm of HEROES and the plot.

Of note if you compare the silhouettes of the orderlies to the ones in part 2, they're totally different. Here they were just generic guys, but in the next part I decided to have a bit of fun with them and gave them actual identities. You're going to have to wait til next post to see who I made them.

This brings us to the end of Foz McDermott's run on THE TRIP. He passed the baton to his good buddy, and fellow HEROES scribe, Jim Martin. I will get into that next post!

THE TRIP page 5

2010-04-29T08:56:00.004+10:00

I'm blazing to catch up! A back to back post. Now that I've got time to work on these, I'm having a ball writing them up.

A huge challenge was swapping between Hiro-vision and real life. I wanted to make sure that people could understand what was going on. Wherever possible I tried to mirror panel layouts, so things just became a "spot the difference". With Hiro in the same position in each panel, it just becomes a means by which you see how elements change. A good example of this is panels 2 and 3 on this page. But I really set the standard back on page 3. Every panel is a mirror of another one on that page.

You can see on my line art (the black and white version) that I separate all my backgrounds onto separate layers. I find it allows either Annette or myself (whoever is coloring it) to pick which elements you want to bring forward and which elements you want to push back. For example, Annette decided to make the background 100% black in the last, but faded it back in panels 2 and 3. In panel one she decided to pull some elements (the log) forward, and let others like the forest fade into the background. I find this technique takes a little longer to do at the drawing stage, but allows great flexibility at the coloring stage.

POP CULTURE REFERENCES:

Panel 2: That's some sort of Yoda-like creature. Again, a generic princess.

Panel 5: A huge Flame giant cos I wanted to draw a huge giant. I think he helps add scale to the proceedings. That's Bilbo throwing the One Ring into the lava too.

Note: I am particularly happy with Hiro's likeness on panel 4. I think it's very... "him".

THE TRIP page 4

2010-04-28T05:05:00.004+10:00

Dear god, I'm more than behind on these. I need Marty McFly and the Delorean if I ever want to catch up! In the past, I never let myself get more than one chapter behind on these. But I think I'm now... uhh... Let me count: there's part two of this, then 1963 parts 1 and 2 and then 1988 parts 1 and 2. Uhhh... I think that's more than one.

Crap.

Anyway, just looking over these pages I drew last December, all I can do is just gush at Annette's awesomeness. The biggest task I gave Annette when we started working together is to create unique palettes for each scene and place and time. I felt (that ages ago) she did a bit of "one lighting". This work shows how she not only grabbed that bull by the horns, wrestled it into submission but also mastered it. Her versatility and control of that area is just inspiring.

The lush green peeling away to the Mordor-like wasteland is just amazing. You can just feel the heat!

Ok. Pop culture references:

PANEL ONE: That's a homage to the Cheshire cat. The Gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel and... an Ice Dragon... cos I felt like drawing a dragon. So there. Although it would be greatly appreciated if someone could shoe-horn that into some sort of pop culture reference.

PANEL TWO: The gardener is based on one of the HEROES staffers. I just scanned all my emails and I can't find Foz's link to who it is. Damnit! If anyone who reads this knows who it is, please drop me a line so I can edit this post.

PANEL THREE: The Mario Bros. line ushers in the Mario Bros. references. Toad and some bricks with money inside them.

PANEL FIVE: Foz specifically asked me to channel Mordor, but I decided to go for the rocky part and add more lava pools. I think I had been playing a lot of Dragon Age, and I was inspired by the design for the Dwarven city. Foz wanted the background building to look like Arkham Asylum. And I tell you, now that I've started playing Batman: Arkham Asylum I've had their brilliant design ingrained on my mind. If I was to draw it again, it would look eerily similar to their design.

CONCLUSION:

Now that I've moved into my new house I'm all settled and posting will resume. I'm also going to unveil something huge soon which also accounts for my tardiness and un-postingness.

Sure. That's a word.

THE TRIP page three

2010-02-18T11:05:00.004+11:00

Now the story really starts to get going with the pop culture references. Alright let's do this by panel.

PANEL ONE: On the far left is some super hero chick walking along with a red Hulk-like character. I don't really get to draw super hero chicks or Hulk-like characters enough so it's fun to bust out of my purple pants every now and then and just let my inner nerd hang out. God, that really sounded far more wrong than I intended. Just take that at face value, ok?

Foz called for a Mario-like character climbing out of a Mario-like pipe. By getting rid of the moustache, it made my copyright avoidance job a lot easier. But with the side burns and the tuft of hair out the top of his head he looks like a little Elvis. Man, that would be a surreal game. Playing a mini Elvis collecting peanut butter sandwiches and cadillacs while kicking the heads of screaming fans with blue suede shoes.

To the right is my take of a Storm Trooper sitting on one of those huge lizard things. I forget their names. No, I'm not pretending that I forgot their name to make it seem like I'm a less of a nerd, I actually forgot their name. The way Annette colored him though, he looks a bit like a Halo dude. So I like the color choices even more.

The most fun reference was having Spock standing there. I just thought it would be too fun having Zachary Quinto as Mr Spock standing there. I'm sure Hiro would have been really confused when he went to see the new Star Trek. He would have been like, "Sylar! Billain!" But he's probably a bit too far away for you to fully make him out.

But then, Hiro was probably even more confused when he went to see GET SMART when he saw himself up there.

PANEL TWO: That chick isn't meant to be anyone other than a princess. She looks less than totally princess-like. I should have made her look more innocent by making her eyes larger or something.

PANEL THREE: That dog is just some random dog. I was going to use Star, Ollie and Abby's dog but it occurred to me too late, damnit.

PANEL FOUR: Nobody is anybody here. I think the dog is based on a photo that Foz sent me in. He wanted me to use that dog for the missing dog poster but I couldn't find anymore reference to draw it in the proceeding pages. It's funny, the panel with the least "bang" in terms of references took me the longest in terms of time. That mall... took a while. Those palm trees drove me quietly crazy too.

PANEL FIVE: Again, no references here. Just a lovely little garden. I enjoyed the silhouettes and as a design I think it worked out really well.

PANEL SIX: The butterfly has turned into the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, or a homage to them at least. Linkie here for reference:

http://images.starpulse.com/Photos/Previews/Rescue-Rangers-tv-03.jpg

OVERALL: I'm especially happy with the art and the flipped panels from Hiro-vision to normal. I wanted to lay it out so when you went back and forth it was logical and you wouldn't get lost, even when the colors are all relatively normal. Annette and I agreed to return to a less-saturated palette here so you could get the color gags. Ie. the super hero lady in purple is a middle aged lady in purple. And the Red Hulk creature is really some Floridian dude in sandals and socks.

My next story 166 - 1963, drawn and colored by me and written by Howie Kaplan is up. I'm gonna try and punch through these and catch up by the time 167 goes live.

Wish me luck!

Oh yeah, I got engaged to Heather on Valentine's day. So it's not like I've been sitting around not-blogging and wasting my time or anything. =)

THE TRIP page two

2010-02-11T13:57:00.002+11:00

It seems I tend to update this blog when I have a new HEROES project in the works. But generally as soon as I hear about it I have to start working on it. Then during a brief break I binge-blog out the rest of the pages so I can talk about the new stuff. The latest story is written by Howie Kaplan and is fun, fun fun. It fills in a really key gap of the HEROES universe and I'm buzzed to be able to draw it. In fact, I'm having a riot of a time. Pun intended. You will see what I mean.

But let's scrunch our faces really hard into our best pinching a loaf expression and go back in time to the Trip. I want to cover a great deal of the pop culture references and the burden that they became.

As I mentioned, that which became the most fun, became the most laborious part of doing this comic. Ironically, it actually bothered me the least. Normally it's the artist suffering under ridiculous deadlines and horrible circumstances. I was aware that there would be issues and had brought my laptop to Boston over the Christmas break to do any edits that needed to be done. Luckily, I felt that they were of a reasonable size, whether I agreed with them or not.

The problem is that I'm not the last person in the chain. I'm probably the first person actually. So when Nanci Quesada sent me the corrections I got up bright and early to work on them and finished them before midday. But Annette still has to color them (which was more than half the legal changes) and Nanci still has to get them approved and do the post production on them. So while it was a little tedious for me, it was a lot tedious for Annette and Nanci.

NBC legal's main bone of contention was the similarity between the drawn characters and those that were most recognizable. There were occasions that I drew in characters that I felt were too close to the version I based them on and changed them even when I wasn't asked. I figured that just because NBC legal wouldn't recognize them, doesn't mean the owners of those characters wouldn't. And I don't want to cost some lawyer their job because they're not well-versed in pop culture.

I've included the original black and white version. I think it will be easier to tell who the characters are without their alternate colors that Annette so wonderfully and lovingly rendered. Also, this is a previous version before NBC legal got at it. So characters resemble who they are based on a lot more.

I really want to take my hat off to Annette here who took my style and created something dreamlike and surreal here. It took a bit of going back and forth between us, but I'm super happy with the result.

Not all of these are my idea. Foz really brought the pop culture power here and I just riffed on what he suggested.

POP CULTURE REFERENCES

From the top to the bottom.

That's based on Angel from the First Class of Xmen.

Behind his left leg is the spaceship from Futurama. I'm guessing these two are how Hiro sees birds in his halucination.

Below the Futurama spaceship Foz wanted a T-rex walking down the street (in actuality a business man) and I decided to put a little person on his back as a homage to the scarlet Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy, an old Jack Kirby Marvel Comic. Annette even colored him red but no one cared. And I kind of doubted that Marvel are going to sue HEROES over a project that the wife of the Editor In Chief edited.

Let's go down past the purple trees to the street below. That silhouette walking down the street among the umbrellas is a Predator.

Some sort of cat-like Pokhemon looks onto a table with a devil sitting there.

That's a land speeder from Star Wars parked out the front.

Coming up the steps is a Terminator Marine walking with an Alien.

And right down the bottom is a tiny Superman chasing a tiny Wonder Woman. I have no idea what these actually are. Maybe they're two pieces of trash rolling across the pavement?

Anyway, it's Hiro whose brain is scrambled, not mine. You should ask him.

More updates soon, I hope!

THE TRIP

2010-01-15T06:14:00.004+11:00

Parts one and two of The Trip are up. You can find them as graphic novels 160 and 161. Oh, forget it. Here are the links to the free graphic novels. Grab the PDFs if you have the bandwidth. And if you don't have the bandwidth, I'll still be your friend. I'd just rather you didn't touch me.

http://www.nbc.com/heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=160

http://www.nbc.com/heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=161

The first part was written by Foz McDermott (whom I worked with on COG) and the second part written by Jim Martin who I've worked with so often that an umbilical cord trails between his mansion in the clouds and my Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs.

This was also the first time I got to work with Nanci Quesada. We got off to a tumultuous start, but it turned into my favorite HEROES working experience after.

It started one morning when I was still sleeping in my coffin. I heard the phone go but I decided that the lid on my coffin was just too heavy right then to even check who it was, so I let it go to voicemail. Bad mistake. It was Ollie Grigsby on the Batphone.

When I finally rose from my Place of Eternal Rest I immediately checked my email. The principle line of communication for most people (the phone) lay forgotten. There was an email from Nanci Quesada asking me if I was exclusive to Aspen and would I like to do some HEROES work. I was excited to work for Nanci. I admire her stable of artists. Dennis Calero. Michael Gaydos. I'm huge fans of those guys. And to pull up a metaphorical, and perhaps somewhat hopeful, chair next to them would be really exciting as a creator and fanboy. But there was a small hitch in the road. I was booked out so solidly that I was outsourcing my bodily functions to India. This is normally a great problem to have... Except when HEROES comes knocking on your door. But maybe, just maybe if it was a nice easy story to draw (like Stuck In the Middle also written by Jim Martin which was mainly set in a closet). If it was simple enough I would be able to fit it in. So I asked Nanci to send me the script so I could take a look.

So Nanci sent me the script. I think I got to the page where Foz describes a ring-wraith flying over Arkham Asylum set in the lava stricken lands of Mordor when I finally blanched. There was no way I could squeeze this in. You could roll up the world's largest shoe horn and the biggest tub of lube you could find and it still wouldn't fit. I wrote her back telling her how busy I was, and that the story was just too much, but that I would love to work with her in the future.

I then noticed the phone and called Ollie back. Ollie asked me about the story telling me how much he'd love to see me draw it. He thought it was right up my alley, and I heartily agreed. But I told him I couldn't do the story. It was wa-ay too much work with everything I had on my plate. The way I hit deadlines is by making sure I don't take on too much work. And unfortunately this just came in too tough too late. The disappointment in his voice almost broke me. I'd never felt so appreciated in a single, "oh."

Then fortune struck. An email arrived explaining delays on another project. Suddenly what was due that week was on indefinite hold. Providence? Fate? Destiny? Or D. All of the above?

I was free to do the HEROES gig, but what if Nanci had already assigned it to someone else? I emailed her. Sent a carrier pigeon. Made smoke signals and then noticed that Nanci popped her phone number on the bottom of the email. I called her immediately and we had a great little chat. She told me the stories were still available and she'd love to have me. Yes! Score!

A quick email to Annette confirmed that she too was available. The pieces were really falling into place. This was too good to be true. Nanci told me the first six page part (160) was due on the 23rd - the same day I was leaving for Boston on vacation to freeze my proverbials off and stay with my girlfriend Heather's parents. So I told Nanci that I would have all twelve pages done before I left. Then I looked at the date. The 10th of December. 12 pages with layouts, art, colors and sign offs. It was going to be a rough one. I called Heather and checked that she was ok pretty much not seeing me until vacation. While disappointed, she saw what a great opportunity it was said it was totally cool with her.

So, pith helmets on we hacked our way into this twelve page jungle of fan boy soup.

I saw one fan asking what he was supposed to get out of these graphic novels. I'm not sure what you're supposed to get out of any of these graphic novels. But maybe you should be reading these two graphic novels as a subconscious stream of Freudian and Jungian metaphors detailing everything you need to know about Hiro's profile. Correct diagnosis should allow you to construct a mind map and psychological profile so accurate you will be able to predict every line of Hiro's dialog for ever more.

Or maybe you're just supposed to have fun...?

I know I did.

Until the thing that made it so fun did a heel turn so drastic that New World Order Hulk Hogan would have been proud.

Oh how little we knew. Back when Nanci, Annette and I were so young and innocent. With our eyes full of stars, dreams and moon beams.

GI JOE part 3

2010-01-07T06:53:00.012+11:00

Let's finish this GI JOE action off so we can get into my latest HEROES work. You can go do your homework and grab the free comic at:

http://www.nbc.com/heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=160

Come back in a day or so and I should have the first blog entry up. There will be a quiz.

Right. Go Joe!

<- Stormshadow Paris: Tiger stripes. Because Paris is filled with tigers. Why you would think you could camouflage in with them rather than say, getting eaten is beyond me. On the other hand, there's something distinctly and delightfully low-brow Parisian about covering yourself in a tiger-print jumpsuit. It reeks wonderfully of Euro-trash. Like something you'd see on a Eurovision broadcast.

<- Stormshadow Movie: Some sweet desert camo to hide his awesomeness before he impales you on his family heirloom katana.

<- Stormshadow Basic: Everything the power broker needs to wear to work. Urban camouflage and katana. I just read MARKET FORCES by the brilliant Richard K. Morgan and I can't help but think the characters in that would strangely love this suit.

<- Stormshadow Arctic: Not what I'd wear to the arctic. In fact, I can tell you that I went a little more Snake Eyes - full body head to toe black. Just to prove it, here's me in the gear I amassed to brave the Boston cold on Mount Sunapee. It's Silence of the Lambs meets Snake Eyes:

<- Viper Basic: I always wear an armoured face mask with a tshirt. I do like the bad-ass alternative camo pants that you can get with this outfit though. I'm sure he'd give a mean head butt in this thing. Anyone else notice the ridiculously overt Army of Two reference with the masks? Cool, but seriously derivative. I wonder if the Vipers in the movie were also suspiciously homo-erotic in their over-compensation to appear the peak of heterosexual. The Army of Two guys went all the way on the dial from Hetero, to Manly, to Bad-ass, to Rambo and to finally just You're Really Just Trying to Hard Cos You're Actually George Michael Toilet Block Lover. <- Viper: Movie. Just the plain design bereft of camouflage. A little more sensible in the body armor department to. You can also get a button camera so people can watch you kill or be killed. Sweet. Reality tv to a new level.

<- Neo Viper: Some sweet badness wrapped in a fine camouflage design. <- Viper Arctic: Here he is with the urban camo design. I like their design a lot. Practical and largely makes sense except for the fact that awesome looking red visor would make a really good target. Definitely what not to wear if you ever get turned into a zombie.

UPDATE: So I'm writing the second issue of my six issue graphic novel called ORBIT for Flexchampion.com. I'm also drawing a prelude mission which is the sixth story and I'm about 12 pages into that. It's easily the best work I've ever done. And Annette is coloring that. My uber-website is coming along and I should be able to make some announcements on that in the next few weeks when it goes live. This is not a personal website. It's a website that will change the way you interact with the web. Big talk, but you can decide whether I achieved my goal.

Next up HEROES 160: Trip. Written by Foz McDermott and art by myself and the amazing Annette Kwok.

GI JOE part 2

2009-11-07T06:16:00.012+11:00

Damn, I thought I posted this. Apparently not. So without further ado, let me bring you the blogpost that time forgot.

Not a huge amount to say, so let's let the pictures do the talking:

<- Snake Eyes Basic: Here's the base I used for all the Snake Eyes pictures. Generally I drew a head and body for all the characters and just drew over the top in various layers to create each costume change. Slower than a phone booth but more variations than a big "S".

<- Snake Eyes Arctic: His outfit looks a little bit... effeminate because I had to pull his sleeves up so that we could interchange the guns I drew. Each gun came with a hand so we could just overlay it over these illustrations. I believe I somehow merged the Duke arctic illustration here using the magic of Photoshop.

<- Snake Eyes: Movie. Take your basic Snake Eyes, and dice into small pieces. Put pieces into a searing pan with sesame oil and wasabi and stir lightly. Add belts, buckles, arm bands and enough pockets and pouches to make Rob Liefeld happy. Serve with white wine.

<- Snake Eyes: Paris. Over in France right now, if you're a super ninja, hooded coats are all the rage. Gone are the accessories and pouches, in are sleek lines and minimalism. It's so gauche to show how you're going to kill someone. Let the victim guess and then get sucked in by your designer lines, and dynamic flowing silhouette.

<- Snake Eyes Accelerator: This design was unfortunately never used. Mainly because it would have broken not just the game, but the universe itself with it's conceptual awesomeness. Snake Eyes in an accelerator suit would initiate mass suicides across the globe as humanity would have no further purpose knowing it had peaked at this moment of uber-coolness. Survivors of this zeitgeist holocaust would go into psychic shock, blocking out the entire concept of our society and go back to living in caves trying desperately to reboot humanity and society until once again they inevitably conceived the idea of Snake Eyes in an accelerator suit.

<- Scarlett Movie: I really like these armored designs for the JOE team. Drawing them I got an opportunity to get inside the thought process behind them. They look and feel reasonably practical to me. I hate stuff that looks impractical. Huge breastplates where you wonder how they bend at the waist just irritate me to look at.

<- Scarlett Fatigues: shown here modeling the desert camouflage texture. Not what I'd design for a basic fatigues outfit. But at least it doesn't make her look like a box. I remember bumping into a police officer lady I worked with when she was out of uniform. I almost didn't recognize her because she actually had a figure! Most fatigues and uniforms do nothing for either men or women.

<- Scarlett arctic: This was basically just an illustration of the outfit she wore in the film for this particular sequence. I like it. She looks cute and practical. I decided to leave out the textures for this one as I think the costume stands up quite well by itself.

<- Scarlett Accelerator: I'm pretty sure she never had one in the film, but I drew one up just for her. I used the basic Duke model and just tweaked it so it fitted over her. I tried to follow the mandate of making it still look like an accelerator suit but also let you know that there's a woman not a man inside of it.

NEXT: One last GI JOE post coming with Stormshadow and the Viper.

GI JOE

2009-11-04T06:22:00.005+11:00

I know I've been really quiet recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been drawing my tush off. I've just been too busy to blog about it! But that's changed so let's do some catch up on what I'm allowed to talk about.

<- The Baroness in her Paris outfit modeling (of all things) a tiger camo texture. If you ever fall into a pit of tigers in the middle of a gunfight, this is what you want to be wearing. But beyond its impracticality, it looks bad ass. This whole texture is a homage to Tony "The Tiger" my housemate who coded the game.

My housemate, Tony works for an amazing company called THE VISIONAIRE GROUP (TVG). They're an incredible digital company responsible for a lot of a-level movie websites (Wolverine: Origins, Gamer, Surrogates and the Watchmen Motion Comic). He heard they needed an illustrator so he put my name forward. I did a storyboarding job for an ad for them (something I don't normally do - but this was very fun). Jeff, my contact there is a huge comic book fan so he loves my style and the way I work. The next project was the immense GI JOE FACEBOOK application.

<- The Baroness in her standard slinky and sexy movie outfit. This year in Milan they're doing full body cat suits with a large camouflage print. This is an underrated, practical design used exclusively for assaults in fake, plastic gardens. Take it into a real garden and your ass is grass.

Tony and the team designed the game and it was up to me to design the characters to fit into it. We had a meeting and a thousand and one great ideas were thrown around. The basic premise is that you start with a lowly grunt you can customize them through rewards garnered from successful battles to make a unique unstopable fighting machine. My favourite idea was that the highest level of costume you can unlock was the 1980s original Joe costumes.

<- Here's the Baroness in her plain leather outfit. I'm not sure when she wears this in the film. No, I haven't seen the film. You can read why down the bottom of this blog. I included this one without the texture because I like it just plain. There's enough going on without adding all the extra camo textures etc. I love how shiny she looks. I love drawing shiny textures. They're so much fun. Ok. Maybe it's time for me to get out more.

Unfortunately the 80s idea got shelved, but the rest of the ideas were put into play. You can choose from either three members of the Cobra team - Baroness, Storm Shadow or a Viper or the Joe team - Duke, Scarlett and Snake Eyes. They start off pretty standard, but there is an insane level of customization. Arctic gear? Sure. What color? What texture? Did you like the outfit from a particular scene in the movie? Chances are it's there and you can make it any color and any sort of camo texture you'd like. Let's not even talk about guns and vehicles.

<- Arctic Baroness was a version that wasn't in the film. But we decided that everyone would have an arctic costume. So I had to design this based off her other costumes. It's very similar to the "movie" costume with a hood and white furry bits. It's like a slinky leather version of what Han Solo wore in Empire Strikes Back. Here we see her clad in her urban texture on the arctic outfit. Perhaps she's planning on assaulting Finland or Boston in the winter?

We had to be smart about this. We had a capped budget so we had to be careful what we did within that to get the biggest bang possible. We quickly determined that if I had to draw each gun for each person, that's six versions of the same gun! I think there are 15 guns all up. So 6x15 is... a lot more than we had the time, money or will to draw. A generic gun arm pose was figured out. You will note that all of the weapon arms sit at right angles to us with the palm open towards us. This way we could draw each gun once and it would fit into anyone's hand.

<- Duke in his training outfit. I think this is what he wore all around base. I love drawing different textures, and in this illustration, playing with some very fun, very dramatic lighting. I think he's in his urban camo texture here. The texture for this illustration only went on his pants. It's like he's wearing different fatigues. He's doing what everyone does, and covering his ass.

A huge shame was that they asked me to draw the likenesses for the actors, and I think I did a really nice job. I've included them here so you can see them. But unfortunately there was some clause somewhere that the actors (or someone) needs to approve every likeness that's drawn or painted of them. Somehow that couldn't be done. It was either time or cost prohibitive.

<- Here's Duke in his combat armor outfit that he wore for the movie. I did love this design. Here it is with... aw crap. I can't even remember what texture is on it. And the thumbnail I'm staring at is too small to make it out. I've spent too many years not eating carrots and being single to make that out. But anyway, drawing it made me appreciate the subtleties of this beautiful design.

If you look at the actual game they've stuck new heads of previously approved artwork on top of the bodies that I drew. This was less than ideal, but it was the solution we all had to roll with and I totally understood why they had to do so. I was told that Paramount absolutely loved my rendition of the characters, and that many of the women especially loved what I did with the Baroness. It's a shame that the original heads didn't get used in the game, but you can see those original heads here.

<- This is Duke's fatigues with a small camo texture. There's a large and small one. I guess you might want to measure the leaf size of the surrounding foliage you're going into. Nothing more embarrassing than deploying into the field in the wrong camo size. But seriously, each camo texture created a whole different look. The small worked better on some outfits, large on the others. So we let the user decide.

I think TVG did a great job of compositing the new heads and you would never know the difference if I hadn't pointed it out.

Another thing that I did to make the characters all look like they're occupying the same space was to add a fill light. I picked the fiery glow from the promo posters that were released. It added a sense of urgency and danger. I personally love a good fill light. It can add an extra level of dimension and round out images that seemed flat before.

<- Duke in his plain arctic gear without any textures on it. I don't think Duke ever got to wear this in the movie. So I adapted it from what Ripcord wore.

The huge irony of working on this project is that I never got to see the damn film! I mean, it's not like it would have cost me anything. I could have claimed it on tax. But I dragged my poor, supportive but ultimately suffering girlfriend off to the Arclight. We got there five minutes late and they refused to sell us tickets. I mean, what were we going to do, ruin someone's enjoyment of the ads or a random trailer they could catch on the Quicktime site? Seriously people. I think we need to stand down a moment.

<- The unused Accelerator Suit that I drew. Unfortunately this bad boy never saw it into the game for one reason or another. So feast your eyes on the technological badness of the Accelerator suit. Scarlett and Snake Eyes got one too. I know what you're thinking. Snake Eyes + Accelerator suite = World freakin' Dominating Awesome. Maybe you can just pretend that he has one.

NEXT: More GI JOE

CASTLE PART 3

2009-10-30T05:46:00.011+11:00

Andrew Marlowe, creator of CASTLE shook my hand and wished me luck with all the work I had to do. All the while you're speaking to him, you're painfully aware that you're speaking to someone incredibly intelligent who is measuring your every word and intonation. His insights during the meeting were quick and incisive. He cuts to the point quickly and effectively communicating that he had already played out all the possibilities in his head. I learned a great deal watching him work and I'm beginning to appreciate the qualities and the level of vision required by a show runner.

After Andrew had left I turned to Howard Grigsby the producer of CASTLE. I asked him if it would be possible to come down to the set and watch any of my art being filmed. He said of course and would keep me in the loop.

Unfortunately schedules clashed and I wasn't able to see the sets that were made out of my artwork. Nor did I see any of the scenes that involved my graphic novel. But I got to sit in on the scene at the police precinct where Castle explains to Beckett why people get involved in the vampire sub culture.

Gina was my guide and took me around the set. The first thing that hit me was that the precinct set is HUGE. Holding cells, corridors, office after office, interrogation (er interview) rooms, stairways to nowhere, and of course the main area where Detectives Beckett, Ryan and Esposito have their desks. I first ran into Seamus Dever who plays Detective Ryan and then Jon Huertas who plays Detective Esposito. At the time I hadn't watched enough CASTLE episodes to appreciate who I was meeting. My reaction would be very different now. They were really low key and stopped by for a chat when they realized I was new and how I was involved in the show.

Afterwards, I mentioned to Gina that I'd love to meet Nathan Fillion. I asked her if it would be "out of line" to get him to sign a couple copies of Firefly that I'd brought with me. She said he's super cool and snagged him as he zoomed past on a kid's scooter. It looked miniscule on him. I'm not small, I'm 6'1 and 215 pounds and he made me feel pretty tiny. He's gotta be 6'3 and 240 pounds and he carries it well. He was fun and gracious and signed both the Firefly dvds with his signature, "Watch this, it's good".

When I later gave my friend her dvd she totally flipped out and actually jumped into the air several times waving her arms and legs like a hummingbird. She's a pretty cool cat, and to see her lose it was gratifying and hilarious.

I'm a reasonably cool customer, but I may have gushed around Nathan and there may have been some fanboy babbling.

Maybe.

Anyway... moving on. They finished shooting the scene and it was great to watch them work. Then the crew moved across to Castle's apartment which is also huge. And it's a really nice apartment. It was all decked out for the Halloween party and Michael Courville from the art department gave Gina and I a tour through the Halloween candy that he had especially catered for it. The whole apartment is so thoroughly designed. Everything is thought of. The letters of congratulation and rejection to Castle on his wall are all proper letters not garbled words. The books on the shelves seem like the sorts of things that Castle would read and they're all real books. He has fencing statues (reminiscent of the time that he and his daughter Alexis began an episode fencing.

I ran into Barry, the first AD and a huge HEROES fan. I mentioned to him that I'd brought down my first HEROES graphic novel for Stana to sign but that she was nowhere to be found. Above and beyond the call of duty, Barry ran upstairs and asked Stana to come down and chat to me. I was taken aback. Stana was lovely, very tall and very lithe. As I handed her the graphic novel we spoke about her character on HEROES, Hana Gitelmann and how the character was the mouthpiece for the online fans. I commented that the writers probably didn't realize her rise in popularity and really should have included her in the show more. She would have been the perfect way to keep the sprawling cast together.

On the plus side, I got to draw her Death which set me on the map as a creator who cared about his work on HEROES. She had a great laugh at the ridiculous portrayal of her body and clothing by some of the artists. I told Stana how the fans agreed and how I tried to get them involved and to put their money where their mouth is and get them to design a dress for Hana. Meanwhile she's flipping through the pages of the story I drew and I'm getting increasingly nervous. I then hurriedly told her how I was going to do a competition for who gets to kiss Hana. She laughs flicking through the pages saying, "So who won? Who did I kiss?"

Then her hand moves away from the offending panel...

http://jasonbadower.blogspot.com/2007/05/hana-part-1-i-eight-hana.html

Yeah. Em-BAR-RASSING!!!!

We laughed so hard. I told her that at the time I didn't have a girlfriend, and I joked that if I wasn't getting any action in real life, I could at least get some in my comics. So I drew myself in thinking that I would NEVER HAVE THIS CONVERSATION with Stana. She (graciously) laughed very, very hard.

So she asked me if she could write something in the front of the HEROES graphic novel for me as well as sign it. "Will your girlfriend read it?"

"Yeah, but you can write anything. She's totally cool."

So Stana wrote:

"To Jason, For the best virtual kiss I ever had. Stana."

And that ladies and gentlemen is why Stana Katic is awesome.

That concludes my time on CASTLE. I had a ball and was overjoyed to see how well it turned out. I only hoped that my artwork would be integrated as well as it did. Thank you to everyone involved for making it such an awesome experience. I hope you liked seeing the extra artwork and if you go back and watch the episode again (206) you will see where it fitted in.

As a final piece of icing on the cake, I turned in my invoice. A day later I got a call from Howard, "Jason, we need to have a talk about this invoice.". I start thinking, "Oh god, I've over charged. I thought it was fair but he's going to ask me to compromise or explain some of the invoice. Here we go..."

Instead Howard says, "I've been talking to Alfred (the head of the art department) and we both think you did a tremendous job and seriously undercharged us. We think you should redo this invoice. Here are some suggestions..."

Howard basically increased the invoice by 50%. I was so humbled, and stunned. I knew I'd probably undercharged myself, but fair is fair. I quoted a price so I felt (as a man of honor) that even though the amount of work blew out, I had to stick to that price. That Howard would call me to tell me that he didn't think it was fair to me tells you the caliber and integrity of the people working on this show.

Immeasurable.

Castle. 10pm ABC.

They've made me a fan for life.

NEXT: More freelance work. The GI JOE Facebook application.

CASTLE part 2

2009-10-29T15:01:00.006+11:00

I've attached here some of the main artwork that we saw and didn't see in the actual show. I did a great deal for CASTLE that didn't make it onto the final cut. Hey, it happens. I'm more concerned about giving them what they need rather than what they use and don't use. If I even felt slightly bad about not seeing all my work featured that feeling is assuaged now by showing you the artwork right here.

These first two pieces are the key pieces of the tree that we see. They kept referring to this off as Crow's sketch work, when it was obviously a digital print out. That's ok, I mean they wanted Crow to be a digital artist. Karen and Alfred even asked me extensively about my setup at home. But when it came to the final cut I think that detail got lost in the mix. My only concern was that I did a great deal of actual sketch work using actual charcoal work for them. Yeah, you heard me. REAL artist stuff. Non-digital artist stuff. I generally don't tend to work in media other than digital because I tend to wear everything that I work in. The charcoal was no exception. I looked like a chimney sweep by the end of a solid drawing session.

But I remember the story involving these two digital pieces of the mother very well. I am by nature, nocturnal. As the night draws on and the numbers on the clock reach their maximum and start again at one my creativity winds up more and more. So I tend to get to bed around 4am and rise from my coffin around 10am. So when a call comes at 8am, it gets shut off pretty quickly. Except when my phone reads, "CASTLE".

I answered the phone, still trying to hang onto the blanket of sleeping hoping that I could slip back under again. They apologized profusely. The order of the scenes they were shooting had been moved around for logistical purposes. But then they realized they needed artwork for the scenes. They needed a sketch of the mother under the tree, and perhaps also a close-up so it read better. And they needed it by 10am.

I told them that I could do the charcoal sketch but even if they sent someone now we couldn't courier it back to them in time. They assured me that a digital sketch would be fine to send by email.

I remember going into full-on fight or flight mode. My adrenaline was pumping so hard my hands were shaking - which doesn't help you draw, believe me. Now I know how Kaylee felt with Captain Reynolds yelling through the intercom to get the engines back online or they're all going to be raped to death by Reavers.

I managed to get them done in time. Somehow. You don't have much choice when you realize an entire production is waiting on you to get something done so they can get to work. Every minute is costing ridiculous amounts of money. I remember after the adrenaline come-down going back to bed to sleep for another 4 hours. I was so exhausted.

The "pool of blood" picture was for a piece that sat on Crow's easel. I originally misinterpreted it and drew it much smaller. Once that confusion was cleared up I was given the go-ahead to do a huge 3 foot by 4 foot piece. I drew the faces separately and glued them on, figuring that no one would ever notice and it wouldn't read for the camera. Now apparently the glue started to give and her face started peeling off. But it made for a really nice creepy effect. It's one of the key images as Castle and Beckett enter Crow's apartment. An accidental piece of art. I wish I could take credit for it, but I think that goes to Alfred and Karen.

I took a photo of the piece before I painted in the pool of blood. I was terrified that the pool wouldn't work and I'd have to digitally rework the piece. Turns out, it ended up looking ok. I also liked that it's a subtle mislead that Morlock killed her and possibly him.

What I loved is the amount of thought that goes into every aspect of the production. Everything is considered. In addition to the huge "pool of blood", Alfred Sole, the head of the art department wanted a huge mural for Crow's wall. It was supposed to be a work in progress or visual diary for Crow. So every night Crow would awaken from his nightmares and draw what he dreamed. Visions of his mother mixed with Morlock and the tree and blood. I threw paint at the mural, flicked it, smeared it. Drew on it with paint and charcoal and ink and everything I could get my hands on. It's about 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall. That's my toes in the corner as I climbed on my ottoman to take that photo. It was the only way my camera lens could get the entire piece in.

They also asked me to do a bunch of sketches to cover up Crow's wall. Here are two of Vixen his vampiric lover. I ended up asking Samantha Shelton to "friend" me on Facebook so I could steal some pictures of her to draw from. She kindly accommodated my bizarre request to Face-Stalk her. I was concerned that I wouldn't know what her makeup would look like. Then I realized that all the goths I know change their looks more often than a chameleon sitting in the window of a moving train.

I also did a sketch of the daughter, Crow's sister, but I can't seem to find that anywhere.

Next: The third and final part of my CASTE experience. Sketches of Zoe Taylor as the dead mother and Robert Arbogast as Morlock. And of course, meeting Nathan and Stana.

CASTLE part 1

2009-10-28T04:31:00.007+11:00

I've attached here the four pages of Crow's, (our murdered graphic novel artist's) comic book and the cover. You will find notes on each page next to it. It was written by the CASTLE writer's assistant John Zaozirny and edited by co-producer and the episode's writer, Terri Miller. It's important to note that the cliched, and heavy captions are intentional. After all, it's written by a twenty year old emo vampire-wannabe.

The artwork is drawn, colored and lettered by me.

<- The cover to Blood Everlasting, Crow's graphic novel. Crow's mother was played by the super lovely ZOE TAYLOR who is much prettier than the photo of her in the show. I tried to do her justice with these illustrations. She was kind enough to give me a lift home after our photo shoot. Note the blood drenched dress.

I would recommend reading the blog post first and then coming back and reading all the image comments in italics. You can click on any of the images for a higher res version.

It began with an email from (now) HEROES staff writer, Oliver Grigsby. Ollie has been the editor for the HEROES comics for a while and I think most of the best stories I've done have been with him. His email asked me to contact his father, Howard Grigsby, the producer on CASTLE. Apparently they needed a comic book artist and I was the first guy Ollie could think of. I guess the lasagne I cooked for Ollie and his wife, Abby as thinly concealed bribery paid off.

<- The original sketch for the cover of Blood Everlasting. The actor who played Morlock is Robert Arbogast, who I thought did an amazing job of playing a very subtle crazy person. You might note the similarity to my HERESY piece. It was referenced by the producers as a direct inspiration.

Anyway, Howard asked me to quote for some comic art and I did so - keeping to the rate that I quote for HEROES. Then... crickets chirping. I'm thinking, "Oh man, I've insulted him and he's looking elsewhere. He's probably told Ollie how greedy, short sighted, unprofessional and unreasonable I am."

It appears I was wrong.

Then the floodgates opened.

<- At this stage I had no idea what Robert's makeup would look like so I kept to this clean cut direction to showcase his pretty boy looks. Little did I know...

<- ...that they would go all "Rob Zombie" on us. I was excited to see that this page really got used. I drew it before the set photographer managed to get me reference shots for Robert's Morlock makeup. I had to add the beard and dishevelment afterwards. There are only four pages to the graphic novel (plus the cover) because that's all we needed. Two sets of open pages.

First I was sent Terri Miller's script for VAMPIRE WEEKEND episode 206. I had never seen CASTLE before. Reading the script I went from smiling, to giggling to downright laughing. One of my favorite lines was cut from the episode. It was a good cut, but I was sorry to see it go. I think it's the most accurate and pithy commentary on women's halloween costumes I've ever heard:

<- This is what I gave to the producers and the art department to show them what I had in mind. I drew these after the location shoot. That was a day which involved me wandering with certain members of the crew around different parts of LA trying to find locations that would work as sets. At one stage we're in a very nicely designed and appointed warehouse. A girl in lingerie and ridiculously high heels walks past and goes, "Who are all these people?" Turns out they were shooting an "adult movie" in the adjoining room.

CASTLE
You could be slutty Nurse... no,
too sexist. Slutty Doctor. Oh here,
you can be slutty Supergirl... or
love this one...

(He pulls it off the rack.)

CASTLE
Slutty slut!

I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I asked myself why the hell I wasn't watching this show. I'm a huge Nathan Fillion fan, I had to draw Stana Katic for HEROES (see the link on the side for THE DEATH OF HANA GITELMANN) and the banter was as fast and as sharp as VERONICA MARS (probably my favorite tv show ever which Howard was coincidentally also a producer on).

<- I was buzzed to see that the last panel got so much coverage on the show. I knew that it had to resemble the location exactly. Karen, the director told me it would literally be held up to camera then removed to mirror the exact location. Karen and I meticulously coordinated the shot but I didn't hold my hopes up. How wrong I was! Those bricks and graffiti took FOREVER. Andrew Marlowe suggested the guys huddled by the burning trash can on the left.

I was asked to come down to Raleigh studios and talk to freelance director extraordinaire, Karen Gaviola; the episode's writer and co-producer, Terri Miller; the show's creator, Andrew W. Marlowe; the first AD the lovely, Barry K. Thomas; the head of the art department Alfred Sole; and of course, Howard.

<- a layout based on the photo reference I took of this old basement under an abandoned hospital. It gets used as a set so often there's still duct tape and fake spider webs up from the previous crew's efforts. But Alfred redressed it so well you'd never ever know.

The meeting was basically to show them and assure them that I can do the job and I "get" what they're trying to do. I brought my portfolio and that pretty much spoke for me. We bounced ideas, around and generally agreed that I would have a metric bucketload of work to do.

<- After looking at my reference photos I was forced to do a different angle of panel one. I just felt this angle helped the storytelling more. If you re-watch the scene before they find Morlock you can see that this is a step by step guide as to how to find Morlock's lair. If I ever get murdered I'm screwed cos I mess with geography and locations all the time. You'd need a teleporter to follow my graphic novels.

<- The idea is that Morlock has the spirit of his old lover floating over him and protecting him. But he feels alone not knowing that he is being watched over. Zoe was kind enough to pose for all these reference photos. You can see again I thought Morlock would be clean shaven.

Afterwards, Barry came up to me and told me that he is, "a huge fan of HEROES and that he's kind of locking it down right now." I'm used to this, and I'm also used to the misapprehension that a fan of the show has confused me for someone really involved in the who. I launched into my usual schtick of telling any HEROES fan that they should check out the online comics as they're set between episodes and expand on the stories in the show. He replied, "Oh, I know about them. In fact I've read them all and I'm a huge fan of your stuff. The work you did with Stana on the 'Death of Hana' was my favorite."

<- The last panel here got some great coverage and I was very happy about that. I remember kidnapping the location scout as my model. There's an amusing reference photo (that will never see the light of day) of panel one on this page of Terri playing Morlock and Karen looming awkwardly over her. They were doing that to give me a sense of perspective and composition for the shot.

I was totally taken aback. He actually not only knew my work, but liked it! Being recognized has happened a couple times before, but never in a professional capacity. Barry went on to do one of the nicest things for me and it was my favorite anecdote from my time working with CASTLE. I will go into that and meeting Nathan and Stana in a later post.

MUTEMATH: breaking the silence

2009-10-12T11:04:00.003+11:00

Sorry to not post. But I'm so busy. And busy on stuff I can't talk about yet. But I have so much to cover and catch up on. NDA's are starting to fall by the wayside (storyboards, GI JOE Facebook apps, Castle etc.).

Now it's a bit out of keeping to recommend music. I mean, you don't come here for music reviews. And who cares what I'm listening to as long as I'm pumping out pages, right? But I just went to one of top five gigs ever last night. In the past top five gigs have generally been because I went with an awesome crew of people, and when you take awesome people anywhere you have an awesome time.

But while my girlfriend and her bff are amazing people, the ties between us were eclipsed by one of the best shows I've ever seen. Here's a review I wrote:

"Mutemath are one of my top 30 bands. I think they're cool but my girlfriend is the big fan and keeping her company was the main reason why I went.

Imagine my surprise when Mutemath did one of my top 5 gigs EVER.

Mutemath's albums are great, but onstage they are off the chart. You need to see these guys live, even if you don't know their stuff. If you're an up and coming band this show (not a gig) is a step by step guide on how to perform. They organically and spontaneously remix popular tunes and then open the flood gates on lesser known songs to show you why you should love that track as much as they do.

Every time I thought we'd peaked, they played the next song. Visually it was like Stomp meets the Blue Man Group, and sound-wise like Mutemath swallowed a jazz band and European dj. And in case you think it's a one-off they've been doing this show every 2-3 nights for almost two months now.

I paid a ridiculously small $20 for one of the best shows I've ever seen. If they were playing here again in LA tonight and wanted to charge twice or even three times as much, I'd go in a heart beat."

Please. They're still touring. And it's SO cheap. Whatever music you're into is irrelevant. Go check them out. You can thank me after.

http://mutemath.com/

LIBERATION part 2

2009-08-20T11:57:00.003+10:00

Thanks everyone for keeping me updated on the Deviant Art situation. It looks like they asked that person to take the artwork down. I hope that person finds other ways to channel their creativity. I'd feel bad if that person's find the experience so hurtful that they wanted nothing to do with their creativity.

On the other hand, that experience and Crystal from Deviant Art has prompted me to have a closer look at Deviant Art. I have to confess that when I looked at Deviant Art back in 2006 it was a forum for amateurs. It just seemed like it was where kids went to put up their pictures of Dragonball or whatever manga was hot at the time (as an fyi I was into Dragonball back in 1984 and had to get my mum to translate copies I would import from Hong Kong. Pretty industrious for a nine year old, huh?). But maybe I missed a memo, but Deviant Art is kicking some pretty serious booty. Adam Hughes is on there. Jim Lee is on there. Sweet.

I played with the interface a bit and really enjoyed myself. I still think the blog is the best place to talk about process. Here the focus is on the journal entry as a whole, wheras Deviant Art focuses on each piece of artwork. This makes it a bit tedious to post all the process sketches as they all come up as separate pieces of artwork rather than as a subsection of the finished piece. No matter. Every tool for every purpose, right? I'm thinking I might post more of my personal, non-commissioned work up there.

So back to this page. I would say that I didn't do a great job with Molly or Micah here. They're serviceable, but they're not outstanding by any measure. Why would I let something like this through the door? If I remember correctly I was drawing this while I was in Vegas. I woke up every morning at 9am and started drawing. My buddies woke up a lot later and headed down to theHOTEL at Mandalay Bay's wave pool, sat in the sun and started drinking. As each bucket of beers proceeded the next the texts they sent me got more and more inflammatory and insistent. So with this is mind, I may have been a little distracted while drawing these pages. I hope you can forgive me.

I'm happy with my likenesses of Claude. I know Tarot is always keen to see new Claude so I always try to deliver with him.

LIBERATION part 1

2009-08-19T08:38:00.004+10:00

Well! It's finally up and I must say that I am very happy with how it turned out. I think I got some good likenesses there, the characters seem to interact really well and I like the backgrounds. It was fun playing with the different scenes, and I remembering commenting to Jim Martin (the writer) that he covered a hell of a lot of ground very, very quickly and effectively while still leaving room for the character interactions that make these stories and the show so much fun.

I really enjoy the palette of the opening sequence. I'm quite happy with my outdoor coloring. I'm still working on inside coloring that isn't too dramatic.

People have asked me what reference I used for Molly. Basically I just used the final episode of season 2. I think that was the last time she was seen. I don't know how much time has passed, so I just drew Adair Tishler as she appeared back then. To be honest, I didn't even contemplate the idea that she'd grown up. I know Micah has grown up, so maybe I dropped the ball on that one. I guess you're the judge of that.

Regardless, I think the last panel turned out to be quite a nice likeness. It was important for me after the wide establishing shot of the second panel to make sure that there was no doubt that it was Molly who was speaking.

Who names their kid "Molly" anyway? It's a great name for a kid, but not so great a name for a grown woman.

I had fun drawing the wrecked train. I'd never drawn a train before, but I had drawn a lot of wrecked stuff, so I kind of started there. I think it turned out rather well. That's one of the fun things about doing commission artwork, you always get asked to draw stuff that you've never drawn before and perhaps wouldn't have considered drawing. I think that's why I like drawing comics in general. There's always new stuff to draw to keep you on your toes artistically. And that keeps it fresh and exciting.

Toni (Acidburn133) sent me an interesting Facebook message today. She noticed that a person on Deviantart has run some filters over some of my artwork and posted it as their own work:

http://evofurianspartan.deviantart.com/art/heroes-78281346

I had a long think about how to approach the issue. Roy Lichtenstein has a notorious popularity for taking comic book panels blowing them up and recoloring them. They hang in galleries for millions of dollars while the poor original artist sees none of it. While I don't necessarily agree with Roy's art in this aspect, it is still perceived as a valid artform. I'm not sure where running some filters over my artwork lies, but my signature still sits at the bottom of the artwork, so there's no doubt who did it.

After some deliberation I contacted Deviantart asking them to get the person who posted the artwork to credit myself and provide a link to the orginal piece of artwork (which you can find HERE.) If they refuse, then I asked them to get them to take it down. See, I don't know if it's some kid, a person with a disability or someone who is just trying to be clever. As long as they credit me, don't do anything offensive with it (a subjective guideline again assessed by me) then I don't really have a problem with it.

I hope they credit me and all ends well.

WANTED page 6, 7 & 8

2009-08-12T04:44:00.006+10:00

Well it looks like my next HEROES story is going up tomorrow. I woke up last week like a kid on Christmas morning all ready to see my story lettered and there was still Dennis Calero's train crash. Oh well. Apologies to anyone that I mislead. It should be up tomorrow.

I love reading it for the first time, it's a totally new experience. I'm finding that the better I do, the closer the finished product is to what I imagined it to be. Before there used to be a huge deviation between what I planned and what I saw. These days the gap is closing and any deviations are usually pleasant surprises from the collaborative process. There's something really satisfing about seeing the lettering in place. It's like it becomes a real comic when there's words.

It's funny looking back on the way I depicted the characters. In 141 written by Timm Keppler on page 3 panel 4, the agent says, "This ain't no place for you kids...". Now, I'm not sure if Timm is intending on being funny, or the characters are actually kids. In which case, I feel a little bit weird (a lot weird actually) drawing them wearing this stuff! See, I thought that the characters of Sparrow and Abby were based on Kat and Abby, Zach and Ollie's girfriend and fiance respectively. I mean, wouldn't it be a bit weird if Abby is getting married to Lee and she's underage? I'm hoping that the agent is just being casual here. Otherwise it's all gone a bit weird.

Regardless, when you see 142, which should be up tomorrow, you can see how I've really toned down the outfits. The main reason is that apparently they were very distracting and generated too much discussion in an area that I didn't want people to be considering. Therefore, it was a poor costuming choice on my part. I hope you find their new outfits cool, sleek, simple and a lot more appropriate.

I had so much fun with these pages though. Harrison recommeded the tavor that Thompson Jr is carrying and while I normally hate drawing guns because they're so damn tedious, I really enjoyed drawing this gun. It's so different and so modern. I also particularly like the dust particle effect all over the place from the caved in wall. I don't really like movement lines (I find them a bit guache), so I like to try and create movement in other ways.

Page 7 was a blast. I hadn't really drawn many action scenes before HEROES and I'm really enjoying them. I like going wide, especially when there's a bunch of people running around. Panel one is a good example of me trying to set the scene. Originally Sparrow just punches Thompson and knocks him to the ground. I was concerned that if he was just lying on his feet in front of them he would stand up and just attack them again. By knocking him down through the floor it not only shows that he is literally "beneath" our main cast, but that he has no recourse against them. I mean, what is he going to do there? Throw rocks at them?

The panel where she punches him through the floor with a big rock fist turned out extremely well. It's the sort of widescreen action that I love to try and get away with. You're going to see some more widescreen stuff from Sparrow in the next story too. It gets very fun.

I promise to start showcasing all the sketches I did over Comic Con (both good and bad) right after this. I might attach a couple at the end of every post after the next installment of Rebellion that goes up.

I will also talk about the preview pages that are up for BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (http://www.barkit.com/) after the next 8 pages of HEROES: Rebellion.

I've also been offered my first long-term writing gig courtesy of http://flexchampion.com/. I was asked to write and draw the first issue for their series ORBIT. The plan was that they wanted to approach a different artist and writer for each issue to get totally different takes on their characters. Marcus, the creator of the Flex Champions wanted me to create personalities and a world for his characters. I worked closely with him and came up with a world and a first issue script. He then asked me what ideas I had for future issues and I shot some back at him. He liked the ideas so much he asked me to write the next 4-5 issues. My brain has been ticking away and I've got some really exciting and fun ideas. The stories are about children and the pressures from their parents, choices, a love triangle, a top secret covert black ops organization and a dash of terrorism. Shake it up, serve with lime and you have my pitch for ORBIT.

The problem is that I can't draw all the issues. So if you think you can draw similar to my style and have 4-5 sequential pages you can show me, email me at grael23@yahoo.com with the subject line "ORBIT SAMPLE PAGES" and I will have a look and see if you're appropriate for the gig. Or maybe you know someone that might be able to do the job? Put us in touch. You never know, you could be a part of making the magic happen.

WANTED page 4 and 5

2009-08-11T17:37:00.001+10:00

Above: Page 4 of WANTED written by Harrison Wilcox. I think this is one of my best coloured stories.

Oh man, I have so much to chat about, I have no idea where to begin. There's a LOT of links in today's post, so don't get lost. Make sure you come back and get them all! While I don't want to turn this into one of those whining, "And then I..." blogs, I have had an action filled July. It started with my bestest buddies, Simbo and Nicho arriving on Independence Day. We proceded to head to the beach for the very Australian activities of drinking a heck of a lot, lounging on a beach and getting very sunburnt.

<- Me and my boyz! To my left, Nicho and Simbo at the Pink Taco in Los Angeles moments after seeing Paris Hilton.

Over the next few weeks we partied and frollicked (while I desperately tried to do some drawing) and eventually made our way up to Vegas, to meet the third member of our sordid team, JAn. It was a sublime experience for me to have four of the people I hold closest to me in the world in the one country together. There we also met up with Kate and Jas, friends from Australia who had stayed with me earlier. Together we managed to destroy Vegas. Well, Simbo, Nicho and JAn did. I was home early so I could take early advantage of the all day buffet Simbo had managed to organise.

<- A fuzzy photo of three of my favorite people in the world. From left to right, Heather, Simbo and JAn.

Our last days in Vegas Simbo had managed to swindle $99 per person per room with all you can eat and drink at THEhotel at Mandalay bay. Days consisted of me waking up early to draw and the guys texting me increasingly illegible texts from the pool as they made use of the unlimited drinks. I usually joined them by mid afternoon when they were just warming up.

From there it was to San Diego Comic Con. And boy, was that a bucket and a half of fun. The only downside was that there was SO many people it was virtually impossible to get into any panel unless you wanted to wait 2+ hours for it.

I had two signings on Friday. In the morning it was for the announcement of my top secret project BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA. Written by Evan Bleiweiss of the SHIELD. You can find a preview at http://www.barkit.com/. I can't wait to see what people think. I'm incredibly proud of the work.

<- Ollie, Abby and I at the HEROES/Nissan booth in front of my artwork and the portrait of Abby. The second signing was for the HEROES fan access organised by a whole bunch of girls who rock the house: Willow, Meaghan, Jennifer and everyone else did an incredible job. I was signing with Ollie Grigsby, fellow HEROES webcomic and Marvel artist, Dennis Calero and David Lawrence XVII (Puppetman). It was a great afternoon. But what really rocked my world was seeing the HEROES Nissan booth. It was covered in my artwork! It was amazing to see my art being the focus of a major booth at Comic Con. I also wanna thank the awesome cheerleaders at the booth that lavished mountains of comics on me when they heard that I'd drawn them.

But wait! There's more! Driving around San Diego at the time were four Nissans covered in my artwork from graphic novel 138. Amazingly enough that graphic novel won Best Graphic Novel Tie-In Story: "Rebellion"at the HEROESSITE awards. You can go check that out at: http://www.herosite.net/awards2009-7.htm

If you search the other awards you will find out that Ollie Grigsby was voted third best writer after Brian Fuller and Tim Kring! Huge congrats buddy! You really deserve it! Couldn't happen to a nicer, more talented or committed guy.

<- I spent the weekend literally chasing these cars down, running across traffic and through crowds to hail them down. Heather took this photo of me in front of one we managed to catch.

It was totally surreal seeing my artwork used so much. I'm so glad I pulled out every stop and made it the best graphic novel I could have drawn. It's a fair feather in my cap and I'm really proud of it. Check it out: http://nissan.smr3.com/active/0379001/

I also just finished graphic novel 142 written by Jim Martin. It's going up tomorrow morning and I hope you enjoy it. He covers a hell of a lot of ground in 8 pages and I think he does it really well. The big question is will it end the REBELLION story arc that has consumed our summer graphic novels?

I also might have an announcement with Deviant Art too, which should be a heck of a lot of fun. Justin Barlow is lining up an interview with me too. If you have any questions you can add them to the list: http://boards.9thwonders.com/index.php?s=ec4f85da1c9c4cbb16c78185dc441cef&showtopic=69246

Above: Page 5 of WANTED written by Harrison Wilcox. Micah brings the pain to Thompson Jr.

Update!

2009-08-07T05:16:00.002+10:00

Thanks to everyone who came and saw me at my two signings over the Comic Con weekend. I had a ball and I hope you did too. I met so many amazing, inspiring people who radiated energy.

I have so many photos, announcements, links and reports to make. But right now I have a huge HEROES deadline for the latest part of REBELLION. The script is written by the inestimable Jim Martin and it's a kicker. So please bear with me. I'm planning on blogging properly Sunday or Monday.

signing update

2009-07-23T17:46:00.002+10:00

Hey gang, I feel horrible but I only just managed to get online to tell you my signing Thursday morning has been canceled. Friday at 945am is still on at the Top Cow booth, and I will also be signing with Ollie Grigsby at the House of Blues at 3pm until 5pm on Friday for the HEROES All Access VIP party. I'm told they will have copies of the magazine and the comic con Nissan comic.

Apologies for any inconvenience!!!

SIGNING TIMES

2009-07-18T03:02:00.003+10:00

Hey gang, I'm gonna be at the Top Cow booth at the ungodly hour of 945am Thursday and Friday morning. I will be signing ZERO G and a secret new TV tie in comic book. I'm also more than happy to sign and sketch HEROES stuff too.

Email me at grael23@yahoo.com if you can't make it and I will see if I can meet up with you later.

WANTED page 3

2009-07-11T03:10:00.005+10:00

Blogging on my birthday!

Last night I had the pleasure of being invited to the Digital LA event at Meltdown Comics on DIGITAL COMICS. I had an absolute ball and met some great people. Everyone was so nice and it was great to see the spectrum of people that had sold out the event. Also on the panel were:

- Sam Humphries, creator of MySpace Comic Books
- Jermaine Turner, Disney XD, Director- Original Series
- Rich George, IGN, Comics Editor
- Jonah Weiland, Comic Book Resources, executive producer
- Chip Mosher, BOOM! Studios, Marketing and Sales Director

I think it was a fun panel, but I just felt that I wasn't informative enough. Kevin assured us that we wouldn't need to prepare anything, just field questions from him. While I have a fairly good general understanding of comics, there's a lot of numbers, facts and ideas that I don't have off the top of my head. As a future note to people going on a panel - bring a piece of paper to job one word notes down. Losing your train of thought is a serious hazard as you try and remember what you have/haven't told people.

Here's a bunch of thoughts from the panel and some I've added with the beauty of retrospect and the @digitalla & #digitialla Twitter feed:

1. Don't use comics to launch a screen play unless:
a. You are an already established comic book storyteller. You might be a great scriptwiter but chances are you're just going to create a crap comic.

b. You can convince a professional artist that their spare time is well invested in your venture. The more established you are, the easier that is.

c. Take the time/years to LEARN how to be a good comic book writer. But be aware this is going to take time from your script writing and marketing. And if you're not passionate about comics, just stick to what you're already doing. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner are two good placed to start. Then read and study heaps of good comics.

NB Jermaine from Disney said his senior executive won't even look at a comic. In fact, they will say, "Nice comic, but where's the script?"

2. Jermaine from Disney surprised me and said that companies will put up with your lack of experience and unprofessionalism if you're THAT DAMN GOOD because if they don't spend the time, someone else will. (Me? I wouldn't rely on that.)

3. Twitter has been exceptionally helpful for promotion for CBR.

4. Social networking is a cheap and effective way to promote your comics.

5. Comics are where the "cool hunters" hang out. They are voracious for material. If you're doing a comic give them material to find and consume. But they can smell crap from a mile away if you're faking it.

6. There is room for a missing link between comics and cartoons - but right now everything to me looks like a bastard medium with a combination of the weaknesses of both. Look for Spiderwoman by Bendis and Maleev from Marvel to possibly fill the gap.

7. Funny quote from Chip "They're artists. If they could communicate they'd be writers."

8. Keep your eye on Longbox to do an Itunes with comics.

9. Open contests are a terrible way of finding artists. Deviant Art, Flickr, Digitalwebbing and Pencil Jack are great places for creators to hook up. Get your stuff on there if you want to be found. Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith met on the Spawn.com forums.

10. There is virtually no comic market for young kids ie. about 6 years old. The comic market is getting older.

11. Put your comics out on as many platforms as possible to maximize exposure.

12. Comic movies are being made because the geeks are now in charge (from Jenny).

MY THOUGHTS SUMMARIZED AND ELABORATED:

1. Companies should be using the low entry cost of comics for cheap narrative visual online content.

2. . Online comics are an affordable means to test your comic and its market before you go mortgaging yourself to get it in print.

3. Aspect ratios and storytelling: Your screen is wide, your page is tall. Don't use tall vertical panels as it creates a tedious need to scroll back up. Lay out comics in rows for easiness to read. Check out Bryan Hitch's layouts.

4. Fonts - shell out for a good font. DON'T USE COMIC SANS!!!

5. Don't be scared of asking an unprofessional artist (and by that I mean someone who is untried and has been unpaid to do comics) to produces 3-5 complimentary pages within 10 days to prove they can do the job. Skill is one thing, reliability is another. There's hundreds of potentials out there. Make them work for it to prove they want it or you're just going to end up in trouble.

6. If you're a comic book writer, while your artist is drawing you should by hyping the hell out of your upcoming comic. Get on Facebook, Deviantart, Myspace and any forum you can find and WRITE! Promote your stuff while your art-monkey is drawing. Become a sales person.

7. 50% Energy to create. 50% energy to market yourself and/or your product.

8. Free online content does not inhibit actual sales. HEROES and BOOM! have proven this. The HEROES graphic novel sold 30,000 copies at $30 a pop while the content is all still free on their websites for download in pdf format that you could take to your local Kinkos and print out.

9. Drawing digitally makes you fast, but you lose the option of selling original artwork. You also don't have the rights to make any prints.

10. 30,000 copies is considered successful by Marvel and DC. If you sell that as an independent comic your profit margin is virtually equal to that of a 60,000 selling book for Marvel and DC.

If you want actual numbers, take a look at this link:

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2009/2009-05.html

Pretty low huh? There's been a 19% drop in sales generally. Here's May 2008 to give you an idea.

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2008/2008-05.html

Interestingly enough, in January of this year, Amazing Spiderman 583 sold over 500,000 copies over two months (as it featured a cameo by Obama). This proves:

a. The President is able move mountains more comic books than the entire Justice League and Xmen combined.

b. There is a serious market out there... somewhere.

Hi to Mel, Rachel, Michael, Crystal, Loren, KW, Ken, Remy, Shannon, Chris, Jenny, Tim, Dale and everyone else I met... and of course Heather and Kasey for coming out and saying "Hi" last night. I really appreciate you all turning up and hope you got something out of it.

Thanks also to Ollie Grigsby who stopped by beforehand. You should really check out the 4 pages that Ollie did for Penny Arcade. The boy genii at Penny Arcade, Jerry and Mike did three page 1's for three various ideas. One of them was THE LOOKOUTS. Here's page 1:

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/10/

Ollie approached them about pursuing an extra 4 pages. He wrote it up, Mike found an amazing artist called Becky Dreistadt and the magic was born. I'm warning you though. This stuff is Art, and you need to work for it to truly appreciate it:

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/1/

Swing by Ollie's blog for his excellent write up and insights on this comic. It's worth it just to see how his brain works:

http://www.olivergrigsby.com/

ps. I will post about page 3 of WANTED next post. I've included it here so next post isn't too picture heavy. I've been so busy with a bunch of professional writing gigs that I haven't been blogging. Bear with me, it's just something else I have to get my head around.

WANTED page 2

2009-06-20T03:32:00.003+10:00

I've been hosting Aussies in LA and my blogging has gone to the dogs. My buddy, Jason and I have been revelling in the gay overtext of ARMY OF TWO to the chagrin of our girlfriends. For those who want the funniest review of Army of Two which will explain exactly what I'm talking about, click HERE for the brilliant Zero Punctuation. When you're finished being distracted there, don't forget to come on back and read this post.

I'm writing this now as a warm-up to drawing. I'm not quite ready to get started. I'm sure you know what I mean. The cogs need a bit of time to get oiled and I'm sure a blog post is the perfect antidote.

This page was one huge cheat. What I can't figure out is why I repeated the same picture of Thompson! I drew an original picture of Thompson Jr on page 1 and blurred the hell out of it so no one ever saw it. I could/should have used it here instead of recycling the one picture of him three times from the first page. As they say, "E's lovely, but e's not very bwight."

This may seem like such a cop out, but I think it got the job done. I actually drew the Micah separately and just pasted and resized him into the panels. The beauty of this page was that it allowed me to spend more time on other stuff.

If time is my budget, I found I was able to save a lot to spend it elsewhere. I think you got your money's worth... especially given it's free!

Alexandre in one of his recent comments mentioned my guns and how I try to depict them accurately. Several people have asked about this. My secret is the lax gun laws in LA. Not the gun laws in LAX. The relaxed gun laws in LA. We all the same page yet?

In Australia NO ONE has a gun. If there's a shooting it's in every paper even if the shooting occurred in another state! You can't even get paintball guns in most places and toy guys don't resemble anything like real guns. But LA... In my first few months here I went down to the awesome army disposal story on Hollywood and grabbed myself a bunch of pellet firing replica hand guns. They've got a little orange nib on the end of the barrel so you know they're fake. But they look, feel and weigh like a real gun. When I give these props to a model, the performance I get is phenomenal. There's a real feel of respect for the weapon, and then they just get an evil grin (no matter how pacifistic they are) and just go for the performance with real gusto.

So there you go, another secret exposed!

Ollie just asked me if I wanted to do the 8 page finale of REBELLION written by James Martin esq. Of course I said, "Hell yes."

My 22 page script is being looked over by the kind folks at SUMAJIN. It's a covert action thriller that puts the characters in some very interesting places. Ollie Grigsby and Alex Hammond gave me such great feedback. They really helped me crank it up a heck of a lot. Man, I learn so much working with writers I really admire. It seems that the company funding the idea is very happy with it so far. I'm just waiting on final approval. Then I can start on layouts and character sketches. It's gonna be tight but fun!

I also finished my four issue mini-series of an unannounced project. At least you know it will released on time, right? Or if it doesn't, it's totally not my fault. I will word you up when it hits the mean streets of your local comic shop.

APPEARANCE: I'm doing a panel for Digital LA on digital comics being held by MELTDOWN COMICS on July 9th. I will be there from 7pm.

Here's the link:

http://digitalla.net/

There's also a Facebook page and you can join the other 235 people and sign up for:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=91736912490

The panel will go for an hour and a half starting at 8pm. I will bring along my silver pens to sign graphic novels, but I apologise, I won't be able to do any sketches. Sorry! Hit me up at San Diego for the sketching action.

WANTED page 1

2009-06-18T03:42:00.003+10:00

You can find the free download of the comic I'm talking about here:

http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=140

Man, oh man has this last stint of HEROES been fun and tough.

I'm sure Harrison Wilcox, writer-extraordinaire, all-round nice guy and scourge of the undead would agree that the spoiler for the big twist on the thumbnail was a huge downer. Sure we reveal that Thompson Jr is the shooter three panels in... but really? Couldn't we have picked something else? When I'm drawing I'm always wondering who writes the preview text and picks the images. I'm always wondering which panel I would use to preview it. Personally, I would have used a cropped version of Micah tied up on page 5 or page 4 panel 2 or even page 1 panel 3 without Thompson in it. It just spoiled the cool reveal and let us know too much about the story before reading it. Ah well.

I was specifically asked to come back for this story by Ollie Grigsby and Frank my editor because I'd drawn the last installment where Thompson, Donna, Fallon and Sabine had turned up. That was called INTO THE WILD (check links on the right) and it was written by Timm Keppler (who has unfortunately left the HEROES stable) and Jim Martin. It was great to come back to these characters, but I will go into that some more when I get to page 3. All things in time, my friend.

As you can see from the actual line art, I wasted the time drawing an actual Thompson for panel 2. I think I was going to re-use it for page 2, but ended up repeating the image from panel 4 instead. I don't know what sort of stroke of sub-brilliance inspired that, but I wasted time and recycled images that had already been seen. Not my finest moment.

But here it is for those who care. Yeah, that's you in the back row. Thanks. Takes a bow to the one person clapping.

Man, that background on panel 3 took some time. I don't know if you noticed the reflection of the water on the ground, but that took like, no time at all and looked far better than I expected. Is anyone else getting the impression that I kind of just flail around and sometimes stuff seems to work out really well?

Well, it's not an inaccurate impression.

I'm generally a big fan of Comicraft who do the lettering for all the HEROES graphic novels. I like their fonts and their sense of design. I wasn't a big fan of what they did on this page with panels 1 and 2. It works, but it's just a personal thing that I don't like balloons breaking over the panel edge. I don't like anything breaking outside of my panel borders. It's a personal and stylistic thing, but I like to keep my comics very simple and draw you into the action within the panel. I find that if you cross things outside the panel you suddenly become aware that you're reading a comic and pop outside the story. But that's just my call.

You can see on my layouts on the left how I indicated it. And that's pretty much from Harrison's directions in the script. Perhaps it was a stylistic choice on Comicraft's part, perhaps they thought it was just quicker. Perhaps both?

FRIDAY: Page 2. Colour palettes and repetition is the mother of saved deadlines.

LEFT BEHIND page 6

2009-06-17T12:22:00.004+10:00

Thanks for the fantastic reception to Graphic Novel 140. All your comments mean so much to me. I will chat about it tomorrow though.

Today, the briefest wrap up of LEFT BEHIND. I have to run off soon and won't get any more opportunities to blog today.

I really like the colouring on this page. I really feel that I have out doors nailed down, but I'm still working on indoors. I found it tough to colour the Human Resources room without it looking muddy. But hey, I'm getting there!

Panel 1 is fun. It's got a widescreen feel that just really attracts me visually. It was one of the earliest panels I conceptualised. I especially like the design of the trees on the left to help our intrepid heroes pop visually making them easier to find on the panel. I also spent a ridiculous amount of time drawing windows. I recall listening to Dennis Leary's "Why We Suck" as I drew them. I at first disliked Leary because he spent the early part of his career ripping off the inestimable Bill Hicks (whom, if you haven't heard his stuff, prepare to be as equally enlightened as you are offended). But Leary has really grown into his own, and his show RESCUE ME (which I've only seen the first two seasons of) is ridiculously good. His book is fantastic. It has an incredibly offensive level headedness that I really enjoy.

But yes. A lot of windows.

I also like the trees. Yes, the trees. Sorry to bore your non-botanical butts (with alteration and the admiring of my foliage).

But most of all, I love how the colour of the final story feeds so naturally into the sniper scope on the very last panel. It just had a nice synchronicty that I'd like to take credit for making happen even if I didn't premeditate it. Hey, sometimes accidents happen for a good reason.

But you all seem very pleased that Micah was actually shot, and it was Ollie's and my intention to give you that impression. It was funny reading the extraordinarily cynical predictions of how Micah would avoid being shot.

Anyone, time out. I'm off for sushi! You all have fun and be good, and if you don't make sure you name it after me.

LEFT BEHIND page 5

2009-06-16T07:59:00.004+10:00

I just finished the final part of REBELLION that I'm involved with last night. I'm really excited to see the future installments and see where the guys take it. It was a late finish at 5am (as usual) but I like to cram as much into it as possible. The basic formula is:

EFFORT X TIME = TIRED JAS

Overall, I think the artwork is the best I've done. I think it's a step above this installment. On the downside, I don't think the colouring is quite as detailed as I would have liked. But as I'm reading in Stephen King's seventh and final book of THE DARK TOWER, "Wish in one hand, sh!t in the other and see which one fills up first."

But let's come back and wrap up LEFT BEHIND up before the next installment goes live tomorrow morning.

It became more and apparent as I drew everyone that I really wanted to draw some superheroes. These characters were no longer portraits of my friends but superheroic effigies of them. Many people noticed and commented on the visual similarities of this story to mainstream superhero comics. Some people love it, some people didn't, some people were indifferent. Some people wished the show was this big, some people found that it didn't fit with the show. The show is a "big" show, but I guess it's no Michael Bay extravaganza (speaking of which, I want to find an IMAX so big that I have to launch myself into geosynchronous orbit to fully capture the hugeness that's gonna be Transformers 2.)

The tight costumes and the team as well as the widescreen feel made it all feel larger than the show. What's funny is looking at the comments how aware people are of the limitations of television as a media. That primary limitation is budget. I see a great amount of wish fulfillment dreaming of a budget to be able to have a show of this visual extravagance on the air. The awareness of the audience stunned me. Do we sit down to watch television expecting a lower budget than we do of a movie? I know that when I sit down to watch Battlestar Galactica I don't have that expectation at all. And before you start with the BSG comments I *STILL* haven't watched the final season. I'm starting again and working my way through it again to give it full context. So just hold your god damn horses for me, ok? Some of us have been busy trying to entertain you. Cut me some slack. I'm still churning through TORCHWOOD season 2 and LOST season 5.

It's funny I bumped into some fans saying that the episode COLD SNAP was their favourite because they loved how Tracy froze everything. It just goes to show that any part of a show can be exceptional enough to capture people's imagination: direction, acting, writing, costumes, production, paintings or a cg sequence.

A lot of people loved West's "Mario" comment that the Princess is in another castle. I played a bit of Mario Brothers when I was a kid and did my time with sidescrolling platform games (yes, I know it's evolved a bit since then) so I don't know if it's a direct quote. Me? I thought it was more a thinly veiled code for any sort of fairy tale sequence. I guess we tap into what resonates with us. I guess someone who doesn't have a penchance for online rpgs is going to have to tell me if it's a direct quote. Or... I could just ask Ollie. But I think he's more of a LEFT 4 DEAD dude than a MARIO dude. And if you think his fiance Abby is collecting gold coins and riding cute green dinosaurs you're totally wrong. She's dual wielding M1911 pistols and carving holes the size of dinner plates into the craniums of the undead right next to him.

<- left you can see more of Paul Caggegi's awesome 3d modeling work on my layouts. I just slapped them in and drew over them so Ollie could see what I was doing.

TOMORROW: I was supposed to post on Friday, but drawing my ass off and getting free tix for Heather and I to go see the totally ghetto LA Erotica convention distracted me. Without any desire to purchase hardcore porn, a penile enhancement or a vibrator I found myself vaguely unentertained. It was like someone had built a convention out of my spam inbox and populated it with a bunch of guys who still live in their mother's basements. Ker-eepy.

But anyway, I will post the final page of LEFT BEHIND tomorrow, as the next part goes live tomorrow also. I wanna start covering the new stuff on Wednesday. God, I actually have time to blog now that I'm outside of the crushing (but incredibly fun) weight of HEROES.

LEFT BEHIND page 4

2009-06-12T05:08:00.003+10:00

If you've been eating your carrots and Wheaties you might notice that the layouts overlap perfectly with the finished art. This occurs for two reasons. One is that I've started doing layouts on Photoshop. I sit down, do all my research (guns, buildings, clothing - or lack of it, etc.) and then figure out what shots I can do based on what research I've done. It seems much smarter to do this "cart after the horse action".

You might think it limits my storytelling, but it does just the opposite. It seems my brain has very limited camera angles and ways that it can perceive a sequential scenario. This doesn't mean that I can't perceive a scene from multiple angles, I can. I can draw it through the plastic mesh of a shopping basket discarded in a corner, I can perch above a chandelier with the crystals creating a glittering frame. That's not the problem. The problem for me is moving around the scene in a way that is dynamic, highlights the main action and moves in a way that the geography and action makes sense to the reader.

While some people perceive comics as a seamless stream of action, it is far from the truth. In fact, nothing is seamless. Movies have cuts. Hell, even your eyes blink cutting your perception 10 times per minute! That momentary darkness is compensated for in an unconscious immediate way. I know there's a term for it that I learned in my psychology course in college (university for everyone else on the globe), but I just can't remember it. Spot the person who's suddenly regretting their college debt. Anyway, comics are jagged, frozen moments of time held together by dialogue, captions but hopefully (and mostly), good visual storytelling. A good storyteller will lead the reader around the scene in a manner that makes the action seem seamless. If you at any point ever go, "What the hell? Where am I?" when the storyteller hasn't intended you to feel that way, then the storyteller hasn't done a great job.

So by finding the research first, I tend to use these shots as anchors, or to belabor an animation metaphor - keys (coming from the term, "key frame" which is a frame drawn by a senior animator to indicate a key, or important frame of movement). I then tween around these shots (short for "in between - shots that are less important in animation than the "key frame"). I find it incredibly challenging and exhilarating when I'm able to tie it all together in a manner which is both readable and exciting. But I always try and lean towards readable before exciting. I'd rather be boring and clear, than exciting and impenetrable.

Having Paul do the backgrounds for the Human Resources room allowed me to shoot everything exactly as I wanted. We're now experimenting with software that enables him to give me the model and for me to just set up my cameras and light it just the way I want it. It's less time on his part and we don't have to keep going back and forth with me saying, "can you lower it about 10 inches and tilt it up 15 degrees."

Doing this back and forth on email sometimes feels like the joke of two blind men both groping at different ends of an elephant. If you haven't heard it, you can Google it or something.

The second reason the layouts are so close to the final artwork (you thought I'd forgotten that I'd mentioned two right? Well I remembered without even having to do a reread! Go coffee!) is that Frank uses my layouts to do lettering when I haven't finished drawing in time. Which is pretty much every time. Because I follow these layouts exactly, he can have the lettering done before I've finished the art. The letterer then just has to lay the artwork underneath. A 2 minute job for each page. Speaking of which... Frank needs me to double check the layouts and send them through for lettering right now.

In good news, my character outlines for my story have been approved. I'm so excited. I'd been coming up with concept stuff and action scenes. Then I found myself totally bored as I realised I was just writing about ciphers. Faceless killers. So I wrote a quick 100 word background on both of the characters, and discovered that there needed to be a third - a love interest. I added each character's theme and submitted it. Bingo! Approved! Suddenly I'm writing about people and the situations just start to write themselves.

LEFT BEHIND page 3

2009-06-09T06:27:00.002+10:00

Three scene changes in one page! It's like being backstage at a runway show. Now all we need is some emaciated young thing shuffling in and out of their outfit out of the corner of our eyes and the scene is complete. Once again, Ollie handles this with ease. I just tried to stay out of his way. I worry sometimes that I'm a bit too ham-fisted in my storytelling. Given that I've not had any complaints on the boards by people wondering what the hell's happening, I'm guessing that I'm taking the right course.

I did design all the colour palettes beforehand. I knew Peter and Matt's story and the general corridors of Building 26 would be a green/cyan palette. I knew the Human Resources room would be blue, the final panel on every page was... challenging. Recently Ollie read POWERS by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming (go the three names dudes). Originally the sniper story occurred in random panels throughout the story. I pointed out a sequence in POWERS where a news television show is running down the bottom of every page. I suggested that perhaps if we did the same that it might be easier to understand what's going on. In fact, you should be able to read all of the Sniper story separately with ease if you had it in book form.

To further separate the sniper story from the rest of the story, I ended my standard black background and added the blurred blood texture. I think this also leant a subtle danger to the sequence. But then I needed to make this pop from the rest of the story. I normally run a standard "gutter" (the gutter is the distance between two panels). Sometimes I make it smaller for faster sequences, but in this case I made it a fairly large distance from the main story. These techniques are relatively subtle storytelling techniques. The last technique I used was the green lens. This was perhaps over the top, but definitely helped avoid any confusion.

Nana was fun to draw. While I find old Trek amusing, I'm more of a Next Generation sort of guy. Now despite my martial training I'm also a fair pacifist. But if Patrick Stewart said I needed to don the army greens and go fight, I'd be right behind him. Captain Picard is Da Man as far as I'm concerned. I even once heard of IBM showing clips of him at work at one of their executive seminars as an example of a true leader. Anyway, as a pop culture junkie I love the shout outs to old Trek, and Uhura (Nana) was no exception.

As an aside, if you've seen the New Trek, or like the old stuff you're gonna dig this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film

Now I'm sure some of you don't check the comments. While I always do (sometimes late - but I'm MUCH better these days) there's some great stuff that happens there. Paul Caggegi, background artiste extraordinaire expanded the video of his contribution to this work including building 26. It's so well edited and scored. It's fast, it's cool and it really seems to be the tip of the iceberg as to what this guy can do.

Check it out here: http://www.vimeo.com/4957527

Oh, and do I know who the sniper is and what happens to Micah?

You bet your ass I do.

LEFT BEHIND page 2

2009-06-06T03:40:00.004+10:00

Just finished listening to the amazing NO DOMINION by Charlie Huston read by the incredible Scott Brick. Boy, what a fun, fun book. It's the perfect thing to listen to while drawing: smart, funny, dark and... vampires. Scott Brick does such a great job. I highly recommend this and it's predecessor ALREADY DEAD. Thanks to JAn for sowing the seeds and of course Peter Marshall for helping me get my hands on this copy.

I think I'm gonna head back to listening to the ORIGINAL RED SOX podcast. Heather's a huge Red Sox fan, and I'm trying to not look like a poser and catch up on what's been going on. I started at the start of the 2005 season and I'm currently in June 2006. I'm getting there. But there's only so much baseball you can listen to. No really. There is.

Enough with Jason's recommendations. This isn't a critic's choice thing ("with a two snaps up and a round the twist"), this is an artblog.

Ollie's script didn't indicate the shadow of the guy nor his gun in the first panel, just West and Abby taking out said guard in the second panel. I decided to add these elements to help us get to the second panel. Otherwise you'd be wondering a bit where he came from. It's not a huge leap to guess that guards are probably wandering around, but I don't like making people take leaps of faith and intuition to read my comics.

Ollie and I brainstormed a whole bunch of things that Abby, Sparrow and West could team up and do in terms of power combinations and stunts. In the old Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying game (and Jason ushers in his total nerdiness with those 4 simple words) any unconventional use of a power is called a "power stunt". For example, Sparrow's rock slide is a power stunt. Ollie came up with the West/Abby battering ram and it's such a great idea. I'd to show some of the others.

Boy it was fun drawing Peter here. I think it's this panel that really ties this comic into the show. I really dig that. People complained that this story is such an afterthought. I would counter that it's such a brilliant extrapolation of events. It's a testament to Ollie's storytelling skills that he can not only weave a great story, but weave that story into the episodes and events that we've already seen. It's a fantastic piece of storytelling that fleshes out events and enriches the HEROES experience. As fas as I'm concerned, it's stories like these that tie in between the episodes that the comics were made for.

Once again, Paul Caggegi steped in to lend an enormous hand. I stared at the enormous task of having to draw the Human Resources room in Building 26. Frankly I just had no idea how I could do it justice. Enter Paul Caggegi and his amazing 3d modeling. He built the room and one person on one gurney, copied and pasted it and made me a Human Resources room! He made the impossible, possible.

His invaluable assistance meant I could concentrate on storytelling and rendering all those stupid foam lumps on the briefcase in the last panel rather than spending days on perspective lines, grids and foreshortening of the human figure. This panel took a full day to draw instead of several days. Thanks so much, Paul!

Now, here's an incredible treat. Paul has created a dynamic video of how we worked together on the last story 138. Check out the awesomeness:

http://www.vimeo.com/4957527

He's got a bunch of cool stuff there, so feel free to get distracted.

UPCOMING: My cousin has approached me about writing and drawing a story to tie into a line of action figures he's produced. More details as that gets closer to the wire. Right now I'm nutting out a story. I've come up with something good... but I think I have the time to make it great.

NEXT: More of Paul's awesomeness and some thoughts on the last panel story.

LEFT BEHIND page 1

2009-06-05T04:45:00.002+10:00

Hey gang! Thanks for the great comments on LEFT BEHIND.

You can find the free download at the nbc site: HERE.

This was a lot of fun to draw. I love drawing the episodes that tie directly into the episodes. In fact, when people ask me what the comics are about, I usuallyuse ROAD KILL as an example...

"Let's say the bad guy gets away and turns up next episode in the show. The comics would show you how he gets away and how and why he turns up at the next place you see him. They fill in the gaps between the series. You don't NEED to read them, but they're fun if you do."

My likenesses of Peter are... ok. I think I did some great Matt Parkman's though. So I'm very happy with that. I think you can tell it's Peter, but you're not really gonna put any of these pics of him on Milo's driver's license.

In panel 2 there's shout outs to Natalie Wells (of the Nat and Noo hotel from ROOT AND BRANCH part 1). I didn't manage to include her or Ryan (who has always been so incredibly helpful and supportive of me) in the last story. And given that I included shout outs to Tom, Dick, Harry, their dogs, cousins and parakeets in the last story, I felt kinda bad. I would have loved to have put in more shout outs in the story (andI got a LOT of requests to do more) I just couldn't fit any more in without it detracting from the story. And while I like doing shout outs, the story comes first people.

And now the elephant in the corner. What the flaming heck is with the costumes? Here's the thing, they're not wearing spandex, but I wanted a stealthy superspy/superhero feel. West is in a tight top (like what he wore on the show) and black jeans. Abby is also in a tight top with what I guess are yoga pants. I actually saw a chick in her outfit at the gym. Have you ever noticed how much people in gym gear look like superheroes? Sparrow is in a halter top and jeans. The main reason why it's all tight is cos I didn't feel like drawing jackets. folds in clothing take time, and time was not a luxury I had. This had to be done in the blink of an eye. Ollie bought me more time and I tried to put that time in to backgrounds and detail rather than clothing.

Tight fitting clothing is FAST TO DRAW. Here's how many times I drew everyone (not including distance shots):

Sparrow: 2 times - including a huge poster shot. Those rocks took FOREVER!
Abby: 9 times
West: 8 times

Now you add jackets and accessories with folds, texture, lighting, zips, buckles etc and my time frame starts blowing out the window. Just think about an elbow. A bare bent elbow is about 3 lines plus some rendering. A bent elbow in a jacket is about 10-15 plus the same amount of rendering for each of those lines. And that's just an elbow let alone every joint on each person 8 to 9 panels! I made a call against the deadline I had that would also sell the visual sexiness of all the characters as well as the stealthiness.

My favourite quote is from Pamela (WickedM on the 9th Wonders boards) who quoted Buffy saying, "Don't worry I've patrolled in this halter many times."

And Joss makes it ok cos he makes the characters self aware of the ridiculousness of their wardrobe choices to help put bums on seats.

NEXT: Page 2. Powers and Paul Caggegi.

aw no

2009-06-04T01:58:00.002+10:00

Another interlude! I can't blog on LEFT BEHIND. I'm over at Heather's and left these files back at my house. At the time I couldn't think for the life of me why I would need them. Well... oops. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

In other news I also forgot to bring any t-shirts or tops. I'm wearing a tshirt so small it's hard to breathe and you can also tell if I'm an inny or an outy (inny for those of you not walking around the apartment right now).

Bloggage tomorrow!

Thanks for the kind comments on my Facebook and on the blog. If you wanna friend me up on Facebook, please please say how you know me. Mum told me not to talk to, take candy or accept Facebook invitations from strangers.

FAMILY part 6

2009-06-02T13:46:00.003+10:00

Hey all, thanks for the patience on the posting. The part after FAMILY goes live tomorrow morning. I hope you enjoy it. Ollie and I had a blast making it!

But let's finish off FAMILY then. Man, I read this again, and Ollie did such a sweet job. It's so light, yet so dense. It reads so fast, but if you pay attention there's meat on the bones and stuff between the lines. The next part is gonna rock you with some super-heroics and a very clever tie in to a previously aired episode. The part after that, by Harrison Wilcox is just balls to the wall fun. I'm so glad I'm drawing it... the only clue I'm giving is that it picks up where I've left off. You can figure out what that means.

This page was fun, fun, fun. Zach and Ollie asked me if I could show off Sparrow's tatoo on her right arm. So I flipped the page so her right arm was towards us. The main problem was when I shot the reference shots, I just didn't do a great job of directing the girls and Kat's pose didn't show her right forearm at all. You can see their incredible performances in previous pages (and previous installments in Abby's case). But these final shots just lacked punch and I'd got their poses all wrong. I realised I had to deviate from my reference to really sell these characters as a full on super team.

I had to sell the power, the sexiness and the whole vicarious "you wanna be these people" factor. My greatest conundrum came when I had to sex up the girls. I mean, Abby is Ollie's fiance and a very good friend and Kat is Zach's girlfriend and also a good friend. I didn't want anyone looking at the pictures and wondering what the hell was going through my head. All I knew, is that at this stage I had to leave the reference behind, and stop drawing homages to my friends and sell these characters to the best of my ability.

I did several things. I gave ALL the characters (including West) heroic proportions. Proportions are measured with respect to the figure's head instead of feet, inches, centimetres, metres or some other form of spatial distance measurement. The human body is 7.5 heads tall (or something like that). The heroic figure is about 8.5 to 9.5 heads tall. What this means is that the body is much larger than the head. The person looks taller and generally more heroic and idyllic. If you think about it, high heels are designed to add an extra 1/3 of a head to a woman's height making her look taller, her head smaller and therefore more idyllic. Body builders are spending all their time increasing the size of their body to make their heads looks smaller and therefore more heroic. I think the statue of David by Michaelangelo is also on idyllic proportions.

So the girls and West are about 9 heads tall (or thereabouts) stretching them out to impossible proportions. Dynamic poses and tight fitting clothing round out the ensemble. I had fun with the clothing, especially with the girls. The union jack top was a fun design. I saw someone wishing that they had a top like that. When people want the clothing I design, then I figure that's a good thing. Sparrow's print is based on her Native American affiliation. Zach did a bunch of research for Sparrow's tattoo even figuring out which tribe she's from. I found a textile texture from that tribe and mapped it onto her body. A small detail, but an important one for me.

VERSION 1

I initially started out giving Abby these sort of forcefield shields (see left), but Ollie asked if I could go back to what Annette established in the last arc, and I think that was an excellent call.

You can see also a print on West's tshirt. That's the SPACEDOG logo for the company I work for. It just looked distracting so we removed it.

NEXT: I will post about page 1 of the next part on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to scouring the boards for all your thoughts and comments.

Meanwhile I'm hard at work on the 8 page third part written by Harrison Wilcox. I've been working on HEROES since about halfway through the first season, and I just gotta say, these epic arcs are getting better and better. These 20 pages, as well as INTO THE WILD, then before that ROOT AND BRANCH and before that THE DEATH OF HANA GITELMANN... well, I just think you can read them all and see the improvement of everyone involved. There just seems to be a stronger grasp of the medium, story and characters.

Anyway, enjoy the next part tomorrow.

Interlude

2009-05-30T04:16:00.001+10:00

Hey gang, no posting today. Every second I have directly correlates into how good I can make the upcoming story. I can't justify posting when I can do so on Monday after the deadline.

Sorry, but I promise it's gonna be worth it!

FAMILY part 5

2009-05-28T05:16:00.003+10:00

This was the last page that I coloured, and definitely my favourite. I remember that it was 4am in the morning and it had been a long day colouring both pages 4 and 5 on one day. Ironically, they're both my best pages, which is a testament to my learning curve (or how much I had to learn) and my ability to combat exhaustion.

The other reason why I like my new colouring style is that it doesn't take forever. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I wave my fairy wand and the colours appear... It's still a lot of hard work. The 4am finish would testify to that. I remember being so happy with pages 4 and 5 that I worked until 6am fixing up the other pages so that they were a little stronger to fit in with what I'd learned. I'm a perfectionist like that. While panel 1 of page 2 is definitely weak, it's an exception rather than the rule. So I can be happy with that. I'm looking forward to a higher level of consistency on my upcoming story... part 4 of Rebellion.

Ages ago I remember reading WE3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (which I highly recommend) and there's a scene where a train tumbles off a collapsing bridge. I remember needing to draw the underside of a train so I thought I'd check what Frank Quitely did for the underside. I found the sequence again to find that he'd covered the majority of the underside of the carriage with rubble and shadows. Smart. Very smart. It saved time and no one noticed or missed it. So I decided to use that same technique here. The huge chimney not only covers up heaps of tedious perspective, but it also creates a sense of depth. But it did take a fair amount of time to draw, just not a great deal of emotional effort. But that was a lot of bricks. Did I mention that was a lot of bricks?

The flag and the tree are all other examples of not only framing the scene to draw attention to what I want you to look at, but saved me drawing another couple of buildings too. See? I call it stealth cheating.

But I am particularly happy with the design of this page. I think that once you finish panel 2 the arc of their flight sweeps your eye back down to the collapsing building. I'm also not a huge fan of motion lines. Again, like Bryan Hitch I like to try and use what's in the scene to convey movement. In this case the dust, debris and dirt peeling off the forcefield as they fly to safety... not Washington. Anyone who thinks they all flew from here to Washington is crazy. They would have frozen to death. It's why I changed the girl's costumes to help sell time passing.

And while we'd never seen him do it, I thought it would be cool to give West the "donut" effect on his flight. I felt that it was such a unique HEROES visual that I just had to throw it in to remind the reader exactly which universe we're in.

NEXT: Page 6: The dilemna of sexing up friend's fiances and girlfriends.

FAMILY part 4

2009-05-27T04:49:00.008+10:00

No bloggage yesterday as it was Memorial day weekend and I found myself kidnapped in my girlfriend's bed and checking email and blogging was the last thing on my mind. We're powering through the 2004 ALCS World Series with the Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees. She's a huge Red Sox fan and wanted me to see their greatest moment of victory in 86 years. Being the accommodating boyfriend, and more importantly wanting to share something that means so much to her, I said, "yes".

Then I heard the beeping as a massive truck reversed up the driveway. It's chassis sat low and its suspension rebeled under the weight of its cargo. The doors swung opened and from within the darkness thunder echoed. Flashing lights cut the darkness and a huge robotic hydraulic cargo machine that I recognised as the one that Ripley used to fight the mother alien at the end of Aliens came teetering out.

Its 15 foot frame reeled under the 12 disc box set of baseball that it carried. Setting it down on a specially reinforced concrete frame I checked the side of the box to see that it was 33 hours of baseball! Dear god! What the hell had I got myself into?!

And the game I watched yesterday was 5 hours. Even Heather was starting to wilt. The next one is 6 hours. If you don't hear from me it's cos I chewed my own wrists out trying to be a good boyfriend.

But lets get onto this HEROES story. Again, you can find it HERE.

The biggest technical difference in this story is that I used the inestimable Paul Caggegi (check out his site, THE PROCESS DIARY - don't worry I will chuck another link further down) to help me out with the backgrounds. You may remember Paul. He used to do the 3HEROES podcast and he was my very first interview. Since that time we've struck up a great friendship and even had the chance to meet up over lunch.

The formula in comics is (effort + talent) x time = result.

So the more time you have, the better the result. It basically means that anyone no matter how mediocre can take years on a project and rival the best professional. The trick to being a professional is that your effort and talent multiplier is much bigger so you can spend less time on a piece. But at the end of the day, time is the deciding factor. It's a matter of doing as much work as you can before the deadline.

I'm either:

a. Lazy

b. A team player

c. All of the above

So what I did is you looked for help. Now, at the end of the day, I prefer to draw everything. But that doesn't mean I can't ask Paul Caggegi to help be my interior decorator and set builder. And that's exactly what he did! Paul went above and beyond the call of duty to create a beautiful living room for this scene. He made it a believable home. I sent him an overhead map and the layouts of the pages (see left) and he took it from there. He built the room in 3d and then rendered out the angles that I needed. I pasted his renders in behind the figures and basically traced over his lines for perspective and structure. Because he made this stage so quick, I was able to concentrate on lighting, texture and distressing the room from Sparrow's antics. It made for what I think was in incredibly effortless amazing result. I've included the page of renders so you can see the effort that Paul went to that unfortunately got covered up by my figures and later, lettering. Damn writers getting in the way of the artwork!

I can't recommend and praise Paul enough. He was so efficient it was ridiculous. If his turn around times were any faster he would have sent them before I'd sent my requests! His models were perfect and detailed enough to give me character and a great base to work from, but also sparse enough that he let me put my own stamp on things. It was one of the best working partnerships I've ever had. We're teaming up again on the next part. He's not just helping me out this time, he's helping me achieve the impossible.

Again, the link to his site is THE PROCESS DIARY. He has all sorts of tutorials, thoughts, videos and generally runs the sort of blog that I can only envy at. If you think you'd like to hire Paul for freelance work or something bigger please chuck me an email at grael23@yahoo.com or wander around his site for some contact details.

NEXT: Wednesday: Page 5. Colouring in all its glory and how I learned to cheat from Frank Quitely.

FAMILY part 3

2009-05-23T03:03:00.004+10:00

Remember, you can find the link to the grahic novel >HERE<. It's s free download! Fans have surmised a great deal about how this story ties into some of the foreshadowing of COG which you can find >HERE<. Smart readers noticed that on page 3 of COG you can see Lee and Abby. They then theorised that this was foreshadowing this story.

I guess this perfectly examples the organic and coincidental nature of smart storytelling. Foz, the writer had nothing to do with putting Lee and Abby there. I put Lee and Abby in COG for two reasons. One, I had to fill two photos and didn't have time to draw new pictures. Those two shots were from SUM QUOD SUM part 2 page 2 panel 1 and 2(see side labels). Because they got so distorted and blurred in the effects we never saw the pictures clean. So I asked Annette to pull them out so we could show them off here. Secondly, they're two great friends of mine and I wanted to throw them a shout out. Two birds one stone.

Now, whether Ollie picked up on this and decided to write FAMILY including them again was because of, in spite of, or despite of these cameos is something you will have to ask him about. But regardless, what he's accidentally or deliberately done is to create some fantastic foreshadowing and a tangible link between the two stories.

Let's talk about colour, shall we? Did you know men actually see FEWER colours than women? It's to do with either them or us having more or less rods or cones. I can't remember which. So when your partner says, "Honey... which of these do you prefer" and holds up two swatches that look identical to you... don't feel bad. It's just our inferior male genetics at work. On the plus side, we apparently see better in the dark. I guess you can put it down to evolutionary gatherer (being able to tell ripe from rotten) and hunter (stalking prey in the dark) roles.

But... this was the first page where I started to figure out exactly how to colour. The order went: 2, 6, 1, 3, 4, 5 . I had to do the Nissan thing first. Then I went to page 6 cos being a splash page it makes a good warm up. After stretching my colouring muscles I moved onto page 1 and started charging through in order. Page 1 is ok, and when I finished page 5 at 4am Sunday night, I stayed up another 2 hours just to clean up pages 1 and 2. I just wanted to make sure this was perfect. If I could I would have coloured this page again. I finally figured out how to get all the muddiness out of my style and make it clean and open. Before I just don't think my work breathed. It was so dark and murky. I remember Brian Bendis saying just that and it took me about 4 years to figure out the problem. I'm a nice guy, but I'm not the sharpest knife in the draw.

But here is where I stumbled across the style I wanted. I remember taking all damn day on this page (while listening to Hearts from Atlantis - the Stephen King story - I'm almost done with the Dark Tower and trying to listen to everything that ties in). I then fell into a bad place health wise. I headed to Heather's to hang out and rest. But while I was there the back of my brain was ticking- the cogs turning trying to figure out how I could do what I did faster and better. And by the evident improvement of pages 4 and 5, I think I solved that problem.

But while this page is good... it could be much better. What killed me is that the house that I drew behind Abby (see the black and white versions) is all fully coloured. the chairs have upholstery, the skirting boards are colour co-ordinated and the cabinet at the back tastefully matches the walls and floors. Then I covered it up with those damn forcefields!

I actually sent Annette an email asking her how to do the forcefields. She gave me some good outlines but I had to figure it out myself. The best advice she gave me was, "Don't stress. Make them your own." I tried to do two things with the forcefields. The first thing was give them this ripple effect when the darts hit them. Instead of just bouncing off a hard perspex shell, I liked the idea that the forcefields are like hard water. Also when Abby gets flustered they start to break down like in panel 1. But when her concentration is perfect, like panel 2 they're solid as houses.

Panel 3 I really wanted to sell Sparrow's power. I wanted it as widescreen as possible. I would have pullled further back, but I just couldn't justify it in this tiny corridor. I mean, if she can pull a column of the earth out to catch her fall out of a plane, she can tear a house down. And I really wanted to sell that this house was falling the hell apart! I hope it added a level of dramatic tension that you consciously or subconsciously processed. I wanted it as widescreen as possible. I would have pullled further back, but I just couldn't justify it in this tiny corridor.

NEXT: Claude and Abby. More effects and 3d modeling by the amazing Paul Caggegi!

FAMILY part 2

2009-05-21T03:59:00.004+10:00

Once again, you can find the free download of this comic >HERE<.

Thanks for all the great feedback! It's so great to see everyone back. I'm so glad this story is resonating. I don't know how Ollie does it, but his stories have such an incredible momentum! I found that reading it myself I just kind of drove through it like a bullet. And I know how much time was put into each page more than anyone!

Zach Craley wrote parts one and two. He was responsible for giving Sparrow terrakinesis and perfectly casting her as his lovely girfriend Kat Purgal. Obviously, Ollie's fiance, Abby was in it too, and Ollie graced us in a panel. Originally he'd planned a larger role for Lee posing theidea of Lee "going nuclear" but decided that not only had that idea been done in HEROES already, but rethought it due to his constant humility (not wanting a feature role) and trying to serve the other characters better. With Sparrow bringing down the roof I think it helps sell the scale of her power and her impact on the series. She's been on ice so long (living really only in the roleplaying boards) I think Ollie and Zach decided that it's time she really had her time in the sun.

Ollie organised a big barbeque so I could shoot all my photo reference. I could do it without it, but the likenesses would only be mediocre. Everyone was available and so beforehand the likely suspects involved met up and I shot all the reference photos. Kat was fantastic. Her acting background made it so easy. I'm convinced that I'd much rather work with actors than models. I need performance, not just pretty faces. Abby was brilliant as usual. You can see how well the girls did by how good their likenesses are. When performances are a bit wooden I have to change facial features to get the performance I want. And generally the more the performance in the photo deviates from what I want, the less it looks like them.

My sinus infection had begun to kick in, and I remember huddling over the bbq, wrapped in my jackedt, shivering - on the border of shuddering I was so cold. Heather took me home, made me soup and I tried to sleep it off. I think the cold lapsed for a couple days before coming back in full force. It felt like Tracy Strauss or Bobby Drake (Iceman from the Xmen) had grabbed a huge steel hook, lodged it into my nose, froze it then started pulling for all they were worth. I don't take pain killers. I like to know where my body's at so I can moderate my activity to make sure it's getting rest when it needs rest. But there was no rest for the wicked while drawing this. I saw the doctor who diagnosed me with a sinus infection and began popping Tylenol Extra Strength like they were candy... only just managing to stay under the limit of 8 every 24 hours. Because the pain was so great, they would take up to 2 hours to kick in. So I would wake up 2 hours early, pop the pills, then go back to bed for two hours and wake up with only a mild amount of pain. In fact, today is the first day I have woken up and not started popping pills.

The pain was quite frankly, exhausting. Trying to labour through this on top of it was one of the most trying things I've ever done. But as I've said before, the pain is temporary, the page lasts forever.

This story is also totally sponsored by Nissan for Comic Con. They were actually incredibly reasonable about changes and ammendments. The only time it was a little frustrating was when they gave me an image of the exact angle of the car they wanted drawn after I had already drawn it! You can see the original artwork above with some more shout outs.

The key to making changes quickly and effectively in Photoshop is to keep things labelled and on separate layers with masks and selections. I made sure to do this with the Nissan panel and so I was able to do pretty much every change they asked for in minutes... except when I had to redraw the car. That took an extra 5 hours.

I remember Frank sent me an email Friday morning telling me that this page had to be coloured that day. I freaked and rushed the colouring. I later went back and cleaned up what I could but it was like, 4am on the eve of the deadline. Unfortunately, I think this is the weakest panel in the story. I think I cluttered it up with too much black and excess linework. It looks flat and I hate the palette. But I dig the colouring on the rest of the page! I just wish I'd put some sort of motion blur on West to sell his speed more.

Thanks again for stopping by!

TONIGHT: Off to see Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction. I can't wait. Two of my favourite bands playing on the one tour. I'm gonna be in heaven!

FACEBOOK: Friend me up, cos sometimes I make announcements like the shout outs in this comic. Just please mention you know me or my art.

FRIDAY: Effects, colouring and characters.

FAMILY part 1

2009-05-20T04:28:00.006+10:00

First up, you can find the free graphic novel at the HEROES site >HERE<. I recommend downloading the pdf to see all the detail. I've drawn it so you should be able to effortlessly read it on your screen.

I haven't been this excited about a graphic novel since SUM QUOD SUM. I loved what I did with Jim and Foz in the meantime, but two things really stood out for me. First up, I got to work with Ollie again. While the other guys are incredibile talents, Ollie just has my storytelling style down to a "T". I just find his and my stories read that little bit better. It's like they're greater than the sum of its parts, you know? Ollie outlined the story for me, and it just sounded so damn exciting. I loved the twists him and Zach came up with. Then Zach Craley sent me the Dennis Calero artwork preceeding mine and I was blown away. Looking at the artists before Dennis and I noticed it was comic book superstar (and all-round nice guy) Phil Jimenez and before that Michael Gaydos. Holy crap, I knew I just had to step up. The second thing was that Ollie told me that this would be the story printed for San Diego Comic Con. I just knew I had to bring my A game.

Another thing that fired me up was that I recently had to put together a proposal for a super secret project that Ollie and I are hoping to work on. I realised that SUM QUOD SUM (see labels on the side) was the last time I went without sleep and worked around the clock to hammer out the best possible artwork I could do. I've done some nice work since, and some stuff that has come close but nothing that rivalled it. I'm all about self improvement and I decided that FAMILY was the time to show people just how far I could hit the ball now.

The other factor to the story was the Nissan integration. This means that Nissan could really be the only logo in the whole story. I remember turning to Ollie and asking him what the hell we're going to do. I had to fill up two shots of Times Square with fake ads!

"Shout outs." he said.

So I put a call out on my Facebook for anyone who wanted a shout out. Here's the complete list of all 28 shout outs:

page 1 panel 1
Lee Olson: Heather's middle names

page 1 panel 3
acidburn133
sheindie
Alexandre Togeiro
rob beck: : you were originally the guy fighting Alexandre, but you got covered up. You can now find yourself on page 2 panel 1
thejollity
PulpFaction
lindsey Elhai
Jessica Taurins
Alex Moses
Anthony Mitchell: that's you in the scarf in the bottom right corner dude.
Ian austin
Oneironaut
curlymarie

page 1 panel 4
Noo
Chloe Nye
Alby Chin
Green Dragon

page 2 panel 1
Kelly J. Compeau
"Da Shark Shack"
!404
Paul Cageggi
"Helix Comics"
justin barlow/Riddler
Steven Barrance
Dylan Eales
Adam Waterfield

Ok, these guys got covered up and lost:
alabastamasta
nick hayden
Stephanie Gerk

You can see your shout out over on the left without the Sparrow Redhouse text. I'm so sorry. I just couldn't squeeze you guys back in. =(

Paul, buddy... you also got left out. I had to redraw the Cube on page 2 panel 1 and I had to shift the background around and you got erased. But here was your shout out dude, "Absolute Abstruse". I even drew you a bottle and everything!

I'm so sorry.

I think I managed to fit them all in, but some got covered by lettering. For example, my sister is on a star on the Hollywood walk of fame that's directly under the caption, "Are you ready to join the fight?". I think a fair few of them got covered up. But I have no control over the lettering. On the good side, I read a lot of posts saying that while they saw all the shout outs, they didn't seem to distract or detract from the story. I figured that people would just gloss over them the first time and then go back and look for them the second time.

I think the only pall over the proceedings was that Annette was unable to colour this because of other commitments. She gave me plenty of notice though (and tips on how to deal with Abby's forcefield), so I was more than able to factor in the time it would take to colour this baby. I did a better job than I've normally done of colouring, in fact, I would argue that pages 4 and 5 (the last pages I coloured) are the best I've ever coloured (I like the subtle effects like the reflection of the room in the tv in panel 2, as well as the red palette guiding your eye from panel 1 to panel 2). But I really think it looks so much better in black and white. If you want to do me a huge favour, go click on the black and white links and see the extraordinary amount of detail I put into every panel. I didn't skimp on a single panel. I recently bumped into a retired comic book artist by the name of Frank Gomez, who used to work for Top Cow. He told me that the secret to being a superstar comic artist is this... LONG HOURS. The more time you put in, the better it looks. And the proof they say, is in the pudding.

In the script, Ollie had Micah's captions introducing each person. I can't remember where I first saw the idea, probably in Grant Morrison's X-men run, but I pitched to him the idea of this big bold lettering introducing each character like a 70's tv show. Somehow, in a comic it gives it a real blockbuster feel. Ollie dug the idea and he modified the script to accomodate it. I had such a clear vision of how I wanted to design it, and I'm really happy with how it came out. Zach Craley sent me an email commenting how much he liked it, and that cinched the deal for me.

The biggest thing for me was making sure I set the scene. While there are captions telling you where you are, I really tried to find places that oozed an undeniability of location. While it seems obvious now, the Hollywood Walk of Fame was a late location selection - but perfectly fit the bill. I also wanted to make sure that each location had a specific colour palette.

Huge thanks also to Kat Purgal as Sparrow, Abigail Wong as well... Abigail, Ollie as Lee and Zach Craley as the Hotspur rental dude. I will talk about the great job they did and the modeling stuff later. That's a whole other ball game and I've rambled on for long enough already.

I hope you all enjoyed the story. I also hope it's obvious that Ollie and I enjoyed ourselves immensely making it.

NEXT: Wednesday, page 2. Nissan and Sinus Infections.

COG page 6

2009-05-19T17:33:00.009+10:00

A long time coming cos I have my next HEROES story to chat about.

The new story is written by the awesome Ollie Grigsby and drawn and coloured by myself. Unfortunately, Annette was unable to colour the new story due to time constraints. But I think I've really stepped up to another colouring level. Check out pages 4 and 5, which were the last ones I coloured. I think they're incredibly professional.

The other thing to keep in mind, is that I drew and coloured the latest HEROES story with the worst sinus infection I've ever had. But more on that tomorrow.

So there's the story that's out tomorrow, then the fourth part of REBELLION which will have the same creative team of Ollie and I. Then in two weeks after that, I will draw Harrison's 8 pager.

20 pages of my HEROES stuff! And I honestly believe that the six pages you see tomorrow is the BEST stuff I've EVER drawn.

Again, huge thanks to Bill Hooper for modeling for James Martin. He really helped COG stand out.

COG page 5

2009-05-01T03:25:00.003+10:00

I wish I could show you guys the stuff I'm doing for HEROES right now. It is flat out the best stuff I've ever drawn. I think it even rivals Sum Quod Sum. I did a good job on COG, but I find myself inspired and on a nice relaxing deadline right now. As Paul Caggegi once said to me, you better put ten pairs of socks on so I can see how many I can knock off.

Speaking of Paul, he's helping me out on this upcoming story by modeling a room in 3d for me to use as reference. This way I can get him to render out angles and backgrounds so I don't have to worry about that tedious perspective thing. We're juggling timelines and what not, but I hope it works. If it does, we're hoping to do this a lot more. It's like working with a production designer, it's fantastic!

The story is written by Ollie Grigsby. Because of all the cameos, he held a big bbq last Saturday so I could shoot everybody for photo reference. Looking at the photos I was stunned how good the performances were. I'm very damn excited. You're gonna see characters you haven't seen before, characters you haven't seen in a while and characters you're dying to see in a story that totally rocks... And I'm doing my damndest to make sure they all look... AWESOME.

I wanna send a huge shout out to Bill Hooper who played the shape shifting James Martin in COG. You can see him here being attacked by Agent Jenkins here on this page. Bill was actually conscripted on the show to play James Martin after NBC determined that the original guy "wasn't sinister enough." Bill took that comment in his stride and allowed his mug to be used for the show. Explaining the reasons for his casting choice to his mom was a bit tougher. I'd met Bill a couple times on the set and at Ollies and he's a very cool, very smart guy. When I mentioned that I'd like to draw him properly he came around to my place to shoot the reference for the fight in Foz's script. I was so grateful to him. Panel 3 is probably my best likeness of him. Thanks so much, buddy!

I also love Annette's colours on this page. Where it goes from the teal to the red is just awesome. It cranks up the danger as well as the visual dynamic power of the page.

Thanks for all those who want shout outs. I'm putting them in, but I can't guarantee that they will survive the lettering process. What I mean by that is I have little to no control where the word balloons are placed, so the word balloons might end up covering your shout out. But so far I've managed to fit in 14 of them into one panel... and it's seamless and there's room for more.

FACEBOOK: I usually post a once per day status update there. Friend me up if you're interested. Make sure you mention you know me. I don't friend people I don't know. I also have an awesome little Facebook fan page there. Be awesome if you join that too. It helps make me look more awesome than I am.

COG page 4

2009-04-07T03:59:00.003+10:00

Hey gang, I hope you've been better than I have. I spent a week in Boston meeting Heather's parents and friends. Basically it was 6 days of drinking. I managed to extend the drinking by 2 days when I got back. Now my sinuses feel like they're going to explode and I've metamorphasized into some sort of snot machine. I know, where do you sign up. I just make everything sound so damn enticing don't I?

Quick recap of Boston:

Friday I got to see my first ever Red Sox game at Fenway. Down by 7 in the third and then a massive come back from Green and Drew to win. Amazing stuff. Varitek was solid as always but Big Pappi was still under performing.

After that we wandered to visit Heather's bff, Biss at her work. She was closing up the restaurant and while we waited asked if I wanted a beer. I thought that would be a great idea and said I'd love one. A minute later she slams down this.... stein/tankard/chalice/mini keg of beer. I worked out it was two pints! Well, 2.5 of these barrels later and Heather is guiding my shaky ass out the door and back to the car.

Saturday was spent with Heather's parents at the MFA where I got to see a Gustav Dore sculpture. He's one of my favourite artists and was pumping out stuff at 12 years old that rivals what I was doing when I was 20.

Sunday we headed into the Isabella Gardner Museum where I saw a more John Singer Sargent stuff (another guy I love because of his dynamic lighting). The museum was beautiful but it was Heather's mom who noticed that the placement of the paintings was terrible. After lunch we met up with the girls for more drinking.

Monday was Marathon Monday where Boston stops for the 26 mile marathon. People fill the streets drinking and cheering. It was a great fun. We ended up crashing a party of one of Grace's friends, Kara. She was lovely and incredibly hospitable. After this we headed to Grace's for more drinking to watch the Bruins destroy the Cannucks in Ice Hockey. It was a good sporting weekend for Boston.

Tuesday Heather and I headed into Boston to pick up some Sox merchandise (a tshirt and hat). Later that night I cooked a huge lasagne and cheese cake. I was joking that I need more manly kitchen tools. Think of it, a range of men's kitchen accessories all with the word, "POWER" in front of them. Like POWER mixer, or POWER blender or POWER microwave! I want kitchen utensils I have to crank like a lawnmower and hold like a chainsaw. Then we're playing with power! We could have Tim Allen be our spokesman!

Wednesday I headed back to LA where I caught a cold. If you've never flown Virgin America, do so. I really enjoyed it. Cold optional though.

I also did an interview for the HEROES magazine. Bryan, the interviewer said he'd mention which issue and when it would be on sale, so I will keep you updated. It was so nice to see that my stuff had made an impact on them enough so that they thought fans would be interested in me.

Anyway, I have heaps of work to do including a new HEROES gig which I'm drawing and colouring. This is going to printed for San Diego comic con. Now Ollie and I decided that there we could fill a bunch of areas with shout outs. So, sign yourself up in the comments below for a shout out to see your name in lights! Write the name you'd like included and say that you'd like to be given a shout out. First in, best dressed. I can only fit so many in, so good luck!

Lastly, I'd like to draw your attention to THIS AMAZING POST REPLY by Clifford on the movie, WATCHMEN. It's brilliant and enlightening. I think he really hits it on the head. The main problem is that the character's motivations are all slightly different. Having not read the graphic novel in about 10 years, it bothered me less. But I know that reading it again I'm gonna get angry at the film. Thanks for the great heads up Clifford!

COG page 3

2009-04-04T06:00:00.006+11:00

I hope you enjoyed the (somewhat) stylistic reminiscence of my encounter with Foz. Just to be clear, I was waiting on the sidewalk like some sort of cheap whore for Foz to rock up. WE did zip around a corner, exchange goods and then dump me unceremoniously out the door of his car. It was so quick the real Jim Martin was like, "When are you off to meet Foz?"

And I was like, "I've already been!"

After my incredibly sketchy and hasty encounter with the Fozster on Sunset Boulevard I sat down to watch the dvd with episode 21 on it. I hate watching stuff out of order and ahead. It just spoils stuff for me. You've seen the episode now, but I was back at Ollie's episode 19 at the time. So watching it I knew how the Danko/Sylar thing would work out

I've really enjoyed going through the forum posts on 9th Wonders and I thought I'd help answer some questions.

1. The Title: People were confused by the capitlisation of the word COG insinuating that it may be an acronym. The title on the top of my script is "COG (or…”Cogs Are People Too”)". I think the capitalisation is stylistic and Foz's choice.

2. The character of Jim Martin is named after the writer of the same name. I dearly hope that's the furthest the comparison between the two goes. Finding out my drinking buddy's some "personality chameleon shape shifter" would be a little unsettling... but endlessly amusing.

4. The "waaaah, waaaahhh" sound effects are by Foz. They are to indicate the alarm on the phone. Now that it got changed to a video message, they maybe should have changed it to a "beep beep". You can also see on my last layouts how I tried to communicate this. I wanted his dream to fade and be intruded by reality.

QUICK THOUGHTS

Panel 1 took freaking forever for some reason.

Panel 2: the cameos are both coincidental and meaningful.

Panel 4: Annette did a great job on the shaving cream. I was so worried it would look like a tumorous growth on his face.

*******

Just a quick aside on Watchmen. I finally got to see this last night and enjoyed the hell out of it. The big questions I get from a lot of people is, "Is it better than the comic?"

Is it more entertaining than the comic? Absolutely. But the comic's sheer daunting and experimental brilliance makes for a tough read that affects its entertainment value. But I think that true art needs to be evaluated on more than just an entertainment level. And if I have to discuss with you whether Watchmen is True Art or not... well, then we're never going to agree. I suggest you move onto another blog and save yourself a bunch of trouble because convincing me otherwise would be like trying to convince me that Superman is less than totally awesome and that protein powder doesn't makes everything better - basically it's a belief so fundamental to me that it's bordering on irrational.

So is the film "better" than the comics? Quite simply, I put it this way. If Watchmen: the film challenges and contributes to the medium of film in the same way or better than Watchmen: the comic did for the medium of comics, then it is as good, if not better.

While I place Watchmen: the comic on this incredibly high pedestal, I would rarely recommend it to anyone who wasn't anything but the most hardcore fan of comics. War and Peace may be the greatest piece of English literature... But it doesn't mean you really want to read it. If you just want to be entertained, stick to the film. If you want to be challenged, or need to convince someone that comics aren't just for kids, go read the comic.

UNUSUAL WATCHMEN TRIVIA:

Unsubstantiated: I could be wrong about this as I saw this movie a long time ago... But in Back to the Future 2 when Marty spots the playbook that ruins the timeline in the shop window, there is also a copy of Hollis Mason's UNDER THE HOOD.

Substantiated: This occurs in the actual issue, but I'm not sure if all later collections of the graphic novel got it right... The Rorscharch issue is actually structured like a Rorscharch test. All the panel layouts mirror themselves on their opposing pages. For example, let's assume the middle pages are 11 and 12 (I can't remember how many pages it is), but their layouts would be the same. So would 10 and 13, 9 and 14 and so on. Brilliant.

NEXT POST: Thoughts on page 4 on Monday. Have yourself a great weekend!

FACEBOOK: Look me up, join my facebook group! Hassle me what I can do for the group.

COG page 2

2009-04-02T07:32:00.005+11:00

I gotta say it was fun working with Foz McDermott. He's a damn nice guy who commits to the excellence of the story, but also knows when to give enough space to let a collaborator swing a cat. Because, just in case you didn't know, the hurling of various felines is ESSENTIAL to my comic creation process.

But seriously, you should know that by now.

I had some questions about the script and within an email, Foz had sent me his number. We chatted and I still had problems visualising the action. That night I was actually meeting up with the real Jim Martin (the writer not the shape shifter) at the Saddle Ranch on Sunset with a bunch of my Aussie friends. Foz said he'd drop by, but he'd rather not step inside. His call...

*********

Sunset Boulevard. A road of broken dreams hyper-saturated with billboards screaming taunts to the broken, hungry souls that wander its star-struck pavement. The sickly sweet cologne of the valet attendant weaved unpleasantly with the toxic exhalations of the traffic around me. The jagged teeth of a bitter wind as cold as the hearts of the hollow eyed people that aimlessly shuffled around me failed to move the bitter scents. It clung to the back of my throat with the jagged fingers of a dying man. Inside I could hear the warm laughter of friends and strangers. Music swelled over a thumping beat like jungle drums calling the tribe to celebrate by the fire against the cold, cold night. The solid walls of the bar suddenly seemed a fragile membrane against the bleak, neon cold. I flipped up my collar and scanned for my contact.

Foz.

I'd been warned about him. A loose cannon. A maverick who broke as many rules as he did legs. He had a reputation. Once he commited to the job, he finished the job. Somehow I'd been roped in. Grigsby. It's all damn Grigsby's fault. I'd be inside surrounded by warm smiles and cold drinks if it wasn't for him. Foz needed someone with my specialised skills and he put the pressure on Grigbsy. You see, Grigsby knows people. He knows people that you shouldn't know. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people. I don't know what Foz did to him, but he dropped my name. Grigsby never drops names. I can only hope Grigsby only needs crutches, cos I have a feeling as far as my dealing with Foz goes, that would be getting off lightly.

Suddenly a streak of metallic night pulled up at the curb. Its engine thrumming with power. I could hear imminent sirens and gunshots in the distance. The tinted window lowered and I heard a voice rasp, "Get in."

I narrowed my eyes and peered through the gap that the mirrored pane afforded. In the front passenger seat was a blond. Always a damn blond, I thought. She smiled and I felt my eyebrows hood my eyes. Despite her beauty it was the looming presence behind her that caught my attention. Again that voice hissed from it, "If you're waiting for an invitation she's got a 9mm one pointed straight at your heart."

I looked away careful to keep my hands in sight, "That's a bad place to aim. Grigsby's work burnt that outta me years ago."

A smile split the hulking shadow of the drivers seat, "Grigsby won't be bothering you no more."

Now it was my turn to smile. If Grigsby was done, maybe I could get out of this. All of this. Start again. But I knew wherever I went my hands would be as clean as Lady Macbeths. "It seems we can do business."

I got in the car figuring the back seat was safe. Looking around I couldn't figure out how you broke the legs of someone sitting behind you. As soon as the door shut the car took off screaming around a corner. He drove the car like a guided missile. He knew the layout of the land down to the trash cans and his twisting route disorientated me, which is normally impossible. I was dealing with someone who'd read my file. The metallic beast lurched to a halt and he turned to me slinging a huge arm over the back of the blond's seat. She pretended to look out the window ignoring us. She was smart and knew it's better to pretend not to know. "Down to business." He whispered.

I leaned back bracing myself against the seat. If anything should happen, I'd need as much leverage as possible to deal with a man of this power. "You should know," I said, "This is my last job."

Again the shadows split, "It's always our last job kid. But the only way you and I get out of this is without a pulse."

We locked eyes. Without dropping his gaze he reached into his coat. I tensed, my endorphin system honed by years of training to a hair trigger. "These are for you."

He handed me a dvd and a what looked like a floor plan of an apartment. There were designs on it. Arrows, crosses and circles. The uninitiated would think it looked like a football play. I knew better. It was a kill plan. He interrupted my study of the goods, "You burn those when you're done. And if you got any questions then I'm working with the wrong guy and I do to you worse than Grigsby."

I opened the door and got out. The cold air embraced me, reminding me I was alive "No questions. It will be done by Friday."

The shadows of the unfamiliar alley loomed around me, but this time I'd rather take the devil I didn't know than being inside that car with the one I did. "One last thing..." I said.

A sliver of shadow appeared as his window slid down a half inch. "What?"

"Lose my number."

"You're gonna lose the abillity to walk if you don't do this right."

The window snapped up and the scarlet light of tail lights bathed me as the chrome beast disappeared out of view. I snapped up my collar and looked around. I could feel shadows moving around me, sizing me up. The dvd and kill plan disappeared into my coat. I'd need my hands to be free. My adrenaline charged senses could tell it was gonna be a long, hard walk back to the bar. But that's ok... I needed to work off some tension.

**************

So yeah, I met up with Foz and he gave me episode 21 as well as a floor plan to detail the action on the final page. Sorry, should I have been more clear there?

Oh, and the other night Ollie told me that him and Zach Craley are writing the next four installments of the comics that lead up the break. They interweave with what we've already seen and I promise you, they're gonna be awesome.

FACEBOOK: Look me up. Mention you know me please.

NEXT POST: Page 3 on Friday.

COG page 1

2009-04-01T06:36:00.004+11:00

Here we are back again with the posting.

COG just got released today (you can find it for free HERE) and I'm very happy with it. Annette kicked yet another serious field goal from halfway down the field. Thank you again Annette!

Huge thanks to Foz - the writer, Ollie - the HEROES editor and Frank the ASPEN editor and Comicraft - the letterer. Special thanks to Bill Hooper who played the actual Jim Martin on the show. He came round and gave a stellar modeling performance.

This was a fun project. It was great to see some of the back story behind the poor "red shirts" in black who try and take down our main cast. Agent Jenkins was such a great narrative call. He had a face on the show (but not really his own), and gave us a touch point to see that these guys are real people with families, friends and partners. When they get killed they leave a hole in the lives of the people around them.

I first saw this technique used by Grant Morrison in his brilliant series, THE INVISIBLES way back in issue 12 in 1995. God damn, I'm feeling old now. There are people who could be reading this that could have been born then. Age-related issues aside, the first issue of The Invisibles had the team cutting a bloody swathe into a facility. Twelve issues later we read the story of John Murray... Just some dude. Grant paints an unattractive man with little to no redeeming qualities. But it's only when he's finally at work and he pulls on his uniform that we sense something is amiss. Then we see the main character from The Invisibles appear and shoot him exactly like we saw twelve months ago. His death is unexpectedly painful. But Grant, like Foz made us realise that these faceless soldiers are people.

There was another SPRINT product tie-in and I thought Foz did a great job of seamlessly integrating the phone into the story. As the main communication device that we use these days, it didn't seem out of place at all. Ollie Grigsby (see the vitamins on this page) saved my butt yet again. Sprint asked if we could feature the video function more promimently than just on page 2 panel 2 after it was all drawn. Ollie figured out that would be a lot of work on my part and came up with an ingenius solution. Originally panel 3 was slightly different as the phone was simply supposed to be flashing its alarm. Ollie figured that we could chuck a picture of Danko in there and show off the video function there. Brilliant. Thank you Ollie!

Some of you might have noticed the Sylar pic that crops up a couple times in the story. Cos I'm always looking for ways to support the SARMY, I ended up drawing that as a huge separate poster. Sheindie, Lee, Noo, Nat... if anyone contacts me I will send you guys the full image to do with what you wish for your online store. I'm not reproducing it in full anywhere. It's for you guys only.

INTERVIEW: I did an interview with Rob Beck for his LOTSOFINTERVIEWS site. I'm currently cutting the thing down. Because it's a transcript of a phone interview it's huge. I'm trying to cut it down to a third of its size. I've got it down almost halfway. When it's sharper and ready for your sensitive, abused eyes, I will let you know when it gets uploaded.

BLOG SCHEDULE: Mon, Wed and Friday. So expect page 2 tomorrow.

FACEBOOK: Feel free to look me up here. Just please mention how you know me or my work.

THE FUTURE: I might be working on another two parter with Ollie Grigsby in May. Fingers crossed!

HERESY alternate cover 2B

2009-02-25T10:41:00.004+11:00

As I said, chicks and chains. That's what sells comic books.

Alright, alright, I'm not quite that cynical. Chicks and chains could probably sell anything.

Anyone who read Heresy would know that this character isn't a main character in the book. But she is arguably the most visually arresting character. Second would be the huge Russian vampire.

So it seemed like a no-brainer that it should be the two of them waltzing around this cover.

Then I needed a contentious subject matter that would stop people in the aisles of San Diego and get them to look at this piece. Chains. Bondage. There we go! See? I can be naughty without showing any nudity! Huzzah! My range of sketchiness has just been extended.

I did have several of the people at work express some concern about my sexual appetities at a drinks function once. I told them that's the least of what they should be concerned about.

BLACK AND WHITE LINEWORK

I really like the piece at this stage. I love the balance between noise (her bra and jeans) and then the open skin areas. It's got a nice feel. Graphically speaking I mean, cos you can't really go feeling up an imaginary character. Although, if someone cosplayed her, I'm sure you could ask really nicely. Or better yet, if you have a significant female other, you could ask them to dress up as her and find out exactly how she feels. Or, if you're a girl, you could do this for your significant other. I'd love to hear any feedback on how she feels exactly. Photos would be appreciated too.

But I'm not dodgy or anything...

TONE & RENDERING

"Don't hate me... I'm just drawn this way." I'm sure Jessica Rabbit said something to that effect. This chick would say, "Don't hate me, I'm just rendered this way." This has happened to me before. I draw a relatively curvy chick and then at the rendering stage her breasts just magnify to incredible proportions. It's in the way it's rendered! I think it's the overhead lighting that makes her fun bags look like a bouncing castle. But if you were to read the inside of the book you could see that I've probably understated her assets.

On a totally technical level, I think the rendering of her is some of the most realistic I've done. The shadows just seem so convincing to me, and the anatomy incredibly believable. Perhaps that's what makes the piece sexier?

COLOURS

This is a fairly monochromatic piece. I slapped a dna chain behind them and made it red. See? That's genius folks, you should be taking notes. The vampires are genetically engineered, so let's make a dna chain... red. Ta daaa!!! God damn it! With groundbreaking design ideas like that they should rename MENSA after me!

Of course I'm kidding. MENSA totally understates my brilliance. They should name NASA after me.

Those of you paying attention will notice that there's a tiny picture of her on her belt buckle. It's a portrait of her stolen from the other pinup that I did. I kinda wanted to allude that she's been alive for a while.

FINAL

Here's the piece with some additional texture on the background of some city silhouettes and blood spatters. Ok, LOTS of blood spatters. I don't think we can really deny Ben Templesmith's effect on the design of vampires with 30 Days of Night. Especially cos these vampires don't have fangs either.

The overall effect I hope is sexy without being submissive. Sure she's chained, but I don't really think you should go near her. Especially her mouth. I mean, don't be alarmed or anything but I think she bit something or someone that bled alot. And she still looks hungry, so I'd keep anything containing a vein well away from her.

The big guy looks more like he's going to rescue her than attack her, and I think the synergy between them is interesting in that it is unusual. So if one partner dresses up as her, the other can dress up as him.

Don't forget to send in photos.

I'm also way behind on posting those 25 trivial things about me. Here's the next three as catch up:

2. <3 the Rock (which doesn't help my first point).

3. Had a life changing experience in 1999 when I met Grant Morrison - that just because you're getting older, doesn't mean you have to slow down and lose your energy and passion.

4. Eats about twice what any other normal human being eats. My record is 18 pieces of large pizzas, a serve of pasta, 2 salads and then 3 deserts. Another time I ate 29 prawns/shrimp and stopped because I got sick of the taste of prawn rather than I got full. Recently measured, I have the metabolism of a 9 year old. I could be younger but the device didn't go any lower.

NEXT: Uhhhh.... Zero G I guess. I'm just gonna leap in. This isn't getting any easier anytime soon.

HERESY alternate cover 2

2009-02-21T07:32:00.007+11:00

I will get to Zero G, I promise. It's just a big project and I'm getting my thoughts in order before I attack it. There's a great deal to think about and recall. In the meantime I have way too much work on my plate to blog about Zero G right now.

So I will first show you guys these two covers I did for a Spacedog book called HERESY.

My brief was that the book was about vampires but that they don't have fangs. Ok, no problem. I read the book, and tried to pick out the most interesting visual elements: the detective, the huge old Russian vampire, the vampire chick. Ok. Mix em all up in a pot, add a pinch of salt and play around with the elements. Bake at 400degrees and glaze with Photoshop.

I got the layout approved and got to the drawings.

Unfortunately, Annette was off rescuing captured troops in Iraq so I was on my own on a really tight deadline and had to colour it myself.

I did so and I was reasonably pleased with what was a rather generic cover. It just looks like your classic movie poster crap. Lots of floating dramatic heads and people looking insert [mean/cool/angry/intense].

Now, at no stage did anyone ever think to show me the original cover. It's over on the left here.

Notice anything?

Yeah, good work.. They're basically the same god damn cover! Now if there's anything I ever learned about alternate covers, is that if you want them to sell they have to look radically different to the original cover. That way the punter might be tempted to go for both if they both look cool. But they have to be different. If they're the same, then the prospective buyer is just going to pick the version that they like the best.

Not good enough. I begged my editor for more time and she said I had a day. I went back to the drawing board to produce something visually exciting and arresting.

Something that would catch people's eyes...

NEXT: HERESY version 2: Bondage, chains and chicks.

OUT OF TOWN - page 6

2009-02-17T12:44:00.005+11:00

Bah! I write these and leave them to settle so I can come back later with a fresh mind and redraft these. But my own cunning plan backfired on me. Who woulda thunk it? But yes, a plan that I laid did not come to fruition. One would consider it a rare and momentous occasion. But later turned late and late turned to bed time. I shut my browser down with barely a thought concerning my blog and now it's the next day.

So let's get on with the retrospective, shall we?

It's no secret that I love working on the HEROES comics. I have such a great relationship with a bunch of the writers that the process is not only fun, but also really invigorating. I like to think that our creative relationship is born of trust, mutual respect and a respect for the HEROES itself. But I think what really drives it, is that it's more fun than a sack of lubed up ferrets down your pants.

But every now and then someone makes a mistake. Usually me. Such is with the case of exhibit A above... can you spot this mistake?

No? Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.

Still no? You probably just wanna know the answer and are probably prepared to beat me like a red headed step child to get it out of me by now. Just warning you... I like it rough. But there's no need to resort to violence, no matter how much either party likes it.

Here it is:

The brain is still there.

For those of you as versed in HEROES lore as I was... Sylar has removed and taken the brain of everyone he killed except for Claire Bennet. Joe Macon, our erstwhile and cranially challenged hero would be no exception. It took the brilliant Chuck Kim, editor of the HEROES comics to point this out.

So while Jim exclaimed I'd drawn the best, most gruesome brain he'd ever seen... I had to embrace Sylar's genetic destiny and using the last two and half seasons of HEROES as my only reference, endeavoured to remove Joe Macon's brain myself. It was an interesting process and I have to say I almost crushed it trying to separate it from the spinal cord. I had to get a little butter knife to scrape the cerebellum and brainstem off the spinal cord. I'm fastidious about these sorts of things. But here, for your viewing pleasure is my mistake in all its mis-continuity glory.

As an aside, ladies and gentlemen, could you please return your trays to their upright position as I'd like you to witness genius in flight. I'd like you to sit back, grab a cup of your favourite beverage and enjoy Annette's masterful control of the horror of this situation. The meticulously blended blood on the papers on the floor. The spatters of gore on the desk. The yawning, wet empty cavity of his brain. It's a brilliantly horrific moment... all captured during the day no less!

NEXT: Hmmm... Well, that's HEROES done for now. I think I should get onto the four issue epic that is ZERO G. I won't be printing it page by page, just excerpts that I think you will find interesting. Consider it a "director's commentary".

OUT OF TOWN page 5

2009-02-14T07:12:00.003+11:00

I'm keeping it super-brief today. And I don't mean a pair of red underpants. Although, I do own a pair of those and I am keeping them.

I have waaa-aaaay too much to do to waffle on for hours and waxing lyrical about the war. "Waffle" for you Americans means to "go on about". Just a handy little Aussie Babel fish translation there.

I've also cut the side of my thumb and I think it's infected. And now it hurts every time I hit the spacebar. So every space between every word is a little spike of pain. I really wanna typelikethis.

So before I go get a bandaid and get this looked at. Some...

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS ABOUT PAGE 5

Sandra Bennet: Damn, I think my rendition of Ashley Crow is only second to my likenesses of Mr Muggles. Pretty damn happy with how she turned out.

panel 4: Early drafts had the lift door COVERED in some sort of bukkake of blood. If you don't know what a bukkake is... go hit google and take your safe filter off. I'm sure not gonna tell you. Either way we decided that it was too much.

Geography: I just couldn't figure out where Noah's office was in the house so I just put it next to the kitchen. I have a bad feeling that's the door to the living room. Yes, I've actually been in the set. No, I can't remember. It's not like I was free to roam around with a little tourist map.

NEXT: Monday: Page 6! Have a great weekend and wish me luck drawing. If you have someone to share Valentine's Day with that's fantastic. If not... go find someone. Anyone. You know how it is... Any hole's a goal.

OUT OF TOWN page 4

2009-02-12T09:00:00.005+11:00

Urgh, I've just come off the back of just losing a page of work. It's so tough to go back in there and redo stuff. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. I don't know anyone who likes going back and redoing stuff. So... My files are about 1gb in size while I'm working (28.3cmx43cm at 600dpi in CMYK with all my layouts, reference and perspective layers pasted in). The file gets smaller and smaller because as I work as I delete my reference layers. But at the start I don't tend to save much as it can take several minutes to do so. I find this tedious as it disrupts my delicate train of thought. But I've decided that I'd rather only ever lose two hours of work. So... saving every two hours is now the thing to do.

I had some facetious people comment on my Facebook that you don't get this problem if you work with pencil and paper. No, you don't. Instead you get spilt water, tea and coffee and ink (the last of which I don't recommend consuming).

Avi mentioned I should get a bigger computer and he's right. That just made it onto the list. I need to work fast and my laptop (god bless it's digital soul) is finding that its bones are starting to ache in the morning, its eyesight ain't what it used to be and it's started lamenting about the good old days where operating systems didn't require dual core CPU's and you could walk home safely from school.

But enough of my whining. Let's get onto some HEROES.

This is one of my better pages. I think it's designed well, solid and has some good likenesses.

Panel one was a fun piece of design. It was a piece that I'd conceived at the layout stage. What? Can't you tell? God, it's like I have to draw you a picture or something. I had a great time figuring out the tiles, then the shadow on the tiles. Annette did a stunning job nurturing the design and smoothing it out so it looks cinematic and seamless.

The other design feature is a tribute to Jim's scripting. I don't know if Jim meant to do this, but I was able to halve the page with Claire's scenes on the left and Noah's on the right. It's neat, it's tight and it works. Whether Jim knows it or not, there's a nice visual balance to his writing. Annette and I had discussions about really differing the palettes of the Claire scene and the Noah scene to make sure that the reader wouldn't get confused that we're jumping between two scenes. Even on panels like panel 3 where we don't even see Noah's face.

I've been watching season one again with a friend and I'm just stunned at the change that's come over Hayden. She looks SO different. I personally prefer her original look. She looked more natural and fresh. It's such a different beauty. I think that's what threw me originally. I had a tactic for drawing her and it just wasn't working cos she does look so different. She's so much darker and wears so much more makeup. It really threw me for a loop.

Anyway...

There's this Facebook thing where you write 25 things about yourself. I'm going to include mine here - with the grammar corrected. For some reason I wrote half of it in the first person and half of it in the third. Weird.

1. I constantly get confused for being gay, or (when hanging out with a buddy) a gay couple. I'm possibly the gayest hetero man any of his friends know. My mother found some women's clothes (I was mailing as a present) and even accused me of cross dressing!

NEXT: FRIDAY: Page 5. Peace out. I'm tired and I'm done. Stick a fork in me.

OUT OF TOWN page 3

2009-02-10T09:19:00.004+11:00

See that there, people? That there is a bunch of good likenesses! Finally! Three pages in and I manage to get my first good likeness of Claire. Nice work, Badower-Power. Any crapper and we're gonna need a plunger.

But she is harder to draw than a conclusion at a philosophy convention. Sometimes I draw a really nice likeness in the line work, but then I screw up the tones. That's what happened with panel 1. I remember redoing the tones over and over and over again! I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except there was no Andie MacDowell and it all looked crap and there was a deadline looming over my head nastier than a squatter's crack on a hot day. It's one thing to have all year to draw these, it's another thing to do it to a tight deadline. I wander around conventions and see all these dudes with these amazing likenesses of the HEROES characters. And I'm like, "Damn, I bet you took all year to do that."

I had a week to do all six pages... So given that my parents spent about $100,000 on my high school education, that should mean I don't need a calculator to tell you that's about a day for each page. That means I either gotta get it right pretty damn fast or move on like Elizabeth Taylor to a new husband. Regardless of style, trying to hammer out a likeness is difficult. It's why my hat has been totally off to the other artists on the HEROES team. i know the pressure they're under, and they're doing fantastic jobs.

But I love drawing HRG. I think I've drawn him more than any other HEROES character. He was in Road Kill, the Death of Hana, Root and Branch and now Out of Town. I know when I see him, I'm good. I know that if I have to draw him my likeness is gonna range from good to impressive. I think I've got Jack Coleman sorted. I think the panel of him swiping the door is one of my favourites of him.

Ok, I'm gonna talk about panel 5 now, but in the most round about way possible.

A while back I toured around the Getty art museum here in LA with my good buddy David Blumenstein. Neither of us ressemble traditional artists except in our scruffy demeanors, darkened pouches under our eyes and looks of dreamy desperation. The great thing about wandering around an art gallery with a fellow artist is looking at the paintings and getting inside the artist's head. For example, seeing where they got tired or bored. You can tell by larger, sloppier brush strokes and inconsistent attention to attention to detail. Generally, the main figure is beautifully rendered and by the time they have to draw the chest of drawers behind them, they've gotten a little tired and it starts looking as scrappy as Scooby Doo's sidekick.

But it's a different case when you confront an artist like John Singer-Sargent. I was talking to my friend about him and we were putting forward our favourite pieces. She put forward Lady Agnew. Initially my reaction was that he was so captivated by her face that he just phoned the rest in. Looking closer I noticed the technical brilliance of the transparency of her sleeves. She also pointed out that his brush strokes are relatively consistent around the rest of the piece. I still argued that while his execution is beyond reproach the conceptual idea is born of laziness: to paint a portait and then only focus on what you want to focus on. She then unveiled Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Here, his attention and capacity for detail are almost unbelievable.

So one can only say that his execution of Lady Agnew was a considered, deliberate piece of portraiture in a style where economy became design. While I would never consider comparing myself to Mr Singer Sargent, I'm pleading the same headspace for panel 6. Having a tight deadline and general laziness had nothing to do with my stylistic choice... which ended up turning out pretty damn well.

NEXT: Wednesday. Page 4. Less art theory, more ranting and laziness.

OUT OF TOWN - PAGE 2

2009-02-07T06:55:00.006+11:00

It's Friday, but as we've established, the concept of Friday is meaningless to me. The only difference Friday makes is that it initiates a series of days in which I miss out on stuff. Back in Australia, at one stage, "To Pull A Jason" doesn't mean anything sordid (get your filthy mind out of the gutter) but to not turn up to stuff. Oh, I'd let people know. It's not like I just don't turn up. My mum raised me better than that. But it's a vague indicator that my social life is in more trouble than Steven Seagal's action hero career. Maybe it too should take up jazz. But I don't even think the sultry wrongness of Songs From The Crystal Cave could save the bleeding, whimpering mess that is my social life. It sits in the corner, chained to a wall on a stained mattress that is more iron springs than material. One of the springs has dug into its thigh and after weeks of inactivity the flesh has grown around it in a blistering flower of pus and putrid flesh. It gurgles weakly on a mixture of blood and bile through a collapsed trachea. A tiny pin hole of air squeezing its way through lips swollen with ulcers and weeping sores.

And that's a toned down metaphor for my social life.

Let's not even talk about how I'm feeling this morning. Normally my coffee is like a shining light piercing the heavens and parting the clouds. It bathes me in a warm, divine glow and empowers me with its holy caffeinating powers for the trials ahead. Sometimes I hear a choir of thousands holding a single, fragile, ethereal note as I take each sip.

But today it feels like its been chained next to my social life. I feel like the only thing that might help would be a couple rounds with a defibrilator.

Ooh... yeah. It's gonna be a tough one today.

But enough about me... let's move onto something better.

Me.

Kidding.

How about Out Of Town? That's a good compromise, isn't it? A bit about Heroes and a lot about me. Sounds fair to me. And since all these arguments are simply rhetorical or the product of a fractured psyche... that's what we're going with.

INTERLUDE: With an attention span shorter than the life expectancy of a vodka tonic in my hand, Jas forgets he was blogging. Works. And goes to sleep.

Alright, it's now no longer Friday. I wrote all the above, meant to finish it and then forgot about it. Around 4am last night I sat bolt upright in bed remembering that I'd forgotten to post this. But then I realised I cared about sleep more than I did about this blog. Yeah, you heard me. Sleep. You wanna see me on less than six hours sleep, just watch Dawn of the Dead and watch the world being taken over by Jasons on less than six hours sleep.

But let's talk about this Heroes comic. I find that my likenesses get better and better over time. In fact, by the time that I have to finish the comic, I'm about warmed up. If you look at all the likenesses on this page you can see that they're... not so good. In fact, I would argue that the only likeness that truly kicks artistic butt here is Mr Muggles. I'm pretty happy with how this canine rodent is looking. Alright, alright, I'm sorry I called him (and all Pommeranians) a canine rodent.

No! No, I'm not! Get a real dog! That thing is about as dog-like as viagra spam.

Ok, one of the funniest things about this page is Jim's script. I hope he doesn't mind, but I have to reproduce a couple of excerpts that made me laugh so hard. Alright, so it's no secret that Sprint and Nissan are sponsors of Heroes. So here are some choice moments of Jim acknowledging his unique appreciation of that sponsorship:

PANEL 4 From the passenger side of the car, we look at him profile. HRG’s sitting in a rented (but awesome) NISSAN SPORTS CAR outside of an office building.

I laughed so hard I forgot to draw a Nissan. Ooops. Sshhh! My bad! I'm sorry. As you can see, I decided to ignore Jim's awesome directions too. God forbid he actually tries to make my job easier by actually visualising a scene as he writes it!

PANEL FIVE

A closer shot of HRG, he’s holding his SPRINT INSTINCT PHONE to his ear, and his reception is awesome. His glasses glint a bit in the sunlight.

I did remember to draw the Sprint phone. On my layouts where I indicate the speech balloons I remember writing, "My reception is awesome!" inside HRG's. I must have erased it.

Ahhhh Jim... He knows how to keep his artists entertained.

NEXT: Yep, page 3. More shennanigans and hijinks ensue on Monday.

And finally comics have made it into the LOUVRE! Another step forward to legitimizing comics as an artform.

Now, I have a new goal.

OUT OF TOWN - page 1

2009-02-05T08:36:00.004+11:00

As usual I was against the wall. Not in some, shady, "trying to make some quick cash in a festy toilet block" sort of way... But against my deadlines. Oh, deadlines. How I love thee. In fact they've become more my way of remembering things than the sun and moon. If I want to remember when I was seeing a certain ex-girlfriend or when I saw a particular show, I just try and recall what I was drawing at the time... then look up the print date (or this blog). It's a bit of a tough way of remembering stuff, but along time ago my mind became as skewed as a Republican sponsored gun rally.

Frank Mastromauro (my editor at Aspen MLT) emailed me asking if I was available for this story. My deadlines were so tight you could've shoved coal in them, heated it up and made a diamond. I just didn't think I could do this. But I asked him to send me the script anyway. I knew I shouldn't have. I knew once I read it that I'd be like a girl on roofies... I just couldn't say no... To more drinks that is. What the hell were you thinking?

As soon as I saw Jim Martin's name on the cover I knew I was in. When I saw Sylar, Claire, Noah, Sandra... and of course... Mr Muggles I knew I was further in than John Holmes. But somehow I had to fit this in to my schedule like some sort of Tetris feng shui master. But it was going to be just so much fun.

And it was.

Jim Martin and Chuck Kim (the editor on the comics) were pretty hands off until the last page. I didn't hear anything about the layouts (the greyish smudge of an image down the bottom). I think they just took one look at the scratched scrawlings of a mind more disturbed than glassware factory in an earthquake and just backed off. In my defence, I don't have a scanner and... I really hate doing finished layouts. I'm lazy ok? Minimum effort necessary at that stage. I know what's going on, and hell, I know best! Well... that's what I tell myself til my art director comes back and beats me like I owe him money.

The employee in the first panel is a friend of mine, Heather whom I work with. She was also conscripted later to play all of Claire's parts too. She's currently undergoing intensive psychiatric therapy to help her through the traumatic modeling experience I put her through. Apparently they have to resort back to electroshock therapy on her, but the doctors say her outlook is good. They reckon they can stop her uncontrollable drooling in a month or two. But then again, it might have been the hard partying for her birthday that caused all this. Happy Bday Heather.

Annette also stepped up further than Neil Armstrong. Panel one has four layers on it: figures, immediate background, far background and my tones. Talk about making your creative partner's job tough! It was my bright idea to have a glass wall there as Jim had gone into extensive detail in the script describing what was outside Joe Macon's office. I have no idea why. Maybe Jim's a character writer and started Joe's day by writing down what he had for breakfast and worked his way up until he got to his designer couch and coffee table and then to his head Sylar'd off? Given that was a possibility I didn't want to risk Jim coming round to my house and beating me to death with his laptop. He knows where I live.

Annette and I went back and forth more than Wimbledon trying to get the visual of Joe's powers right. Eventually we decided that more is more and that we'd try and make them look like they're beaming in like Star Trek. I hate sound effects, but this one didn't hurt.

There were a couple of dialogue changes in the script for the last panel, and I dig what we eventually came up with. It also ties into episode 14 much better. There was even talk of having me go back and draw in Sylar on the last panel here. My vote was that while I would have loved to have drawn Sylar, the story reads better when we get the twist at the end when we see Joes's head Sylar'd off. Then we know who this mysterious figure was.

NEXT: You guessed it... page 2. Sorry to be a bit predictable. You know, with two coming after one and all that. But sometimes I have to keep things somewhat orderly for those knuckle draggers in the cheap seats.

Yes... I'm talking about myself again.

Anyway. Hit me up on Facebook if you want more minutae of what I'm doing. Just remember to tell me how you know me or know of me or I won't friend you. Thanks!

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE PAGE 5

2009-02-04T08:27:00.005+11:00

There will be OUT OF TOWN (my latest HEROES graphic novel that you can find HERE) action tomorrow. I know I said Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but rules are for crossing guards and physics professors. On the outer edge of blogdom we cut it sideways, do dessert before main meals and open presents before we read birthday cards. Basically, I figured that not only am I crazy proud about OUT OF TOWN, but STUCK is now dead to me. I've been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. OUT OF TOWN is my new baby and STUCK has been dumped like yesterday's pinched loaf.

God forbid, I ever have kids. The headline would read, "Man's boredom leads to negligence and child manslaughter."

But, you know, I'm a child of the MTV generation and my attention span resides somewhere between a bee's dick and my sense of propriety.

So if this was a child, I would have left it on Jim Martin's doorstep in an old monitor box lined with packing material from comic books I bought on Amazon.

Let's wrap this up like Mills in a towel and move onto Claire, Noah, Mr Muggles, Sandra and Sylar.

As you can see, I actually stuck to my layouts for once. If you decide you care enough to wear out the scroll button on your mouse you can flick back and forwards to see I speak the truth. But the simple fact that I'm even trying to pose anything to you as "the truth" should be cause for concern, worry and in some cases paranoia. See your doctor if symptoms persist.

By about page 5 I'm usually pretty pleased with the likenesses I'm drawing. I take a bit of warming up (like an old car on a cold day), but you know, like a good pornstar, I get there eventually. I just find it hilarious that the story is usually over by the time I get my act together on the likenesses. Ok, maybe hilarious is a stretch. Mildly ironic is better, but in the Alanis Morisette sense.

NEXT: I'm planning on starting OUT OF TOWN tomorrow, and then going back to my regular schedule of Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays cos the outer edge of blogdom is just too hardcore for me. I prefer my blog regularity more softcore like a men's magazine. Any more of this crazy schedule and I'd have to shrink wrap this blog in plastic.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE PAGE 4

2009-02-03T16:53:00.005+11:00

Hey! It's Monday (well only by another two hours) and here's Monday's posting! Just like I said it would be here. There's a god damn schedule here and I'm sticking to it! Two hours has to count, right? I mean, if you were standing by a bomb, would you rather have an two extra hours on it or not? What about sex? Would you rather have no sex or two hours of sex?

See? You can do a lot in two hours. But I'm neither defusing bombs, nor having sex. I'm writing a blog post. But the time I'm defusing a bomb, having sex and writing a blog post, you know I'm cooler than James Bond... And I mean any of them, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig. And this blog would be a whole lot more interesting - but perhaps less about comics then. I think there's a bit in The Game (which is actually a wonderful self-help book for shy guys and like any tool can be used or abused) where he writes a bit while having sex and includes all the typos. My sex-bomb-defusing blog is gonna be like that. But more awesome.

Anyway, I had a great weekend. Superbowl came and went while I sat in my room drawing. I had parties and things to do (no really, I did. Actual real life human beings invited me to stuff), but such was not to be. Once again, it was Jas locked in his little "Harry Potter" cupboard under the stairs drawing away. In some sort of misguided attempt at self help, I tried to convince myself that *I'm* the "Lucky One" and I get to draw and create stories and have these amazing opportunities while everyone else has to be content with watching football. And when I can't hear the drunken, effusive cheers outside, I almost believe it.

Almost.

Then I go back to crying.

Which is tough while you're drawing. I mean, it was tough when you did it by hand. You'd smear your ink or ruin the paper. But on a computer it's downright dangerous. Not quite as dangerous as defusing a bomb while having sex and blogging... but pretty damn dangerous. I mean, you could electrocute yourself! See? Drawing on the edge here people! Risking my life to bring you my art.

I guess someone should suffer for my art. Normally it's my models. Believe me, if you've ever been one you know what suffering is. Hell's gonna look like the day your internet went down after my attempts to immortalize you in digital ink.

For example, the model for this page had to get her kit off and pose in my shower for lots of photos. And I mean, LOTS... if you know what I mean. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* Say no more... say no more... if you know what I'm saying.

Ok, ok, I lie. That was the fantasy I had while drawing... pretending I had a model to work from. So apparently if I'm not crying while drawing, I'm hallucinating. But surely hallucinating about naked women in the shower is sort of normal...?

Yep, the rantings of a very sane man here. Feel free to back away slowly, and do remember to avoid eye contact. And no, you can't call 911 on someone just for reading their blog. Mental health services... maybe.

Warning... actual technical and semi-sound reasoning may follow...

The reason why the final picture differs from the layout is because there was no balance to the piece. I needed the two women (Tracy and Mills) to occupy the same amount of space and be similar proportions to suitably frame Ryan and really sell that "Stuck in the Middle" title.

I mean, god forbid that a story is actually aptly named!

NEXT: Stuck in the middle: Page 5. Also, my new HEROES story might go up tomorrow. So fingers crossed! But we have to finish Stuck in the Middle first. I'm sorry, but you can't have your dessert until you eat all your vegetables.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE PART 3

2009-01-31T11:33:00.009+11:00

I've been waiting for the dust to settle, and you know what? I don't think it will. So let's get this baby rolling. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we will have posting action.

I'm gonna finish off STUCK IN THE MIDDLE which should time us nicely for my new HEROES story - also written by Jim Martin. And let me tell you it's a cracker. Main cast, great dialogue and mysterious appearances. And to cap it off, some incredible colouring by Annette Kwok.

I hope you've all had a great ushering into the new year. I had an amazing time back in Melbourne. Huge shout outs to everyone who I managed to catch up with. And to those who I missed, I can't wait to catch up with you next time. Being stranded two hours outside of Melbourne made pulling together what little I had of a social life really tough.

Also I was drawing my butt off back in Melbourne. I'm still playing catch up. So, while I haven't been blogging, I have been drawing - and I have HEAPS to show you... and unfortunately, heaps more I can't. Well, not for a while anyway.

And even more awesome, in the meantime my blog broke 50,000 hits. I was waiting with baited breath for that! Grats to me! Wooooo!!!! Thank you to everyone for all your support. That's got me fired up like nothing else.

But let's get back onto STUCK IN THE MIDDLE.

I was so excited to draw Tracy and Nathan. I noticed in the script that they weren't mentioned by name, so I had to make sure I hit some really strong likenesses. I recently read Alitha Martinez's story featuring Tracy and Mohinder. Alitha has stepped up to another level. She has a very cartoony style but she hit Tracy's likeness spot on! This is no mean feat for me, as I found Ali Larter very tough to draw. Come to think of it, all the blonds on the show are tough to draw. Peter Steigerwald commented that he found Elle tough, I was glad I wasn't the only one. But Alitha made it look easy panel after panel.

I drew Nathan in shadow and then well lit in the panel thereafter. I was stunned as to how much better the one in shadow looked. So if you look at the following panels of Nathan he's always in shadow. I also went for this stylistic choice to reflect Nathan's darker path.

On panel 6 is an Easter Egg joke between a friend and myself. Simon Sherry and I worked on our very first comic book together, called ANTHOLOGY - yes, we were young and not very imaginative about the title. At least no one can plead misleading advertising, cos if we called it, THE MOST AWESOME COMIC YOU'VE EVER READ... we would have been totally lying.

But Simon dared me to draw Johnny Luck - the character I created for Anthology into a HEROES comic. I just couldn't find anywhere to draw this genetically altered dog soldier that wouldn't confuse readers. I was going to draw it on the side of the lighter, but I thought readers would read too much into it. get mislead and confused. I mean STUCK was about genetically altered soldiers to begin with! So I shoved his name on the side of the boxes of cleaning supplies.

As an aside, years ago I wandered into a supermarket and saw a line of toys directly ripping off JOHNNY LUCK! They had made action figures of 4 of the six characters I created and even got some dude to paint over my artwork for the packaging. I was stunned. People said I should sue. I just regret not buying them as it would of (at the very least) been cool to have action figures of characters I created. I wish I could remember what they were called.

NEXT:

Monday: Stuck in the Middle Page 4.

Tonight: Ollie Grigsby's bday party.

Maybe next week will be my next HEROES story.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T12:18:00.002+11:00

Happy new year to everyone!

I'm not going to bother doing any proper posts til I get back to LA. I'm at my parent's place in Bendigo (a small country town two hours outside of Melbourne) and they only have dial up. Getting on the internet is like trying to dig your own teeth out with a pair of nail clippers. Painful, slow and ultimately pointless.

I hope you all had a great NYE. I'm rearing to go for 2009. I have a bunch of ducks in a row and I'm looking to knock them all down in 2009.

To those wanting to catch up with me while I'm in Melbourne, I have one more week. It's really tough for me as it takes me 2 hours to get to Melbourne by train. Please be patient, I'm trying to do my best here.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE page 2

2008-12-19T08:00:00.004+11:00

Alright! Let's get contentious.

Let's talk about the depiction of women in comics.

To be honest, it's actually one of my favourite topics. I have a real issue with the depiction of women in comics. Ironically, it's not really about proportions. I draw my men just as ridiculously as I draw my women. And those artists who draw girls with massive, gravity defying orbs on their chest and pencil thin waists just slide over into the realm of hilarity and cartooning for me. Some people love that, and that's their prerogative. For me, it's not even sexy, titillating or even offensive. It's so far removed from reality that I access it on a purely visual level - ie. is it a good picture of what it's trying to do?

My real issue with the depiction of women is about context.

Is their sexuality or nudity being used to provoke only a sexually arousing action in the reader. If it is, then I have problems with it. If the figure manifests power, concern, worry, elegance, awe or something else, then I'm happy. But too many realistic artists have cleavage in your face and porn star mouths (you know, that vacant half hanging open look). And that bothers me.

I've also been given more stories featuring female nudity in the HEROES comics than any other artist. No, I haven't actually counted, I'm just making bold, generalising statements cos they suit my agenda. But let's look at the last six stories I've had to draw, and let me explain how I dealt with them:

INTO THE WILD part 1: "Catfight" between Sabine and Connie

I think Timm and Jim would be the first to say they were just having a laugh when they wrote the "cat fight". Their direction was cheesy and campy and VERY funny. But as I mentioned in previous posts, it was important to me that this fight create a sense of gravitas in our protagonist and antagonist. While it would have been funny to have drawn it as campy as they wrote it, I just think the context did our characters a disservice. This is my directional call, and perhaps another artist would have made it work, but I knew I couldn't. And as I mentioned, I'm pretty particular about the depiction of women in comics. I tried to make the fight look vicious and tough and brutal. Given the lack of offended comments, I think I did ok.

I even tried to do something smart with it. Sabine was wearing a red top (the opposite end of the colour spectrum to Connies's red top). So when we see the blue top, on a subconscious level the fight is actually bringing the two characters closer together visually as well as emotionally.

INTO THE WILD part 2: Connie and Julien in bed

Ok, so they're consenting adults and for the story to progress and have meaning they need to be intimate. This is tough, as we want to feel their intimacy without being exploitative. It is a bit racy though, with Connie having her bra still on and having it visable, but I figured we'd seen worse, a lot worse. It also wasn't a huge close up of her breasts, so I figured I was ok there. I like to think I exercised a fair level of discretion and tase when drawing this scene.

Annette's incredibly romantic lighting really helps sell the idea that they're making love not having sex or f@cking.

INTO THE WILD part 3: Donna in the bathroom

This scene had been previously established by the amazing Alitha Martinez. Seriously, has any other HEROES artist stepped up as much as she has? I don't think so. Compare her earlier work with her latter work and you will know what I'm talking about. She's doing some brilliant stuff!

Oh god, it would have been so easy to do some serious cleavage and leg shots here, but that would have been not only inappropriate but also distracted from the action beats. I'll be honest, my real problem with this whole story arc is the outfit that Donna wears. I just think it's inappropriate for a mission, but then again... it's designed by a girl (Alitha) so I will just take a big can of shut the hell up.

SUM QUOD SUM part 1: Elle in the bathroom

I include the coloured version and not the black and white version as I feel that the electricity is the focus rather than her nudity. Without Annette's amazing effects, it just look like a hungover naked Elle.

When designing this page, front and center is her expression. It's right in the middle and everything else frames it. I spent so long creating the feeling of pain in her eyes and on her face, but also manifesting a sense of "toughing it".

This carries over to STUCK IN THE MIDDLE'S shower scene, but I had the same mindset. During the course of our lives ie. bathing we are naked. The trick I find is to not have the woman in a sensationalistic, sexy pose, but to also acknowledge that she is indeed naked. She needs to be in a naturalistic position, but the appropriate areas need to be covered up. As soon as it looks like she's actively covering herself up we head into dodgy (er shady or sketchy) territory. I'd do the same for a guy, by the way.

And if you think this is a sensationalistic, sexy pose... well... let's just agree that you and I have very different lines in the sand.

SUM QUOD SUM part 2: "Bikini fight" between Elle and Abby

The beauty about this entire story arc was that I actually got to make suggestions and have Ollie listen to my thoughts. One of the things that I was wracking my brain on was how to have an electrocution incident without the chicks running around in bikinis. He had already done the rain, so that was out. There was a sensationalistic subtext that bothered me. But when reading through the story it just seemed really logical.

Elle needs to be someplace she can relax, and it has to have water. The jacuzzi seems logical. And what else are the girls going to wear?

So my challenge was to not sensatioalise it. I had to make the depiction of the characters realistic and not distort their poses, bodies or actions. I like to hope that I managed to erase any sort of sexual subtext to this scene without taking away from the beauty of both of the characters. It's a tougher juggling act than it sounds! But I think just being aware of this negates the sexualising effect.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE: Mill's shower scene

This was really tough. The whole point of Mill's cameo here is to sexualise her in Ryan's eyes and thus let the incident reflect badly on him. It hopefully illustrates what a douche he is by giving him an unhealthily pervy streak. So I had to walk a fine line here.

On the one hand he has to find her sexually arousing, on the other hand I don't want to offend anyone with her nudity.

So I approached it in two ways. First up, I decided to make her pose as naturally as possible. I wanted her to look like a woman washing herself. I also needed to cover up as much of her as possible with her arms. I wouldn't normally raise my right arm like that to wash my right shoulder, but I didn't think it was out of the bounds of a natural movement.

The other thing I did was make her avoid any eye contact with the camera. This bit is really important. If she was looking at us it would be very sexually confronting. Instead I tried to have her off in her own world and very unaware that she is being looked at. I kinda hoped that it would make the reader feel a bit like a perv too. You're watching someone in a vulnerable state who doesn't know they're being watched. Perhaps that uncomfortable feeling that some readers felt is from that rather than the sexualising of her figure? Maybe you KNEW you shouldn't be watching her here and that made you uncomfortable? That reaction from you is what should make you also detest Ryan.

So, I tried to keep her pose as natural as possible, but Ryan's character needed to be served as a pervert, so instead I showed as much of her as I was comfortable. I remember the original framing was somewhere around where cut off jeans would hang on her hips. But it was just too much. I pulled back so we could see less of her. I felt this served him enough.

I ran it by a very close female friend whose opinion I value and she wasn't offended at all. I asked Annette's opinion before she coloured it. I mentioned to Annette that if she wanted to cover her up with steam to just go for it.

But Annette seemed comfortable enough with it to largely leave it as it was. NBC seemed comfortable enough with it to let it go through, so as far as I was concerned, it was mission accomplished.

Speaking of Annette, I thought her lighting and colour palettes were exceptional here. From the brown to the blue, to directing your eye to the hole in the wall on panel 4. It was all so brilliant.

NEXT: I doubt I will be posting next Monday as I will be landing in Melbourne that day (I leave Sunday night and arrive on Melbourne on Tuesday - er your Monday! 17 hour time difference plus a 15 hour journey - I end up losing 32 hours!). So basically unless Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown fires up the DeLorean I don't know how it's going to happen. I will try, but I don't like my chances. I will still make sure there's three posts that week though.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE page 1

2008-12-18T06:15:00.003+11:00

Well it finally went up to resounding debate and contention.

I'm going to talk more about the depiction of women in comics in my next post. But suffice to say, I tried to walk a line between providing motivation for the sexist protagonist and not trying to add to the copious amounts of cheesecake already pouring out every month from comic book companies. Some people mentioned the cheesy pose she was in, and I was like, "Really? You don't think that looks like a woman normally washing herself?"

Apparently not.

I ran it by a bunch of women with a really low tolerance for the sort or bullsh!t I was trying to avoid and they all passed it. But I understand there are people with lower tolerances. And I'm not going to apologise for offending you because I needed to provide motivation and justification for the sexist and offensive Ryan Hanover. Chances are, that the bit you're offended by is the bit that he likes. So consider yourself a good person. =)

Anyway, lemme talk about it more next post.

LAYOUT

Page 1 is Annette and I really pulling out ALL the stops. We both had a great deal of fun on this page. Most of the time when you're asked to draw things on this scale it becomes a juggling job. You're trying to juggle the energy and time you have against the number of pages and the deadline. In this case, because of Jim Martin's damn tight writing, it was just one page. This meant Annette and I were able to pull out the big guns and not worry about blowing our wads too early or runing out of steam. How's that? Three euphemisms in one sentence! That's gotta be a record.

As you can see from my layouts, they are arguably technically comparable to anything the average 2nd grader could pull out. I'm planning on moving towards crayons and finger painting with my next layouts.

LINE ART

Hopefully this would give the average 2nd grader a harder time.

I am a digital artist, and it's times like this that I really try and use my medium to its fullest advantage. One of the things I can do really easily is draw on multiple layers. Here I've used it to create as much depth in the image as possible. Panel one has 5 layers:

David Sullivan
David's foreground that he occupies
Midground between David and Rachel
Rachel Mills
Rachel's background that she sits in

By masking each of these out for Annette it allows her to create a real sense of depth. I actually did a fair amount of research about Fallujah and it's sometimes the worst part of my job. Some of the stuff I saw was incredibly disturbing. I mean, I'd rather not see bullet-ridden corpses lying in the middle of the street. I don't want to avoid the issues going on in our day and age, but I'd rather not see the images if I don't have to.

ANNETTE'S COLOURING

I can't stress enough Annette's contribution to the final artwork. The final page is a combination of teamwork between the both of us and she deserves an equal amount of credit. I find it very frustrating when she is left out of reviews and comments. Sure, my name comes first but that's the etiquette of comics listing credits in order of production rather than of importance.

I've asked this before, but if you ever enjoy the finished artwork to comment it, please don't forget to credit Annette also.

I don't know if there's a better example of Annette really showing us what she can do. This is one of the best examples of Annette being not only my cinematographer and special effects unit but also a great designer.

In each panel she creates a depth of field by either blurring out foreground elements that I masked for her (ie. the rubble on panel 2 around Mills) or adding smoke and fire in between each of the background elements. Her whole grounding of the page creates this incredibly intense apocalyptic scene. If you look up at my illustration of the last panel you will see it's basically just white. She creates the heat and the pain for our money shot.

Note also as she directs the eye around the page with the fire element. It starts medium in panel 1, troughs for a bit then peaks powerfully in the last panel. It's masterful work.

FRIDAY: Naked women & sexism in comics.

KILLEROO: Armageddon

2008-12-16T13:05:00.006+11:00

So awhile back was the Armageddon popculture expo. For the first time, I was invited to attend as a guest (I guess the ridiculous reception I got last year initiated that). Unfortunately, cos I'm now living in Los Angeles I was unable to attend. Is that ironic in the normal or the Alanis Morisette sense? I think the latter.

Anyway, I'm working on a Killeroo story for Darren Close. I love Killeroo, and I love both writing and drawing him. As a preview for that story I thought I would put together a pinup and possible cover for the issue. Darren is even talking about collecting it in a special "Jason Badower edition" of Killeroo.

I'm very proud of the story. It follows my theme of, "the price of doing the right thing."

We're tentatively calling it KILLEROO: THE HARD ROAD.

I will let you all know when it's out. Right now it's been written and laid (layed?) out.

CONCEPT

I had very little time to draw this, and Darren would have been really appreciative if I could have coloured it too, and I don't wanna disappoint anyone, let alone the Big Man himself, so I had to fit colouring into my schedule too.

I normally spend a great deal of time conceptualizing things. Not usually on paper, but in my brain. Just masticating ideas (get your mind out of the gutter) until they form into my darling little children on paper. For this I had NO time. I had to punch it out asap. This is kind of like being asked to build a house in a week. Sure, it can be done, but you have no room for error.

All I knew at this stage was that I wanted to draw him in profile. WAYNE NICHOLS, a fellow Australian comic book artist was goofing around and he drew what I consider to be the most seminal Killeroo picture ever (see left).

Also affected by Waynes' picture, Darren suggested a piece that was very similar to what Wayne did. But he wanted a front on full body standing shot that he could use as a cardboard cut out one day. But it was just too soon for me. I just didn't want to play in Wayne's playground for two reasons. One, Wayne had kicked it out of the park and did that angle and pose about as good as it could possibly be done right now. I needed some time to digest from the artistic blow that Wayne had dealt. And I just didn't think I could add anything to that image at this stage. Two, I wanted to give the fans a fresh take. What's the point of having two pictures that look alike? Give em some options!

LINE ART

All I knew was that I didn't want to draw him facing us. For some reason I was obsessed with drawing this sneering profile. I then got drawing and realised it was SO hard! I actually had to do some sketches figuring out how his skull worked, and then had to figure out his lips so that we could see his teeth. It became kind of involved. What you see here is the finished product.

As you can also see, I'm leaning towards more linework these days. When I drew Zero G, I was very influenced by Steve McNiven. He has this very, very clean open style with minimal rendering and powerful flowing lines. I found that on my graphics tablet I couldn't create the lines that he did on a reasonable time scale. They just took too long! So I've been wandering back towards more of a Brian Bolland style, who, coincidentally (not ironically in neither the true nor Alanis Morissette sense) also works on a graphics tablet.

I really dig the visually heavy middle of the picture with his dark torso and her dark top and hat. Then it becomes really light around the bottom and the top. I especially like how the lines on the jeans turned out on both of them. I think they have a lot of energy. While I like Killeroo (and especially his hands) my favourite thing about the piece is Lee, the girl. She just has great energy and dynamism.

Having finished the piece I was about to start colouring. Then my conscience started creeping up on me. I just knew that I had to put a background in. Now remember I was talking about having no room for error? Well, you better shove over cos I made one in my haste. Now unfortunately, it's a bit low. If she's bending her knees like that, how can a bar stool (which generally sits slightly around hip level) be so far below her? It's like they're standing on boxes (or a pile of bodies?).

Oops.

It's a nice (though poorly placed) background though. When I go back to it I will fix it up.

BROWNING

I would say colouring, but really, it was just browning and exploring different shades of brown. I remember my friend, Mitch reviewing Carnivale (the tv show) as "brown".

I think there's some blue. Last I checked, that's not brown, but let's not let a little bit of a blue come between a good joke (in Aussie slang, a blue is also an argument or fight - so I just made some sort of lousy pun - no extra charge for that one!).

What I love about colouring is lighting. I love tones and the way light falls and reflects off surfaces onto other surfaces. So I love key lights. I will just zone out while I'm listening to someone talk and just be studying the lighting on their face. So if I get this weird look in my eyes, I'm probably doing that not planning to chop you up and put you in my industrial fridge.

As a last minute easter egg, I added the Claire from the last post as no one had seen it undistorted at that stage.

NEXT: So, I'm told Jim's, Annette's and my story will be up tomorrow, or tonight, or whenever. You know, sometime soon. So I will be posting about that next. You might even get to see the dodgy (that's "shady" to you Americans) and sordid drinking photos of Jim and I. Ok, maybe you won't. But there will be art. And naked chicks.

CLAIRE AND NOAH

2008-12-13T08:00:00.003+11:00

Hey gang!

While I have heaps of artwork to show you, I'm only showing you this piece cos it's nice and quick. You see, I have my monthly deadline Monday and I have a bunch of work to do. I'm trying to not leave things to the last minute, but I'm not very good at it. That is, I'm not very good at not leaving things to the last minute. Hopefully I'm good at my job! My editor and I are going to try weekly deadlines from now on. Fingers crossed it should make everything much easier.

I have a fairly full weekend planned. It's my last 9 days in LA before I head home back to Australia for Xmas and there's so many people to see and do. I mean, people to see and places to do. Heh. Freudian slip. Just ignore that. But if you need "doing" before I leave LA just form an orderly queue to the left here.

So while I love you all, I'm leaving you with a brief one.

Ollie and I were concerned on the last page of Sum Quod Sum that people might not know where they were (go to the nav links and find the last page of SQS if you're not sure what I'm talking about. But if you're not sure what I'm talking about you're probably like most of the people I talk to - so everything's normal). I was worried my Lyle wouldn't look like Lyle and that we needed an anchor to ground people. I suggested we add a little photo of Claire and Noah in the corner so people would know where they are - the Bennet house.

When I draw photo inserts I generally draw them in a separate file (ie. piece of paper - but digital like) and then place them in as an indicator for Annette. She then colours the flat piece and then mimics my placeholder. This way we get the perspective perfect. It's very hard to draw flat images on perspective. The only artist I know who can do it is Frank Quitely - but he's a genius.

I'm not, so I do it this way.

I think it's one of the best Claires and Noahs I've drawn which is why it gets its own post.

Competition winners, please gimme til Monday. I think I've got you all now!

On Monday I wanna show you guys my Killeroo piece. And no, that's not a euphemism so just settle the hell down.

Death and the Hiro

2008-12-11T08:54:00.007+11:00

Well, maybe my HEROES comic will be up next week? I haven't had the time nor inclination to investigate what happened. I'm sure it will get printed when they're ready. I'm really curious to see what everyone thinks. Maybe next week?

But how good was the Zach Craley/Peter Steigerwald story? That guy is an incredible artist and Zach crafted such a great story.

Anyhoo...

Earlier this year I was doing commissions. This may have been one of the last I did before I got swamped with deadlines. It was for Matt Siu from New Zealand who runs under the handle of Ironyman.

It was a really fun project and I was drawn to the conflicting yet complimentary subject matter. I hadn't drawn Death in a looo-ong time and I wanted to draw something definitive for myself.

BRIEF AND LAYOUT

Here was his brief for me:

"The head / head and shoulders is Hiro in profile. Again, I think Season 1 slightly geeky Hiro with glasses. He's not necessarily angry, but looks that way as he's running at an enemy, yelling (kiai). Of course he's holding his sword, which is positioned slightly behind his head, and is vertical (or pretty close). You can probably see a little bit of the hilt and handle. However, the sword is very close to the viewer, so you can fit a reflected figure of Vertigo Death on the blade. She could be blowing a kiss, she could be just standing there."

Based on his brief I came up with layouts A, B and C (above). My thoughts were that Hiro should be flowing naturally with the way that we read, from left to right.

Matt then picked A because it had the best shot of Death and I developed it again into sketch D which you can see on the left here.

LINE ART
So here is Hiro without his toning. This is the basic line art that I draw before I go in and draw the grey layer. My line work is simple and open and I tend to do most of my work at the grey stage. In fact, it's knowing what I can do best in greys and what I can do best as linework that is my real challenge. If there's any skill I've improved on, it's knowing which... medium the line art or the grey will best create the look that I'm going for.

The width of the sword is especially exaggerated so that we can see Death clearly. Otherwise she would just be some sliver on the page.

HIRO TONE AND DEATH LINE ART
I actually drew Death in a separate file and then pasted her in. I wanted her as a separate piece of artwork as I had plans for her. No, not those sort of plans! Get your mind out of the gutter! Seriously people, just a small bit of decorum. If you're wondering what plans I have for her, you will have to scroll down to the bottom. Wait! Don't do that! Stay with me now. It's not going anywhere and there's no rush. That's it, ease that finger off the mouse wheel, take a deep breath and relax. I promise it will still be there when you get to the bottom.

I'm very happy with this Death. She looks cute and she looks like a person, like someone you could meet. Chris Bachalo still draws the best Death. Francis Manapul did an off the chart Death in JAn's sketchbook too. I should get him to scan it and upload it somewhere.

TONE AND AIRBRUSHING
I then did Death's tonal work and added a motion blurred grey background to help sell the sense of movement. I think it gives it a nice, subtle manga feel.

I made sure that the two were lit from the same place (our right) to help create some sort of visual consistency in the image.

FINAL IMAGE
Matt had this cute title for the piece and once we played around with fonts and layouts we decided on this.

I also added the blood to help draw our eye to Death, but also inadvertently ended up obscurring her. But again, it helps sell the movement of the image.

Now, remember I said that I had a present for you?

Did you wait? If you were a good little kid and waited well, I've got something for you. Hell, I like it when you're bad, so you can have it anyway.

If you want to see Death in all her glory as a wallpaper for your computer I've uploaded her in my Facebook fan club (you have no idea how weird it is to type the words, "my fan club" - but it actually is kind of awesome). In Facebook do a search for my name and it should come up. Feel free to friend me while you're at it, just write me a short message saying that you know me from my blog or art or whatever. I don't friend complete strangers.

Enjoy!

FRIDAY: Hmmm... Something new. I have a bunch of stuff to post between now and Wednesday. Then I will post about my new HEROES story, which should be up then. After that I wanna start chatting about Zero G.

SUM QUOD SUM - wrap up party

2008-12-09T07:20:00.008+11:00

I think my absence is best typified by Noo's lymerick on my Facebook wall:

There once was a dude called Badower,
Who once used to blog by the hour,
But he stopped a while back
And now we've lost track,
Which has caused more than one fan to glower...

Thank you to everyone who wrote in with emails wondering if I was ok. Let's just say I've been kidnapped into "girl land" and blogging kinda fell by the wayside.

Alright! Tomorrow my story written by Jim Martin and coloured by Annette Kwok goes up. It's a prequel piece to the next online series they're doing and it was a bunch of fun. I got to draw ANOTHER shower scene (for god's sake... I'm going to get a reputation) and some cast members.

But let's wrap up SQS. I don't have space to post all of Annette's beautiful colour work, but if you'd like to see it in all its glory go HERE. I'm just going to post the pages where I have something to say.

PAGE 1

PANEL 1: Again I was smashing out the backgrounds as hard as I could. I'm so happy with not only the composition of the top panel but also the way Trafalgar square looks here. Annette did a great job of helping the tiny figures pop on the final page.

PANEL 2: The reference photo for panel 2 was funny. I think I played Claude and Abby and Ollie played themselves. On today's episode of Heroes, Claude Rains will be played by Jason Badower (cries of Boo! And hiss!)

PANEL 3: One of my favourite pics of Claude that I did. It's totally solid. Annette did such a great job of making him look wet from the rain.

PANEL 4: I'm very happy with this panel. I think is has nice performance and lighting. And it makes Ollie look like a superhero for carrying Elle.

PAGE 2

PANEL 2: You can finally see the undistorted line art. Annette has real issues obscuring my art, but I insisted. She's one of the most respectful artists I've ever worked with.

PANEL 3: I do like the performance here. I think that Lee's hand around Abby's back foreshadows the dramatic choice they make later.

PANEL 4: It kinda looks like her, but it kinda doesn't. I'm not sure what happened here. As a side note, I generally used reference from Veronica Mars rather than Heroes as I prefer VM's lighting as it's closer to my style.

PANEL 5: I like both these likenesses, and I think Ollie captured Claude perfectly in this entire comic.

PAGE 3

PANEL 1: Was it necessary to draw all these people outside the Globe Theater? Hell no. Did I enjoy it? Not really. But I just felt it needed to be done to add some "budget" to the scene. I felt I drew Claude the best on this page. I was so inspired by Ollie's dialogue. It just perfectly captured Claude. I could "hear" Christopher Eccleston saying every line. His lines really informed my performance and portrayal of the character.

PANEL 2: Annette noted that I drew over 200 people here. While I did a bit of copy, paste and subtle changing, she still coloured them all!

PANEL 3: If you've never been to St Paul's Cathedral in London, you simply HAVE to go. I was awestruck for about 3 hours as I wandered around what is one of the most magificent building I've ever been in. The Whispering Gallery is amazing. I do regret drawing a skirt on Elle here. I don't think she's ever work a skirt. No idea what came over me.

PANEL 4: Rob Beck mentioned to me that he thought the pickle was a distinctive London landmark, so I tried to squeeze it in here. Man, that background took some time. It's a great Claude again, but a mediocre Kristen. She's so hard to draw!

PAGE 4

PANEL 1: I remember Ollie commenting to me that I must have enjoyed myself a fair bit drawing a bikini fight. I said I might have enjoyed it more if one of the girls wasn't his fiance. It made it a bit weird.

PANEL 2: But seriously, I actually try and shy away from the cheesecake. I think there's enough guys out there doing that. Someone should bat for the other side. I like to try and hope that the beautiful women I draw make the scene attractive enough without them poking their asses out or lavishing cleavage everywhere. I'm a little upset with Elle's pose here. It looks a bit awkward. But I drew and redrew it and I just couldn't get it to work. Eventually I just had to move on. As you can see, the Annette Kwok special effects house was in over-drive. She basically did EVERYTHING.

PANEL 3: I love her pose here. When I was working with my model, I asked her to imagine that her hands were covered in oil and that she was checking on a friend who had fallen over.

PANEL 4: Oh man, could you actually imagine falling like this? You'd break both your wrists.

PANEL 5: Ollie and I worked on Root and Branch together (see the navigation links on the side). And in one bit there's a bunch of bullets flying at this woman just missing her. I made a bad call and instead of drawing the wall being hit by bullets I drew it all in shadow. To some people it looked like the woman was being protected by a forcefield. I mentioned to people that when I draw a forcefield you will know about it. In his infinite creativity, Ollie managed to give me the opportunity to draw a forcefield. But as you can see from comparing the black and white art to the coloured artwork, it's all the Annette Kwok Magic Show. I did nothing!

PAGE 5

PANEL 1: I'm including the coloured version of this page so you can see the Annette magic at full work. I basically just showed her what space the forcefield should occupy and she did the rest.

PANEL 2: This is one of my favourite pics of Elle. And if you scroll down you can see the awesome forcefield that Annette designed up close. Look at my art, then look at how much more it would hurt with Annette's colours! If you look carefully you can see the wedding ring on Abby. This further deepens Abby and Lee's relationship and helps explain his dramatic choice in panel 4; he has to side with his wife/fiance.

PANEL 3: I remember actually watching and studying Forgetting Sarah Marshall just so I could draw Kristen Bell's body as accurately as I could. Yeah, it's a tough, tough job.

PANEl 4: I love this shot of Abby and Ollie. What I found hilarious was the 5 o'clock shadow that Annette gave Ollie. In reality, he's like me... a bit of a baby face.

PANEL 5: I love everything about this shot. It had to sum up the emotional weight of her loss as well as their intimacy and Abby's hurt. I also love the way Ollie scripted the sequence with Abby protecting Lee. I think it's a great scene.

PAGE 6

PANEL 1: If the panel has Claude in it, chances are I really enjoyed drawing it. He's just so easy and distinctive to draw. I really felt I couldn't do wrong with him after a while.

PANEL 2: I like this pic of Elle here.

PANEL 3: The money shot. I was going to have her looking at us, but somehow I liked the distanced look more. Ollie and I went over and over this sequence. Initially Lyle opens the door in this panel and Elle shocks him in the second panel. Then when we saw the footage, Lyle is lying around the corner from the door. Unless he bounced off a wall or something there's no way he could be lying there if he came from the door. So instead we came up with this sequence. No need to explain how or why, she's just there and he's already unconscious.

PANEL 4: I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to draw a great Lyle. As it is, he turned out pretty well. So we added the family photograph on the left side so there should be no doubt in your mind as to where we are. This is easily one of the best pics I've drawn of Claire and Noah. I will post it separately sometime.

I was a bit disapointed that they released this after the airing of Eris Quod Sum, as I felt these events were a prequel to what happened. If you did read this before seeing the show, then I think you probably got more out of it. When Claire and Sandra come home, you already know what's going on, which (I think) creates more tension. It's like knowing that the serial killer is in the house in a horror film.

Alright, from now on, I'm posting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays unless I mention otherwise. That's the schedule and I'm sticking to it!

Again, thank you to everyone who wrote in to either kick my ass or just check that I wasn't chopped up in someone's refridgerator somewhere.

INTERVIEW: Part 2 of my interview with House Petrelli can be found HERE.

COMPETITION: I will sorting out who did and didn't get their prizes this week. If you were a winner, keep your eyes on your inbox. If you're not sure if you sent me an email or not (ie. I didn't reply) please send it again!

NEXT: Jim Martin, Annette Kwok and Jason Badower. Don't forget to watch HEROES tonight!

COMPETITION WINNERS

2008-10-29T08:42:00.005+11:00

Hey gang!

So the competition has ended. For those of you unsure as to what competition I'm talking about, SHAME ON YOU! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

It was presented by Grand Central Publishing and you could win one of three copies of the BOOK OF LIES by BRAD MELTZER.

You had to answer this question under three categories:

WHAT SUPERPOWER WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE AND WHY?

The three categories are:

1. Best HEROES-related answer.

2. Best SUPERMAN-related answer.

3. Funniest answer.

Well, the entries are in, the judges were escorted into a guarded, isolated room in NATO sanctioned country as per article 49051a of the 1957 UN charter for competitions of this scale. They conferred for 32 hours non stop. The bitter arguing would have made 12 Angry Men proud. It threatened to tear apart several long term friendships, change economic policies and initiate several armed conflicts. But they have arrived at three final decisions.

Alright, alright, it was just me in my room reading blog comments.

To forgo as much bias as possible I had been copying and pasting the entries without the author's names into a separate document. So when I read them today I was able to do so without knowing who said what. I flagged the ones I liked then found out who they were. The 100 word limit was not enforced but merely served as an encouragement so I wouldn't be reading essays. If two entries were similar and I couldn't decide between them, then I went for the one that was posted first.

I really enjoyed reading all the entries. I was so impressed by al the creativity!

BEST HEROES ANSWER

Primarily I was looking for answers that involved powers featured on the show, or were tied inextricably into the show.

WINNER: Mitch said...

For me it would be Candice Wilmers power of of casting illusions. It would be fun screwing with people but also could be quite lucrative if those illusions could be caught on film, How in demand would I be in Hollywood creating cheap and quick special effects. If that doesn't work I could always make a fortune putting on the ultimate stage show in Vegas.

RUNNER UP: baldbobbo said...

Wow, this is a fun one since Heroes is by far my most favorite show on television. As much as I would want telekinesis, I think telepathy would be the most interesting ability to have. For the villainous reasons, it'd allow you to eavesdrop on people's deepest thoughts, you could control people, even in their sleep (Maury Parkman), and at worst you could make Molly eat her cereal.

The reason why I'd want it personally is for a reason that hasn't been shown by Matt yet, which is a shame. I think hearing people's thoughts would make you empathic towards people's feelings, and you could understand them so much better. Less fights with girlfriends/boyfriends, helping out people who are quiet with their feelings. Imagine how great a person you could be if you could crack open people's minds without the mess Sylar makes.

BEST SUPERMAN RELATED ANSWER

Ideally I was looking for an answer that wasn't just about his powers but embodied either what Superman stood for or something inextricably bound to Superman. Alexandre wins on both counts with one of the best answers I've ever heard to this question. Peter M comes runner up with a clever answer on the latter.

WINNER: Alexandre Togeiro said...

I think Superman’s powers complement each other, they are a package. But the individual power I would like to have is definitely the invulnerability - to be a ‘man of steel’! I think someone that simply can’t be harmed by anything made by mankind could have an important role as a neutral mediator in conflicts and disputes. I could be a journalist or a judge that can’t be coerced or threatened by anyone. Therefore I would be able to pursue justice and truth without fear, something that unfortunately we don’t see much these days.

RUNNER UP: Peter M said...

I Think right now Superman would most appreciate me if I had the power to bring back Pa Kent.

what?

too soon?

3. FUNNIEST ANSWER

Based solely on my sense of humour, it's whether I found the answer funny. The winner won by a long shot. His power was funny, but the punchline was a killer. The runner up Ryan gave me a good giggle. When I found out who it was, I found it even funnier.

WINNER: thepoohguy said...

The power to understand and interpret a baby's cry and become the GREATEST BABYSITTER ON THE PLANET!

OK, that sounds a bit creepy for a 36 year old man with no children.

RUNNER UP: ryangibsonstewart said...

...The power to actually control myself whenever I see Kristen Bell.

Yowza!

All winners have until Tuesday the 4th to contact me at grael23@yahoo.com with their mailing details. If they don't contact me by that time then their prize will go to the runner up.

Thanks to everyone for entering! I will be running more competitions in the future.

Oh, and if you don't already know, you can find my latest HEROES webcomic HERE. I recommend you read it before watching episode 7.

Posts about SUM QUOD SUM part 2 will go up tomorrow!