KIMIKO PAGE 5 & 6

Let's get this baby out of the way. And when I say, "baby" I mean the last two pages of Kimiko. It's time to move on. It was a long time ago. Build a bridge.

In fact, I've been dying to move on from Kimiko for ages. I've got so much more stuff to show you, and this, some of the weakest, most rushed work I've done in ages is not my proudest moment. It's probably contributed to why I haven't been blogging (as well as being sick). I just don't really want to talk about work that doesn't excite me.

First up, some more news. I've been plugging away and I'm on book 4, (the last issue) of ZERO G. I will be happy when I don't have to draw another space suit again. To keep me sane, I have another HEROES gig coming up. The deadline is the 10th of April, so keep yourself frosty for that one. All I'm going to say is that while it doesn't feature any of our lead cast, it's a great story set in the mysterious year 1967.

I'm grateful that Annette is available to colour it. I think we're going to create the best looking HEROES comic we've done to date. I can't wait to show you what Annette and my stuff looks like these days. We've created a style together for ZERO G that I think is unique and arresting. I can't wait to hear what you think.

It was actually page five of Kimiko (left) that really motivated me to get Annette back on board. While I'm reasonably happy with the way I colour figures, the way I colour backgrounds irritates the hell out of me. When I put heaps of effort in, it looks cheated and I don't like that. Working with Annette will give me the time to draw it properly and avoid the horrendous cheat that I used on page 5 panel 2. It was just supposed to be a placeholder, to remind me I need to draw a proper background, but computer issues got together with my deadline and gang-bashed me in a dark alley. Whimpering and bleeding I was forced to leave the photo in.

If there was such a thing as a "walk of shame" for comic book pages, this might be one for me. As an effort of minimalism, one might describe it as more Spartan than Gerard Butler.

Two out of four backgrounds ain't so good. It's not my finest hour, but it definitely was my most desperate. Even panel 1 on page 5 annoys me. The texturing looks too realistic if you ask me. I should have gone for something more stylised. I actually get annoyed when my stuff looks too photo-like.

When it started at the layout stage it was all birds singing, rainbows and sunny meadows. By the drawing stage of these last two pages it was rolling thunderheads of deadline storm clouds and torrential rains of panic so dense they were sweeping away entire villages of resolve.

I ended up leaving page 5 and moving onto page 6. I wanted it to at least finish with some strength. I thought I would have time to come back and clean up page 5. Such was not the case.

I had more fun with page 6 as I actually got to draw some stuff. I like the lighting of the top panel. I was also trying to mirror Taiko's body language from page 3 panel 2 here on panel 2 with Kimiko. I feel that she has already become her father's daughter in this panel. I used a cinematic trick that they do on the show on panel 4. For some reason I notice that they use a framing blur on certain images, usually trying to highlight someone's eyes. I thought I would do the same here.

TOURISTY STUFF: Well, my parents joined my sister and I in London. They arrived just as I climbed off the back end of the flu. It just seems that London is tougher than I am. I figure it's had a lot more time than Australia to get it's bacteria together.

I finally made it out the door to visit Madame Tussauds. My sister was smart enough to hussle us out the door to get there when it opened. This meant we only waited for 10 minutes (as I left the queue was literally around the block!). I didn't mind so much as I was enjoying the first snow I'd ever seen in my life. My mum thought it looked like a cloud of insects, but I thought it either looked like an ash storm or blossoms, depending on my mood.

As soon as I walked in the door, I saw my favourite movie star: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. I wish he wasn't slouching so much as you can't really get an idea of his size, but he's a good 6'4 (I'm 6'1). His co-star in Walking Tall, Ashley Scott (whom I reckon is one of the hottest women on the planet - so yes, I enjoyed that film) thinks he has one of the biggest heads on a human being. We're talking physical size, not ego. I was dismayed to see my head was about as big if not bigger. I didn't feel so bad, as those of you who watch Entourage will know Turtle's big head theory: that to be a movie star you have to have a "big head". At least I have one requirement to get on the screen.

I realised that the trick to taking good photos at Madame Tussauds is having a sister with hands so steady she should be performing neuro-surgery (so you don't have to use a flash. They look fake under flash, but great under the lighting they provide), and to just go for it. We proceeded to take a bunch of amusing photos while I hammed it up around my wax co-stars. I'm going to show you these over the next few posts in the order they were shot. My favourites are at the end.

Cameron and I had a moment. She was really sweet, although she seemed a little stiff and nervous around me. But hey, who can blame her?

FACEBOOK: If you're on and you wanna say "Hi" to me, just look me up and write a short note that you know me from my blog, 9th Wonders or my HEROES work and I will add you to my friends list. Be great to hear from you. Don't be shy!

PAST EXPERIENCE: part 4

Here ye, here ye. This is the last will and testament of Jason Badower. I've been struck down by some virulent Brittanic virus that seems to be some unholy synthesis of the Rage virus, Ebola, Leprosy and strain 138 of the Shanti virus. You get the point, I'm suffering. Suffering like a woman on the Boxing Day sales without her credit card. Surviving medical scientists have dubbed the virus, The Unholy Plague as only the depths of hell could have vomited up something so insipid and cruel in its symptoms and fatality rate.

Round 1 saw The Unholy Plague issue a totally unprovoked first strike. I hadn't been out drinking in two weeks. It had been regular work, early to bed and early to rise with a side order of good eating for two weeks. As far as I was concerned, my defences were strong, and going into any sort of match would favour me the victor. This didn't deter the The Unholy Plague. It first attacked me at 7am on Thursday morning with a couple rounds of vomiting. I thought a sneak attack was particularly ungentlemanly and secured a steadfast agreement to do pistols at dawn tomorrow... once I'd had some sleep.

At 1pm I awoke feeling like I'd been clubbed like Rodney King. It appears that while I was down and out The Unholy Plague laid a couple of stern body kicks which the ref didn't see. I protested the unfairness of this, but the ref was off warning The Unholy Plague's ring girl, Sinus Lass to stay outside the ring during the bout. During her latest verbal warning the bitch even caught my eye and grinned as The Unholy Plague went for an illegal choke hold inducing dizziness and nausea. I limped out of the ring, grabbed a couple glasses of water and stumbled back to bed.

SKETCH

I enjoyed these layouts. Simple, elegant and cinematic. I couldn't wait to draw Hiro!

I rose again at 6pm. I felt like The Unholy Plague had kidnapped me, hung me upside down in a large heshen sack and beaten me repeatedly with phone books and baseball bats. By the time my sister came home from work, she found me listlessly staring off into the distance, a half eaten piece of toast and a forgotten glass of water in my hands. I had devolved into (what is traditionally known in the zombie community as) a Shuffle. I struggled out of what could really only be described as Post Traumatic Shock and sent a couple apologetic emails to my editor promising that her pieces would be on her desk tomorrow. These were supposed to be the huge booth posters for the New York Comic Convention. They had to be the best work I was capable of. As soon as I'd hit the "sent" button, my sister hustled me off to bed. I warily drew up the doona/duvet (whatever) and reaffixed the sentry guns and landmines expecting another sneak attack from The Unholy Plague.

LINEART

I ended up doing a screen capture from Kaito's funeral from season 2 and moved people around, but it's largely the same frame. I do like my Hiro. I think I got reference from season 1 here. The trees were a bit experimental for panel four and I like the gothic noir feel it has. Those of you paying attention might have seen my geek Easter Egg and noticed that I used Hiro's boss, Mr Kin Egami as the executive who confronts Kimiko.

I cunningly slept through pistols and vomiting at dawn. I awoke Friday at 11am. Sensing trouble, The Unholy Plague had decided to lob mortars over my defensive wall which had not done any more damage, but the constant noise and shockwaves had stopped my Mutant Healing Factor from kicking in and repairing me whole. Somehow I kept my eyes open for 10 hours and finished off the last two booth pieces. The first I was very happy with, the last, not so much. At 9pm I stumbled off back to bed. The sentry guns were fully armed, the landmines prepped and I issued orders to the troops to engage in perimeter sweeps to dissuade The Unholy Plague from the previous night's mortar strikes.

TONE WORK

I especially like how all the people turned out. I felt that panel 1 got a bit muddy and confusing from poor composition, though.

Saturday (today) I awoke, at 730am. The perimeter was unnaturally quiet and reports from the front issued a suspicious all clear. I stared over the horizon surveying the battlefield. It was like regarding an old friend who had returned from overseas. You know them, you remember them, but you're going to have to get to know them all over again. Everything had changed. War does that to you. War changes you. The Unholy Plague changes you. I'm still reeling. A man returned to a country he barely recognises. Everything's the same but different. People regard me differently. Human beings can sense on a visceral, subconscious level when another has been through a near death traumatic experience. They regard me with a wary nonchalance knowing that intimacy with my recent experience will affect them on a primal and heretofore unrevealed level, even to themselves.

COLOUR

Panel 1 got a bit muddy, but I like the way the rest turned out. If I hadn't been referencing an actual scene from the show, I would have set this at sunset for more dramatic lighting than in the middle of a sunny day.

My mind is sharp, but my body is still reeling from the experience. Two regular cartridges of Neurofen slammed into my magazine seem to keep me alert through the fog of The Unholy Plague's wake. You only wish this sort of suffering on your worst enemy. It's the perfect sort of suffering. They lie there, weak, nauseous and drained while you dance around them, throw general insults and little scrunched up bits of paper at their nose. If you're lucky, they die... suffering.


FINAL TOUCHES

Some added lighting effects. It was a buzz to draw Hiro again. I love drawing the guy. He's just so easy to draw. Overall for a fast, rushed page, this turned out really well. To give you an idea of how rushed, I drew and coloued pages 4, 5 and 6 over two days!

Inspired by the very mechanisms of human nature that drive us through our lives, we are forced to ask Why something like this could happen. How could something so brutal and heartless like The Unholy Plague be unleashed into our lives? But sometimes it's not our place to ask why, but merely give thanks that we survived. And the immortal words of Captain Malcolm Reynolds come echoing into my mind, "We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so...very...pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die."

And I thank God for considering me prettier than the ill-fated Bendis. But he left me scarred with a hollow, haunted look to my eyes (that hopefully adds charm and a certain mystique.) And in the wake of The Unholy Plague, all we can do is hug a loved one and thank God that all of us who are reading this were indeed pretty enough.

Or I could just be a big wuss and a drama queen.

PAST EXPERIENCE part 3

Oh god, I am so slack I should be taken out the back and shot. When I die I'm going to Procrastination Blogger Hell where devils dance around my cage promising to torture me... tomorrow.

It's kinda funny that no matter how hard I work during the week I'm always rushing my ass off at the end of the week to get things done. I think it comes from a serious inability to say, "No" to fun projects. Instead, I just line them all up and then balk at the amount of work that has to be done.

Right now I'm doing some huge posters for Spacedog's New York Comic Con booth. I can't wait to see them 8 feet tall! I've also got some correx to do on a friend's movie pre-vis pieces.

But let's get back to Kimiko.

LAYOUTS

JT, the writer (I figured I better remind you as it's been awhile. I hear they've also invented jet-packs between my last post) suggested that the first panel should mirror the last panel of the last page. In fact, he had very clear directions for how he wanted the scene to run. I looked over them, and they were great. It was just a matter of designing the room and the placement of Kaito and Kimiko to make it work.



LINE ART

I noticed I copped some flak from some posters on 9th Wonders who didn't like my George Takei. At this stage of the game I was ready to print panel 1 out on nice piece of photopaper and mail it to his agent I was so proud. Seriously, that's George Freakin' Takei! I was so happy with it at this stage. I'm still proud of the linewor. Little was I to know that all my efforts would be thwarted by my inability to colour him.

I do like the picture of Kimiko on panel 4 also. I think it really looks like her, and I like it how at the one moment that her father actually looks at her, she looks away.

If I remember correctly, it was about at this stage that my computer was so under-performing I thought it had been taking tips from some of my ex-girlfriends.

It was so sluggish that if it had a pulse I would have checked it to see if it was alive. This page took me 2-3 days to do! And look at it, there's really not much to look at! But I was so frustrated by panel 3, I knew that I would have to look at other, more time effective ways to finish this. I opted for the first of my photo textures for backgrounds.


TONE

George still looks like George here, and Kimiko looks far more Kimiko-like. See? I write gooder!

I remember almost rubbing my hands in glee at how well this page was turning out. I really dug the lighting on the two characters and loved how it accentuated the scale of the room.

Somewhere around this stage I'm probably chanting over my laptop in latin wearing rosary beads and a dog collar. A good old fashioned exorcism is about the closest you're going to come to any sort of technical support from me.

But, despite my best efforts to call out an unholy spirit frommy laptop, there was no screen spinning 360 degrees, no vomit and my laptop didn't even try and climb down the stairs backwards. Following in the footsteps of those pre-mentioned ex-girlfriends, my exorcism was a let down.

I decided to try another tact.

PHOTO INSERTS

So here's Jason trying to save his ass and deadline with photo textures. I can't tell you enough how much I *HATE* doing this. I feel cheap. I feel like I've asked for a refund at a $2 store.

But they look nice don't they? And how about those spiffy glass effects!

I can just see your reply now, "Boy, Jas, you do a GREAT glass effect! Don't tell me you actually DREW that glass in. You didn't put your back out actually DRAWING something did you?"

Shut up. My computer was possessed by a slavering devil from an outer circle of hell that thought that shoulder pads were still a fashion accessory and my time should be played like fingers down a blackboard. Slowly and tortuously.


COLOUR

I want you to marvel at the magnificence at which I have destroyed a perfectly good likeness of George Takei. What the hell was I thinking?! If another colourist had done this to my work I would have hunted them down, nail gunned them to a chair and fed them their toes.

As it was, I plead insanity.

For those of you who've met me, what you see is what you get. I'm one of the most chilled dudes you're gonna meet. Well, chilled as in "not gonna get angry" not as in "relaxed and laid back". I can't remember the last time I got angry at anyone. So believe me when I say I was ready to totally reenact every part of every rage zombie in 28 Days Later. I was especially looking forward to setting myself on fire and running around after people. I think it would have been cleansing.

Like the eye of the hurricane, a calm possessed me. I remembered that my friend Xander Black mentioned that he'd become pretty savvy at putting together computers and had about 8 desk tops at home. I called him and he offered to look at my laptop. So I headed around to his place.

He figured that the graphics card had crapped itself and turned itself off. He turned it back on and made some adjustments to my computer. I would of paid more attention to what exactly went wrong if I hadn't been forcefully kidnapped by his Playstation. All I know is that a couple rounds of Guitar Hero and Tekken later, my computer was working again. Oh the wonders of Playstation and its healing properties!

So Xander sat down and we throw down for some Tekken Tag (yes it's retro, but it's what we used to play against each other, and it's the last Tekken we both learnt to play).

FINAL TOUCHES

Yeah, so here's some lighting and blow out effects from the window. Blah, blah, blah. No one cares. What you wanna know is who won, right? Right?!

Yeah, I know I'm right.

I whup his ass at the start, but then he makes a comeback so brutal it has since been outlawed by the UN as a crime against humanity.

Finding my dignity and my Tekken skillz crushed under his designer boot I make a final resurgence at the end when my main man, Jin Kazama (also my digital man-crush - see below) remembers who he is and interfaces with me on a spiritual, emotional and intellectual level to unleash a mountain of destruction so big they set up a memorial service for Xander.

I hear that broken Tekken players make pilgrimages to this mountain of pwnage to pray at the shrine of Xander's broken spirit.

As you've probably gathered, I LOVE my Tekken. I just haven't had time for it recently. So come walk with me for a trip back in time. I promise to include an embarrassing photo to make it worth your while.

At the time, I wasn't the only one who liked Tekken. My entire martial arts club was into the game. We loved it because if you know how to fight, you can play. In the closest I ever came to cosplay, I organised my martial arts club into a performance called, "ENTER THE TEKKEN". I cast various members of the club as different characters from the game in a martial arts play that I scripted and choreographed.

Of course, I had to play my man-crush. =)

Yes, that's me. I painted those pants with a little help from a very talented ex-girlfriend. I used to wear those pants out clubbing and I got quite known for them. Another friend of mine did the makeup, tattoo (which you can't see) and hair.

I did the abs. =)

ENTER THE TEKKEN went on to win the Grand Champion Trophy in showmanship in an international tournament. Of all the martial arts trophies I won, that was the one I was most proud of.

See? Embarrassing photo. Told you it would be all worthwhile.

Next post soon, I promise!

HEROES: Past Experience page 2

Sorry about the interruption to our regular programing. I just didn't plan some deadlines very well and they all came crashing down on me. And while I love blogging, it's not my "job" per se.

Anyway, let's get back to HEROES: Past Experience.










LAYOUTS

This was a fun page. The key thing for me was to make sure that there was no problem reading that this part was set in a picture book or within young Hiro's imagination. The writer, J.T. Krul suggested in his directions that this sequence could either be drawn like the picture book from the show or in the style of the tapestries:






I'm a fairly flexible artist, and while I could do this, I knew it would take a while. I opted instead for a more cartoony colouring style inspired by Josh Middleton.





LINE ART

Obviously Kensei is asian in these pictures as no one knows that it's really David Anders. I used the samurai armour from the tv show as I believe that the illustrator or Hiro's imagination would have used the real armour as reference.

My only other vague sort of Easter Egg is that the two samurai are loosely adapted from my favourite Kurasawa film, The Seven Samurai. If you haven't seen it, it's a true classic that has inspired so much modern cinema. Here's the reference I used:





You can see that at this stage I'm still deciding how best to make the storybook stand out from the rest of the story.

My young George Takei was fun, but I think he really comes alive at the toning stage.

TONING
I knew that I was going to colour the storybook sequence differently. I knew that if I did that it would help separate the two scenes. So the toning here is really only on the final panel.

It's amazing how it goes from well, some dude, to being George Takei! I'm so happy how I can trust myself these days to be able to do this and know which stage will best achieve what I want it to.

I know some people weren't happy with my George Takei likenesses, but I thought this one was particularly good. Maybe they're just not used to him smiling?



COLOUR
It was so much fun to play with a different colouring style. I hadn't used this style since I coloured "Killeroo: book 2" years years ago! I dig the heavy shadows and harsh fill lights. I also got to play with a really bold colour palette.

Listen to me, "a bold colour palette"?! I really need to get the hell out more. I'm getting all excited over colours! Time to check my testicles at the door, I think I've just disowned all right I have to any manhood whatsover.




MY, WHAT BIG SCROLLS YOU HAVE...

So inspiration finally struck! My idea was to change the panel borders (or boxes) to scrolls. I wanted to give the feel that this story was very old and add a mythic element to this enjoyable fable.

It totally comes alive!

I was very happy with this idea. I was totally convinced that every reader would find this easy to follow and read because of this storytelling device.

I literally had to think outside the scroll.

Sorry, I couldn't resist that pun. =)




FINAL TOUCHES

I placed a faded out version of the raining arrows Kensei tapestry as my backdrop. The harsh white was too startling for me and I needed a texture behind it.

Some subtle airbrushing and colour mixing and the page was done! I was very proud of the storytelling on this page.

While it seems that this page was all fun and games, my computer was starting to seize up like a wet fish in a snow storm. I remember my satisfaction at finishing the page being tarnished by how long it took me because my computer was slowing down like some sort of cheap-ass bullet-time effect.

My frustration was building and I could feel my pants going purple and my skin green...

HEROES: Past Experience

This hit me from out of nowhere. I open my Inbox and suddenly there's a HEROES story!

My goal for this story was to make it the most "illustrated" story since War Buddies. When I work by myself, I tend to use textures and photos to fill up space. Sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's because of the time pressure. I wanted to avoid doing that for this piece and really looked forward to drawing every element possible.

Then the Nightmare started.

My awesome new 17" laptop (Duo 2.4Ghz and 2Gb ram and 300GB hdd) started running like a dog with four broken legs. To give you an example, the simplest move you can do on Photoshop is to grab your canvas and move it across so you can draw the next bit. It's normally an instantaneous operation that I don't even think about. Doing that was making we wait for 30sec! Because the laptop is new, I stubbornly persisted for three days of this as I refused to believe that there was a problem. In those three days I drew ONE page and I was on the verge of tears. I saw my lofty artistic goals evaporating.

Finally I called my friend, Xander Black who discovered that my graphics card had turned itself off, leaving my ram and cpu to do all the work! He solved the problem and also did some nifty Googling and discovered that the version of Photoshop I was using has incredible problems with Vista. Problem solved, and if you look carefully you can see my shout-out to him on young Hiro's t-shirt on this page on panel 3.

BUT I had 2 days to draw and colour 4 pages! Most comic artists are doing well if they can do a single page of line work a day, let alone inking or colouring it!

J.T. Krul's script really grew on me as I drew it. I've scanned the message boards and one of the constant observations that people make is that, "this was such a fluff story. It doesn't add anything to the ongoing Heroes narrative."

Well. You're wrong. For starters, all the webcomics are part of the Heroes narrative no matter how much they progress or simply massage continuity. In this case, it explores a relatively minor character and projects her into the limelight. They even updated the YAMAGATO FELLOWSHIP website to coincide with the conclusion of the story. That's pretty awesome.

The other thing people need to do is consider their expectations of these stories. Remember, these are here to COMPLIMENT the show, not replace it. Now, I'm just making stuff up, but if Matt were to die or HRG got paralysed you can bet your bottom dollar it's going to appear on the show not the comics. The comic adds texture, depth and background, but it is not meant to stand alone. And when it does, like the Death of Hana Gitelman (where you find out what happened to the second tracking system HRG talks about) people get cranky and demand that it should have been on the show!

Do we see the tightrope that they're walking with the webcomics? Too much they get crucified, too little they get drawn and quartered.

Anyway. Onto PAST EXPERIENCE


LAYOUTS

J.T had some fairly specific scene directions, which really helped me discover what I wanted to do here. I realised that we had a transition from a closeup of Kimiko to a closeup of Hiro. I felt that the most logical transition was to pull back and then move in on Hiro at the end.

So we go from closeup on Kimiko's hands, keeping her as the centre element for panels 1 and 2 (hopefully letting you know who is speaking too). On panel 3 I shift her off to the side slightly and compositionally try to introduce Hiro. I'm hoping that the line of the bench that Kaito and Hiro are sitting on will get your eye to him.

Finally I closeup in on the new action. I think it works!


LINE ART

As I mentioned, I wanted to draw the pants off this piece. I can't imagine how much drawing one would have to do to get someone to take their pants off, but I'm guessing it's a lot.

So I had a smack at it. This is the level of detail that I normally draw with when my back isn't so far pressed up against a deadline I practically need consent.

C'mon, look at those flowers! That's a LOT of flowers! I also had great fun drawing all the characters, but especially enjoyed drawing George Takei. It was fun de-ageing him! Welcome to the magic of comics!

GREY TONES

The interesting thing about the script is that it has THREE drastic scene changes in three pages (flashback, Kensei story, Kaito's office)! I had to figure out how to make sure that the reader wouldn't get confused between all three scenes.

I decided to do the flashback in the same way as the flashbacks from Company Man (Season 1, episode 17). I studied them carefully and tried to emulate the blown out whites and deep blacks. It's amusing a comic imitating a television show imitating a comic.

I really felt these grey tones brought some life to the piece. I think they're a bit dark, and if I wasn't emulating the Company Man style I would have lightened everything a lot.



FINAL TOUCHES

I noticed that the whites on the flashback sequences were really white. Like white-white! So I went in and heavily airbrushed everything. I'm normally trying to cut back on the airbrushing ("Hi everyone, my name's Jason, and I'm an airbrushoholic."), but this page actually NEEDED it. I promise!

I especially love the bloom on the last panel.

Well there we go! I consider this one of the best pages I've drawn for HEROES. I love the pacing, camera work and had (at this stage) a luxurious amount of time to draw it.

Page 2 tomorrow. The Hell Page that took me 3 days of blood, sweat and oh so many tears.

FACEBOOK: Friend me if you'd like.

COMMISSIONS: Email me for details. Huge backlog right now.

SKETCHBOOKS: $10+$5 postage. Once these last few are gone, I doubt I'm ever printing these again.