LEFT BEHIND page 1

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

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

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

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

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.