PHASE panel 1

Here's some supporting art that I did for the movie.

As I mentioned, Ione, (Phase's wife) draws a comic book script based on his adventures. The irony is that the one thing that allows her to contribute to the family financially is encouraging the one thing that's tearing it apart: his superhero adventures.

This is one of the panels that I hammered out for it. We see Ione lining the kitty litter bin with it. It's a minimalist and bold style reflecting her personality. But let me be contentious here for a minute.

Is there a particular style that you can attribute to female artists? Is there a style embodied by male artists? I believe that at the extreme ends of the spectrum there is. Most good, solid, non-genre artists are beyond gender. I would also argue that some are defined by their gender, and some are brilliant because they are androgynous (James Jean comes to mind).

While I don't consider my artwork to have a gender, I was consciously trying to shift my artwork towards the more stereotypically "female" end of the spectrum. I was trying to embody Ione and her lines from what I knew of the character. What that means, I'm not so sure.

ZERO-G Tyrell

A break from Phase.

We will come back to it. There's still some artwork that I specifically did for the movie.

So this is Tyrell. The huge, big black Michael Clark-Duncan sorta dude. He's a specialist miner along with Sonny McCann. One of the funny things that I did was that each member of the team has a patch with their symbol on it. The general has a star, Atom has an atom symbol mixed with an A, Sonny has a smiling sun. For Tyrell, I did some research and found the Tyrell symbol from Bladerunner. No one will get it except for me... and now you.

Sorry I've been so AWOL. Been working on INNOCENTS doing art direction. The deadline is super-tight and Bing (the penciller) is doing a stunning job. Been plugging away on ZERO G, but stuck on page 13. So tired...

PHASE page 8

So Jay looks the huge green screen up and down and looks over at his nervous fiance. Gripping the crowbar tight he turns back to me and says, "So where do you want me to hit you?"

"Right on my back. Repeatedly. But up here." I gestured to where the makeup of the injury had been applied back on the shoot (continuity points for Jas!).

Jay and I knew each other so well we could throw full powered punches at each other, swing objects at each other and throw each other into walls repeatedly with only small, minor (but irritating) wear and tear injuries. My knees hurt (despite the kneepads) from falling to them after being hit. Jay had a huge bruise from where he kept collecting the wall. My palm was raw red and aching from hitting the ground. A large red welt had appeared under Jay's armpit from where his coat had dug into him from where I was grabbing him.

But it was hella fun.

Jay and Alica (his fiance - generously playing the victim) were awesome. They had to improvise a make-shift dialogue, and learn a fight scene, and where to fall and land within minutes and shoot it again and again for hours. Jay had done very little acting and Sky was totally impressed. What should have taken two days took about 4 hours.

As I said, there was a twist to the fight. I'm telling you this cos this is the last page of the comic. So Phase hears the commotion and sees a man standing over a fallen woman. The man leans forward aggressively. Phase intervenes. After Phase has disposed of the man, by catching his arm and then punching him out, he turns towards the woman who rushes to the man's aid crying, "Oh my god! John! What have you done to my husband?!"

This was my cute idea that nothing in the world is as simple as it is in comics. What appears to be a mugging is nothing more than a couple walking home and arguing. She falls over and he chides here, then Phase mistakenly intervenes.

NEXT: PHASE: More story! More artwork.

PHASE page 7

So as you can see there's a fight scene.

I was going to talk about this earlier, but I forgot. Hey, it's not like I pay attention to what I'm saying.

Anyway, we needed a guy and a girl.

The script said that Phase hears a commotion (look at the lighting from John our DOP on panel 4 of page 6!) and teleports outside and intervenes. I will tell you the twist next post.

I've done a little bit of stunt work in the past. Those of you intrepid enough might know or be able to find out which dodgy film. I had also done a fair bit of martial arts choreography in live shows and productions for competition and charity. Sky told me we only had 3 or 4 hours to shoot this fight scene. Also, he couldn't guarantee any rehearsal time. So I knew when I needed someone to work fast, I needed someone who knew martial arts, could act and knew how to handle themselves and knew me well.

I found that person in my business partner Jay George. Here's one of the funny thing about stunt, so much of it is about trust. It has very little to do with how well you trust them with your girlfriend, your money or your reputation. It's all to do with how much you trust them with your body. It's funny, I know incredible stuntmen that I wouldn't trust with any of the first three, but know they would kill themselves to make sure I was safe. Anyway, I trust Jay (and Tim, my other business partner) more than anyone I'm not directly related to.

But as Tyler says, "How can you truly know yourself if you've never been in a fight?"

PHASE page 6

So I finally hit the set. It was a totally professional production with a crew of about 20 people. The director of photography was a guy who had done a commercial for my gym a while back. He was good. Really good. People ran about, to and fro. It was totally full on.

Sky had been really smart about organising me. It was a four day shoot. On the first day I had one scene and an off-screen voice conversation. The scene on page 1 where I find the letter, read it, then have an angry moment then head off to work. The last thing I had to do was play the other side of a phone conversation with Phillipa (Nicole Nabout). I spent the rest of the day running around the set helping people, holding lights and grabbing stuff. It's the stuff I do when I don't have to do anything. I won't just stand around like window dressing. If I'm there I'm going to do what I have to in order to get this baby over the line.

It was the best thing I could have done.

The crew couldn't believe I was one of the actors. They'd never met any actor that would help out like I did - which doesn't say a lot for actors in general. For the rest of the shoot they totally bent over backwards for me to help me out. Whenever I needed anything (coffee, food, chairs, space) they went out of their way to get it as quickly as possible. Suddenly I was surrounded by twenty friends instead of twenty strangers. It put me totally at ease. They were also instrumental in communicating to me what was going on. The jargon, the pacing, the set ups. It meant that I was totally on the ball. I almnost looked like a professional.

And when I had nothing to do, I held lights and studied what Asher was doing.