ZERO-G PREVIEW COVER - design 3 coloured!

Here is the cover with Annette's magic touch.

She's used a base purple pallette and highlighted the main chracters with the orange from the plasma guns. The choice of orange both helps separate them from the background and creates an extra level of depth on them as orange is the diametric opposite to purple on the colour spectrum (insert technical term there - I can't remember it). When the two are placed skillfully together (like this) it can create an extra level of solidity to the form.

You can see the guns taking more shape here, and Annette has done a job that would leave Lucasfilm drooling.

The shuttle and wyrm are just superb. I love the way she faded the wyrm into the space/background (rather than black) giving it a far more mysterious and epic scale than the initial drawing implied.

Alex still maintains that the asteroid isn't a large enough design feature and I agree with him. Unfortunately the clock ran out on this side of the process. Next came the Zero G logo.

LATEST NEWS: You know how I mentioned that I wouldn't be getting anymore HEROES work until the 4 part story arc was done? Well I contacted Frank (the Heroes editor at Aspen) and asked how things were going. Apparently my timing was perfect again. He told me that artist had just pulled out and he desperately needed an artist to step in for the last two parts of the Vietnam flashback story. Seriously, I don't know why he just doesn't ask me in the first place. =)

So, I get to find out who Dallas and Austin are. I guarantee you their identities won't be parting my lips... It's more than my job's worth.

ZERO-G PREVIEW COVER - artwork

With bated breath I waited for the response to the sketch. In the meantime I had no time to lose. I pressed on with the cover. This time I felt more certain that what I was doing coincided with what needed to be done. The figures were dynamic and their outfits screamed sci fi. The shuttle was prominently displayed. The alien worm/wyrm was huge and foreboding. The asteroid itself (though small) was centre aligned. The composition was strong and I was confident that I had overlaid objects of a high variety of colour on top of each other to help separate the different layers in the picture.

The email came back and confirmed it. Everyone loved it. The only call was from Alex who wanted the asteroid to be bigger and more prevalent. As he put it, "The asteroid is our Haunted House in our Haunted House Movie. If we don't highlight it, then we lose our main plot point and reason for being there."

While I agreed whole heartedly with him, I was beyond the point of no return. It was wednesday and the artwork had to be handed in by friday. Annette still needed time to colour it. So I passed it onto Annette with notes to try and highlight the asteroid more.

Under the pump, Annette began to wave her magic wand...

ZERO-G PREVIEW COVER - design 3

A couple days go by and I think I'm in the clear. It's monday and the cover isn't due til friday. I'm a week ahead of deadline and feeling pretty proud of myself.

Then I get The Email from Alex Zamm. He implores me to reconsider the cover. He cites how important it is, how powerful our first impression must be. He remarks upon the passive stances of the characters, the tiny asteroid and the general lack of drama in the picture.

He knows how close we are to deadline; how impossible it would be. But he asks... almost begs me to have another look at it.

I take everything on he had to say and came to the realisation that he was right. He was totally right. It was a crap cover.

With no time to waste, I mock up a quick sketch and send it over. With the deadline crawling closer I start drawing Atom while I wait for the feedback (they're in LA, 17 hours behind me). I re-design the alien gun again going for something pointier with a more unusual firing mechanism. My idea is that there is an arc of plasma between the two prongs on the end. The barrel then shoots out a compressed hyper dense gravity ball that is then ignited by the prongs and explodes on impact with a burning concussive force. You can fire small balls like bullets, or huge things like grenades.

Again, with the days crawling by I wait, hoping that I hit the mark this time...

ZERO-G PREVIEW COVER - unused design 2

So Alex's feedback asked for space suits, alien weaponry and more of a focus on the asteroid and the monster. Unfortunately I hadn't really designed a lot of this!

I basically separated the figures from the previous design and suited them up. I had very little idea what to clothe Evelyn in, but I made do building on some sketches I had found from ages ago.

The weapons were also a nightmare. I drew them again and again and again. I think I eventually chucked on some Tool and just zoned out and let my hand move. I wanted something alien, something slightly techno-organic, but not Geiger looking. I love Geiger, but it's so done to death. I wanted weapons that defied logic but looked lethal. I was pretty happy with the final design.

My cute little touch was to give Evelyn the bigger weapon. Atom's kinda useless, and if there were two guns there, he'd definitely chuck her the bigger one. I'm so sick of the guy having the BIG FRAKKING GUN and the girl having the tiny little pistol. It would be very much reversed in this case.

I also removed some of Atom's torso armour to give him more form. I didn't want him to look like a big puffy armoured guy. I wanted a leaner, athletic feel to him.

Anyway, proud as pudding I sent this off expecting the sign off. How ignorant I was...

ZERO-G PREVIEW COVER - unused design 1

Sorry I've been so AWOL. It was Ryan's recent comment that spurred me into blogging action. The reason why I haven't been posting is that I thought that I'd simply run out of stuff to post! But then I remembered this piece. This is just one of the many "sketches" I did for it.

To promote Zero-G for the upcoming convention period, it was decided to release a preview book. The book would contain the first ten pages of art, an interview with writer Alex Zamm and another with myself. It would then be rounded up with a bunch of design sketches of aliens and suits.

The preview book would feature an original cover and back cover. I thought I'd take you through the process of how we put together both covers in (again) next to no time at all.

First up, I consider the cover to be the visually most important part of the book. I wanted something that looked like a movie poster rather than a comic book cover and couldn't get this sort of letterbox out of my head (even though movie posters don't have that - go figure). Alex Zamm (the writer) threw ideas at me like the classic Star Wars posters. Huge montages of drama and action with looming figures in the background.

I wanted to explore the relationship between Atom and Evelyn and allude to that on the cover of the book. The deadline (as usual) was oppressive. I was so taken with the idea that I began drawing immediately. I mean, look at it (I thought)! How could you not like this?!

To help sell my idea I finished off the main figures (instead of leaving them as sketches). The main figures are original art and I just cut and pasted a bunch of heads and stuff into the background to give my editor, art director and Alex Zamm an idea of where I was going.

How could I be so wrong?

Alex's comments were the most accurate. He didn't want to give away the relationship between Atom and Evelyn too soon. He also requested space suits and alien weaponry to give it a visual kick.

I looked up at the clock and grimaced. But I knew he was right.

POST 100!!!

Post number 100!!!

A century for me, and what a panel to show off. This is Annette and I combing our super-powers to create something really fun.

It's such a pleasure working with Annette. One of the main reasons is that we're both constantly trying to push the frontier of what we're creating. We want something unique and different, something that you can't see in any other comic. Panel by panel we're getting a little better.

ZERO-G: page 8 panel 4

I like this panel, it's what I call a "performance panel". It's all about what they're saying and what the reaction is. I pulled out the background because I wanted to highlight this. I didn't want you looking at the cool things I've drawn in the background. Annette and I began some technical experimentation to try and figure out how best to execute these. Once I explained to her what I was trying to do, and why I was doing it, she took to it like a fish to water.

Coming next... the coloured version of the panel.

ZERO-G Evelyn & Bill Barron

Competing with the good ol' U.S. of A is multibillionaire Bill Barron and his corporate conglomerate. Their secret weapon is the beautiful and incredibly talented and smart astro-geologist Evelyn (Atom's college ex girl-friend).

I'm including this as one of the first panels to show you guys, cos I know it's one that's probably going to get overlooked in the book. Don't get me wrong, it's a huge reveal, and while I'm especially proud of the likeness for Evelyn (thank you again, Jess) that's not what I'm most chuffed about.

The script basically says that it's a press conference where Bill Barron reveals that he too will be launching his own expedition to the asteroid. The bigger reveal for the story is Evelyn (which is what should and will draw the reader's attention). This was supposed to be what I call a "phone-in page". A press conference you say? Easy! I'll just chuck them in front of a billboard with some of Bill's corporate logos on it.

Then I got thinking. If I were Bill Barron, and I wanted to make the biggest splash possible, what would I do? I'd shoot the press conference in front of my damn ship which *I* built. He's a one man space program. Who wouldn't want to show that off?!

Next thing I know, I'm giving Geoff Darrow a run for his money drawing crazy amounts of detail on the gantry around the space shuttle.

So what should have taken the time of the figures and shot me ahead of my schedule, became a nightmare page that I'm immensely proud of cos of this panel.

ZERO-G Deiter

Visually Deiter is one of my favourite characters to draw. Our older, craggy Navy SEAL sniper. I like his exaggerated features and made them even more extreme on the page. Big hooked nose, massive thick eyebrows, high cheekbones and square jaw. He's a little smaller than Buck (the other Navy SEAL - who carries around a minigun). Deiter instead carries a massive sniper rifle rigged to his gauntlet.

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...

ZERO-G General White

So here's the leader of the US team in Zero-G: General Eugene White. The brief was for an older black man. He obviously still had to be young enough and athletic enough that he could still lead the mission on the ground. In the face of Samuel L. Jackson and Denzel Washington, I wanted a more unique for my character.

In fact one of the key elements of designing a comic book characters is to make them distinctive. You want to make sure that because you're drawing them panel after panel after panel that they look unique. Judging for the possibility that you may not knock it out of the park with every panel (ie. not do your best, ie. f@ck up) you want to make sure that they're distinctive enough from every other character even on your worst day.

I like his white hair and black beard. I don't think anyone will confuse him for any other character.

ZERO-G Sonny McCan

No pr0n-looking image. As I said, I doubt anyone will see it. Not my finest moment in the sun... But it sure got me noticed. =)

So on a totally different note... here's my mate Simbo being specialist miner Sonny McCan.

The brief was a Seth Green sorta dude. I basically used Simbo, but the final coloured version will have him with red hair.

In the meantime, Simbo gets a decent portrait of himself.

ZERO-G Evelyn

I thought this would follow on nicely. This is Evelyn from Zero-G. While she barely makes an appearance in book 1, she's our heroine and love interest for the series. That's Jess helping me out.

I've been blessed with some great models. I classify a great model as one who is comfortable with me enough to just go for the feeling or stupid pose. They talk about there being "brave" actors who just go for the emotion and the scene and really put themselves out there. I've found I also need "brave" models who can act. I've found that the better I know people, the more they trust me. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not gonna screw people around.

I worked with my mate, Simbo recently and was totally blown away by how quickly he hit marks and emotionaly beats. I guess knowing him so well meant that I knew what direction to give, and what he would respond to. He was also totally comfortable and able to just really go big with his emotion without over-acting. When you see the images you will know what I'm talking about.

Jess (above) is also great for this. I've known her for six months and we get on like a house on fire. Her involvement in film both behind and in front of the camera makes her an ideal model for me. She knows production as well as acting. It's a good combo to have in a model.

One of the real tricks I need from a model is to be able to smile. Generally if you can convince me that your character is happy, you can convince me of anything. The funny thing is that it's in the eyes. I've had many people comment on previous pieces when I have worked with models that either I didn't know very well or didn't direct well or couldn't act. You can really see it. I really try to be true to the model, and any level of discomfort or anything missing really comes through. I might post a piece that illustrates this next as an example.

ZERO-G Atom Weaver 2

It's funny how characters evolve over time. In film it's usually a straight-forward direction. A single step. In tv and comics, it's a subtle rotation, one degree at a time, until you realise you're facing a totally different direction. Characters change for all sorts of reasons. Conflict, relationships and being affected by events around them.

One of the things that they don't often mention to you about, is time. In preparing and working on Zero-G I've been incredibly influenced by Frank Quitely (All-Star Superman), Tony Harris (Ex Machina) and Steve McNiven (Civil War). Their clean, open approach is refreshing, has magnificent clarity and above all... is damn fast to do.

The crux of their style is having a good colourist. When I finally unclenched my ass and realised that Annette is better than I ever will be (and better than most of the guys who colour each of these three's work - and she's only at the start of her career), I realised I could sit down and concentrate on the stuff I do best. Performance, mood and storytelling. I've put so much of the stuff that made my style so visually distinctive in her hands now.

So what you see above you is my style for Zero-G and the change in Atom Weaver also. Don't judge too harshly until you've seen Annette's colours. What you're looking at is only half the picture.

ZERO-G Atom Weaver

So here's the first sketch of our protagonist "Atom Weaver". Yes, that's his real name. Trust me, Alex Zamm (the writer) totally makes it work. There's a reason, and point to his name. It's clever and works.

I did forget to give him his glasses. You can see them on the pinup below.

Alex did a very clever thing and "cast" all the characters from actors. After Googling them I got a really good idea of was meant to be who, and what he was looking from each of them.

Oh yeah, several people have asked me about the plot for Zero-G.

An asteroid is passing by Earth, and NASA geologist Atom Weaver discovers that it is full of enough valuable minerals to upset the global economy. Countries and corporations start rushing for the asteroid before it leaves Earth's orbit. Reluctantly Atom is drafted aboard the mission for America. The US team find themselves trapped on the asteroid with a terrible menance after them. Also the asteroid is not what it seems. It has a very clever, very dark purpose.

For the sketches I used the crazy tonal effect which I've ditched for the finished pages. I just realised I don't need to be such a control freak when Annette is so damn good.

And then I...

I'm gonna try and cover what happened over the last few days. It's gonna be a bit of a list of stuff, but I'm gonna try and cover all the highlights.

MONDAY

So we woke up today to find that after five days of beautiful sunshine, it was raining its ass off. We decided that the zoo would be a bad idea and decided to make our way to LA. We headed to the station (packed with incredibly beautiful women) and hopped the 2 hour train ride to LA. Via a clueless taxi driver we eventually found our way to the Venice Beach House, a beautiful ivy covered old building 20m from the beach. Yes. 20m. What's the catch? Well... we booked for August not July. Anyway, the owner Brian went above and beyond the call of duty to find us an alternative hotel for tomorrow night and accomodated us last minute for that night.

We decided to chill out and walk along the beach. I'm gonna upload 4 million photos of the sunset and the beach in the next few days. After about 2 hours of walking we found our way to the Santa Monica pier (with only one cute goth chick for eye candy, crazy monkey dudes on roman rings, massive black dudes doing pushups, amateur soccer games, inline hockey and countless volleyball matches.) Grabbing burger and onion strings underneath the ferris wheel of a carnival on the beach we looked out on the ocean and just chiled the hell out. We dragged our asses back and crashed out.

TUESDAY

We woke up for breakfast and Sandra the awesomely cool chick who manned the desk drove us to the car rental place where we hired a Ford Taurus. Driving on the right side of the road freaked me out, but apart from what JAn calls, "DRIFT!" where I meander to the right side of the lane (in an attempt to get the driver's seat on the right side of the lane) I found it a lot easier than I expected. We drove to Beverly Hills and wandered around Rodeo Drive and all those places. We continued our addiction to the coffee bean and enjoyed the sun. The sun is actually beautiful here. It's 35 degrees and just beautiful, I wasn't even sweating. It's such a more temperate sun than in Australia.

We then headed to the Grove which is like Fox Studios meets an outdoor Chadstone to meet Roger, his lovely wife Yvette, Roger's mother and their two friends Michelle and Dean. Great Greek dinner and we said our goodbyes and went off to see Clerks 2, which is a worthy but not innovative sequel to the original. We dragged our asses back to the Jolly Roger Motel where I drew all night trying to fill our Shania's order. I pencilled a beautiful Wonder Woman for Renae (that I later totally ruined with watercolour).


WEDNESDAY

Highlight day cos we actually slept in. Every day we'd been running on 5-6 hours sleep, and wednesday we just crashed out. First up we headed back to the Grove for breakfast, Coffee Bean, some sunglasses for me and some presents for Jemma (JAn's uber girlfriend.) Then we headed to the Le Brae tar pits, which are a natural tar pits in the middle of LA (imagine that the museum is right next to a live paleontological excavation site complete with bubbbling tar pits. Inside the museum was fascinting, and I will post photos. Some of the photos may even have the cute 18 year old that was wandering around behind us. =)

Then over to Beverly Hills. People warned us that Beverly Hills was really sleazy, and I want you to imagine Richmond meets St. Kilda with the odd building that would do Collins St. justice. We wandered in and out of tattoo/metal parlours looking for gifts. The day was getting on and half the road was blocked cos Mann's Chinese theater was previewing Will Ferrell's "Talgeda Nights" which I was totally uninterested in. Somehow I convinced JAn to go to Hooters for dinner. We actually had a great meal and got served by the hottest chick in the place... A beautiful black girl by the name of Jelani (sorry, no photos) with the body of an Adam Hughes Wonder Woman. It was this and the great shredded pork that made it unnecessary to spend the rest of my night apologising to JAn.

After we left the Hooters, we were heading to the car when JAn had the great idea to stop and buy a mango off this lil old mexican lady. The mango was on a stick and she was cutting it into a flower. She would then cover it in lemon juice and then sprinkle salt and then chilli powder on it. It was absolutely incredible, and look forward to making the delicacy for people as summer hits.

Then we realised that we had to check in for the hotel! We rushed back to Venice beach (1.5 hours in the car - my back is killing me!) missing Ripley's Believe it or not, the Guiness Book of Records and Wax museum. We went for a walk along the beach and spent the night in, with me continuing to draw while we watched Stan Lee's "Lightspeed" (worse than terrible) and Blade: the series (not too bad).

THURSDAY

Spacedog meeting in Beverley Hills at 10am. We got so lost and got there at 10:30am. We then popped over to meet Renae Geerlings (Editor in Chief of Top Cow) and chatted to her for at least an hour or so. She showed us around the Top Cow offices, which are much more of a 70s office meets art studio and hella cool. She's awesome and was really gracious about all the bad art I dumped on her (apart from a cool pic of Sabertooth/Tyler I did, Wonder Woman and Grace (from the Innocents) were both pretty average.

We rushed back to Spacedog for a HUGE production meeting which went from 2pm til 530pm. It was a matter of going through deadlines, projects and assignments. ZER0: GENESIS issue 1 will be out by the February New York Con, and then showcase at San Diego next year. The TPB will be out by Sep.

From Spacedog we ducked back to the hotel, cleaned up and headed to Alex Zamm's house. Alex is the writer of ZER0: GENESIS whom we met at San Diego. To give you an idea of how cool and nice Alex is, within 10min of meeting him, he'd invited us to have dinner at his house, which we had arranged for tonight. Alex is the director of Inspector Gadget 2, a film he is immensely proud of (which he gave me a copy, which I can't wait to watch). His wife Denise is the costume designer for Die Hard 4, and their son, Dashell is one cool kid. Their house is one of the coolest houses I've ever seen. It looks over the house that was both Deckard's house from BLADERUNNER and the HOUSE FROM HAUNTED HILL. They have a curio cabinet which contains everything from Bob Hope's teeth, sharks in formaldehyde and their son's foreskin. Their coffee table is a showcase table of incredible jewellry made from human hair. Alex has a wall in his study with orginal art and dedications from Bill Watterson, Terry Gilliam, Joe Sinnott, Gary Larson, Matt Groening, Charles Schultz and a bunch of other huge names.

Dinner was incredible and we chatted to Alex til 1am about ZER0: GENESIS. He's got some incredibly inspiring ideas.

More on JAn and my thoughts about the dinner and its affect on us tomorrow...

If anyone wants to hear about anything in more detail, just post a comment.