CASTLE part 1

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.

WANTED page 4 and 5

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.

LEFT BEHIND page 6

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

FAMILY part 4

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

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!