KARA

12 days! I think that's the longest that I haven't blogged since I took that huge break last year. So what's happened? Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with alien abduction, accidental arrest, deportation, kidnapping or a zombie apocalypse here in Australia (I'm reading World War Z and The Walking Dead, so I'm a little obsessed right now). It has more to do with me heading away for the weekend and miscalculating the number of pages I had to do as a full time comic book artist. I accidentally came in under my weekly quota, and then worked my butt off to get back on my deadline the last week. Blogging was a luxury I had to forgo.

I also slipped back all my commission dates back a week, and you would have received an email from me, if I had to do so. But it's all good now. I'm in a great rhythm of drawing, smashing out a page a day as well as back into the commissions, so it's all back to normal at Camp Jason.

I'm also working on my writing pitch and enjoying the hell out of it. I love writing! While I draw, my brain nuts out the problem that stopped me writing last time, then as it clicks, I jot it down for later. It's a great process.

"But don't you draw?"

This has been the most common reaction. It's like human beings are only capable of one of the other, and only an incredible amount of audacity will allow you to consider doing both. But I realised that what I really enjoy doing is telling stories. Now I'm growing less and less interested in telling other people's stories and dying to tell my own. I'm looking forward to showing you the first one.

Now for today's piece: KARA. Why not Supergirl? I mean, everyone knows that Supergirl's real name is Kara. But Kara is also the name of my model and inspiration here. From the moment I met her, I thought to myself what a great Supergirl she would make. Despite being a fair few years older than Supergirl, Kara is funny, smart, lovely and that is actually her body. She's kinda stunning.

I wanted to get away from the Playboy cheesecake that permeates the current comics where she's depicted less like Supergirl and more like Superslut. I find those depictions of a 15 (16?) year old girl... dubious. When I wanted to do my own take I wanted to infuse her with a personality that I find interesting. So I turned to Kara, and she leaped at the opportunity to model as Supergirl for me.

My goal was to create a depiction of the character that young women would idolise as much as I idolise Superman. I wanted an ethereal, almost non-human majesty combined with a smile and tilt of the head that belies her humanity.

Thanks to Kara's patience and creativity, we shot a bunch of great reference photos, and I will get to more pieces in the future. In the meantime, thanks for bringing Supergirl back for me, Kara.

Unfortunately there's no step by step process as I was horrified to find that I'd flattened the image. =(

COMMISSIONS: Still taking these on, but delivery dates have moved to the new year. Upcoming are a bunch of original characters, Diamond Lil, Emma Peel, Deathblow & Grifter, some portraits and more!

SKETCHBOOKS: Some are still available (I'm finding them sandwiched between piles of comics, papers and books). $10 + $2 postage in Australia and $5 for outside.

SUPERGIRL

So I've been in a serious pit of despair about drawing recently.

It's totally all deadline driven and all about me biting off more than I can chew. And while I heard an amusing anecdote talking about always biting off more than you can chew, and chewing like buggery... well I did that for 8 weeks before I crashed and burned (burnt?).

Basically, 50+ hour weeks at the gym and 30 hours of drawing took its toll after 8 weeks. The problem was that based on my schedule of 3 pages per week, I realised that dropping the ball on a page, or even half a page was unrecoverable. There was no way I could step up to 3.5 or 4 pages per week to make up that lost page. Doing so would totally kill me.

So after I dropped a page, I got totally depressed. I knew I'd blown the deadline. That lead to another and another being dropped until the whole thing became so futile, I was basically immobolised by despair.

One of my best buddies, Mitch suggested that I just chill out and try to enjoy my drawing. To be honest, it had been a while since I had enjoyed anything I'd drawn. While I had gotten great satisfaction out of drawing Zero-G, it had also been really stressful. Mitch's advice came when my production manager, Lauren initiated a conversation with Spacedog publisher, head-honcho and all-round cool guy, Roger Mincheff to basically put the book out when I can get it out. We've pulled the rate back to 2 pages per week, but I'm helping Annette tone the art the way that I did it on the Emperor pages.

The results should be spectacular. Our rationale was that while we don't have the promotion of San Diego behind us, we will have one of the best looking books on the market.

As a token of thanks (and a means to lube up the drawing side of my brain again), I busted out this Supergirl in one night for Mitch's bday. It was so nice to finish a piece again. It's heavily inspired by the Adam Hughes Supergirl he did recently. It's not a patch on his, and there's so much more I'd like to do, but one night was the most time I could spend on it before I had to get stuck back into Zero-G.

NEXT: Phase panel 2.

SUPERJESS - page 2

Those of you paying attention can start to see some of the other work I've butchered to make this happen. Panel 3 is a sewer scene from THE FISHER that still hasn't seen print. I'd love to show you guys parts of that, but I'm not sure where I stand legally there. Basically, it's an entire 22 page (24 maybe) comic that I drew for Phospherescent Comics. It's where I met Annette. It was my last Aussie hurrah before throwing myself into Top Cow and Space Dog work. Last I heard they're thinking about doing it in black and white (WHY?!! WHY?!!!)

Panel 4 is the double page spread from FALLEN SKY that I posted a couple of days ago. I just redrew the central figures.

The likeness on the last panel (panel 5) is easily the best, but my favourite gag is panel 1. Such a geek in-joke.

It's funny, I'd known Jess for a while but never considered asking her to model for me. It's only when Ash asked me to do this and I'm working from the photos that Ash gave me (yeah I felt like such a stalker) that I'm like, "Wow! She'd make the best superhero! And she's really easy to draw!"

The funny thing is that some people are easier to draw than others. I have no idea why. Some faces are impossible to nail down, others just flow straight out of the pen. Even with a photo (certain types of lighting can make your job easier) you can still be in trouble. People think it's really easy, that you can just trace stuff and it will look like them. Uh uh. If you've never done it before, try it some time. Get some tracing paper and trace over a photo. I guarantee it will look NOTHING like them. Likenesses are an art.

So Jess has bailed me out of a couple of last-minute deadline predicaments, and I've helped her with her films (storyboarding etc). You will see more of her cropping up in my future work. Another poor soul conscripted into the relentless (and model-dependent) Jason Badower art machine.

You could be next...

SUPERJESS - page 1

First up, I should really emphasize that this is a total piss-take. Jess is one of the funniest, smartest, creative and motivated girls I know. She's incredibly switched on and the whole thing was taken with a huge amount of grace on her part.

I basically took all the little things that I knew about her (yes, I do pay attention when you clients get chatting) and rolled them all into one-panel gags. It's totally over the top with a nice little grain of truth at the centre.

I could only two tone everything (three for the lycra) and relied heavily on photos for backgrounds because of the time constraint. One week to write, draw two pages and a cover - all fully coloured and lettered. As I said before, if it wasn't a bucket of fun, I wouldn't have done it.

The colouring was Luna Brothers inspired (see Girls and Ultra).

I liked fading out the letter balloons so that they integrated with the artwork also. I think it meshes better.

SUPERJESS - cover

Last year I was asked by Ashleigh (the client who played Lucy) whether I do commissions. I replied that it depended upon the size of the project, what it is, and how much I'm getting paid. She mentioned that Jess (Ash's training partner and also one of my clients) was having her 21st. Apparently, the girls go to greater and greater lengths to commemorate each other's 21st. Videos were commonplace and speeches were almost passe (no hypheny thing above the "e").

Seeing the comic-likeness I did of her for Lucy, Ash asked me if I would do a comic for Jess. I asked her if she had any ideas. She mentioned that Jess basically looks like a superhero and would I do a comic about her as a superhero. I said I would get back to her. That night, the comic basically wrote itself. It's only 2 pages, but it was pretty dense with gags from knowing Jess for about 6 months at that stage.

I called up Ash, emailed her the script, talked cash and the deal was a go.

This was done at the height of my Luna Brothers influence. It also inspired me to colour and ink the Frank Quitely Superman. If you take another look at it, you can see the pallette is almost identical.

While it's not a perfect likeness of her, it does certainly does capture her.

So Jess... I've asked you repeatedly over email if I can post this and you haven't replied. I don't usually take silence as consent, so you better get in touch with me if you don't want any more of this to go up. =)