WANTED page 6, 7 & 8

Well it looks like my next HEROES story is going up tomorrow. I woke up last week like a kid on Christmas morning all ready to see my story lettered and there was still Dennis Calero's train crash. Oh well. Apologies to anyone that I mislead. It should be up tomorrow.

I love reading it for the first time, it's a totally new experience. I'm finding that the better I do, the closer the finished product is to what I imagined it to be. Before there used to be a huge deviation between what I planned and what I saw. These days the gap is closing and any deviations are usually pleasant surprises from the collaborative process. There's something really satisfing about seeing the lettering in place. It's like it becomes a real comic when there's words.

It's funny looking back on the way I depicted the characters. In 141 written by Timm Keppler on page 3 panel 4, the agent says, "This ain't no place for you kids...". Now, I'm not sure if Timm is intending on being funny, or the characters are actually kids. In which case, I feel a little bit weird (a lot weird actually) drawing them wearing this stuff! See, I thought that the characters of Sparrow and Abby were based on Kat and Abby, Zach and Ollie's girfriend and fiance respectively. I mean, wouldn't it be a bit weird if Abby is getting married to Lee and she's underage? I'm hoping that the agent is just being casual here. Otherwise it's all gone a bit weird.

Regardless, when you see 142, which should be up tomorrow, you can see how I've really toned down the outfits. The main reason is that apparently they were very distracting and generated too much discussion in an area that I didn't want people to be considering. Therefore, it was a poor costuming choice on my part. I hope you find their new outfits cool, sleek, simple and a lot more appropriate.

I had so much fun with these pages though. Harrison recommeded the tavor that Thompson Jr is carrying and while I normally hate drawing guns because they're so damn tedious, I really enjoyed drawing this gun. It's so different and so modern. I also particularly like the dust particle effect all over the place from the caved in wall. I don't really like movement lines (I find them a bit guache), so I like to try and create movement in other ways.

Page 7 was a blast. I hadn't really drawn many action scenes before HEROES and I'm really enjoying them. I like going wide, especially when there's a bunch of people running around. Panel one is a good example of me trying to set the scene. Originally Sparrow just punches Thompson and knocks him to the ground. I was concerned that if he was just lying on his feet in front of them he would stand up and just attack them again. By knocking him down through the floor it not only shows that he is literally "beneath" our main cast, but that he has no recourse against them. I mean, what is he going to do there? Throw rocks at them?

The panel where she punches him through the floor with a big rock fist turned out extremely well. It's the sort of widescreen action that I love to try and get away with. You're going to see some more widescreen stuff from Sparrow in the next story too. It gets very fun.

I promise to start showcasing all the sketches I did over Comic Con (both good and bad) right after this. I might attach a couple at the end of every post after the next installment of Rebellion that goes up.

I will also talk about the preview pages that are up for BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (http://www.barkit.com/) after the next 8 pages of HEROES: Rebellion.


I've also been offered my first long-term writing gig courtesy of http://flexchampion.com/. I was asked to write and draw the first issue for their series ORBIT. The plan was that they wanted to approach a different artist and writer for each issue to get totally different takes on their characters. Marcus, the creator of the Flex Champions wanted me to create personalities and a world for his characters. I worked closely with him and came up with a world and a first issue script. He then asked me what ideas I had for future issues and I shot some back at him. He liked the ideas so much he asked me to write the next 4-5 issues. My brain has been ticking away and I've got some really exciting and fun ideas. The stories are about children and the pressures from their parents, choices, a love triangle, a top secret covert black ops organization and a dash of terrorism. Shake it up, serve with lime and you have my pitch for ORBIT.

The problem is that I can't draw all the issues. So if you think you can draw similar to my style and have 4-5 sequential pages you can show me, email me at grael23@yahoo.com with the subject line "ORBIT SAMPLE PAGES" and I will have a look and see if you're appropriate for the gig. Or maybe you know someone that might be able to do the job? Put us in touch. You never know, you could be a part of making the magic happen.

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.

WANTED page 3

Blogging on my birthday!

Last night I had the pleasure of being invited to the Digital LA event at Meltdown Comics on DIGITAL COMICS. I had an absolute ball and met some great people. Everyone was so nice and it was great to see the spectrum of people that had sold out the event. Also on the panel were:


- Sam Humphries, creator of MySpace Comic Books
- Jermaine Turner, Disney XD, Director- Original Series
- Rich George, IGN, Comics Editor
- Jonah Weiland, Comic Book Resources, executive producer
- Chip Mosher, BOOM! Studios, Marketing and Sales Director

I think it was a fun panel, but I just felt that I wasn't informative enough. Kevin assured us that we wouldn't need to prepare anything, just field questions from him. While I have a fairly good general understanding of comics, there's a lot of numbers, facts and ideas that I don't have off the top of my head. As a future note to people going on a panel - bring a piece of paper to job one word notes down. Losing your train of thought is a serious hazard as you try and remember what you have/haven't told people.

Here's a bunch of thoughts from the panel and some I've added with the beauty of retrospect and the @digitalla & #digitialla Twitter feed:

1. Don't use comics to launch a screen play unless:
a. You are an already established comic book storyteller. You might be a great scriptwiter but chances are you're just going to create a crap comic.

b. You can convince a professional artist that their spare time is well invested in your venture. The more established you are, the easier that is.

c. Take the time/years to LEARN how to be a good comic book writer. But be aware this is going to take time from your script writing and marketing. And if you're not passionate about comics, just stick to what you're already doing. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner are two good placed to start. Then read and study heaps of good comics.

NB Jermaine from Disney said his senior executive won't even look at a comic. In fact, they will say, "Nice comic, but where's the script?"

2. Jermaine from Disney surprised me and said that companies will put up with your lack of experience and unprofessionalism if you're THAT DAMN GOOD because if they don't spend the time, someone else will. (Me? I wouldn't rely on that.)

3. Twitter has been exceptionally helpful for promotion for CBR.

4. Social networking is a cheap and effective way to promote your comics.

5. Comics are where the "cool hunters" hang out. They are voracious for material. If you're doing a comic give them material to find and consume. But they can smell crap from a mile away if you're faking it.

6. There is room for a missing link between comics and cartoons - but right now everything to me looks like a bastard medium with a combination of the weaknesses of both. Look for Spiderwoman by Bendis and Maleev from Marvel to possibly fill the gap.

7. Funny quote from Chip "They're artists. If they could communicate they'd be writers."

8. Keep your eye on Longbox to do an Itunes with comics.

9. Open contests are a terrible way of finding artists. Deviant Art, Flickr, Digitalwebbing and Pencil Jack are great places for creators to hook up. Get your stuff on there if you want to be found. Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith met on the Spawn.com forums.

10. There is virtually no comic market for young kids ie. about 6 years old. The comic market is getting older.

11. Put your comics out on as many platforms as possible to maximize exposure.

12. Comic movies are being made because the geeks are now in charge (from Jenny).

MY THOUGHTS SUMMARIZED AND ELABORATED:

1. Companies should be using the low entry cost of comics for cheap narrative visual online content.

2. . Online comics are an affordable means to test your comic and its market before you go mortgaging yourself to get it in print.

3. Aspect ratios and storytelling: Your screen is wide, your page is tall. Don't use tall vertical panels as it creates a tedious need to scroll back up. Lay out comics in rows for easiness to read. Check out Bryan Hitch's layouts.

4. Fonts - shell out for a good font. DON'T USE COMIC SANS!!!

5. Don't be scared of asking an unprofessional artist (and by that I mean someone who is untried and has been unpaid to do comics) to produces 3-5 complimentary pages within 10 days to prove they can do the job. Skill is one thing, reliability is another. There's hundreds of potentials out there. Make them work for it to prove they want it or you're just going to end up in trouble.

6. If you're a comic book writer, while your artist is drawing you should by hyping the hell out of your upcoming comic. Get on Facebook, Deviantart, Myspace and any forum you can find and WRITE! Promote your stuff while your art-monkey is drawing. Become a sales person.

7. 50% Energy to create. 50% energy to market yourself and/or your product.

8. Free online content does not inhibit actual sales. HEROES and BOOM! have proven this. The HEROES graphic novel sold 30,000 copies at $30 a pop while the content is all still free on their websites for download in pdf format that you could take to your local Kinkos and print out.

9. Drawing digitally makes you fast, but you lose the option of selling original artwork. You also don't have the rights to make any prints.

10. 30,000 copies is considered successful by Marvel and DC. If you sell that as an independent comic your profit margin is virtually equal to that of a 60,000 selling book for Marvel and DC.

If you want actual numbers, take a look at this link:

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2009/2009-05.html

Pretty low huh? There's been a 19% drop in sales generally. Here's May 2008 to give you an idea.

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2008/2008-05.html

Interestingly enough, in January of this year, Amazing Spiderman 583 sold over 500,000 copies over two months (as it featured a cameo by Obama). This proves:

a. The President is able move mountains more comic books than the entire Justice League and Xmen combined.

b. There is a serious market out there... somewhere.

Hi to Mel, Rachel, Michael, Crystal, Loren, KW, Ken, Remy, Shannon, Chris, Jenny, Tim, Dale and everyone else I met... and of course Heather and Kasey for coming out and saying "Hi" last night. I really appreciate you all turning up and hope you got something out of it.

Thanks also to Ollie Grigsby who stopped by beforehand. You should really check out the 4 pages that Ollie did for Penny Arcade. The boy genii at Penny Arcade, Jerry and Mike did three page 1's for three various ideas. One of them was THE LOOKOUTS. Here's page 1:

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/10/

Ollie approached them about pursuing an extra 4 pages. He wrote it up, Mike found an amazing artist called Becky Dreistadt and the magic was born. I'm warning you though. This stuff is Art, and you need to work for it to truly appreciate it:

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/1/

Swing by Ollie's blog for his excellent write up and insights on this comic. It's worth it just to see how his brain works:

http://www.olivergrigsby.com/

ps. I will post about page 3 of WANTED next post. I've included it here so next post isn't too picture heavy. I've been so busy with a bunch of professional writing gigs that I haven't been blogging. Bear with me, it's just something else I have to get my head around.

WANTED page 2

I've been hosting Aussies in LA and my blogging has gone to the dogs. My buddy, Jason and I have been revelling in the gay overtext of ARMY OF TWO to the chagrin of our girlfriends. For those who want the funniest review of Army of Two which will explain exactly what I'm talking about, click HERE for the brilliant Zero Punctuation. When you're finished being distracted there, don't forget to come on back and read this post.

I'm writing this now as a warm-up to drawing. I'm not quite ready to get started. I'm sure you know what I mean. The cogs need a bit of time to get oiled and I'm sure a blog post is the perfect antidote.

This page was one huge cheat. What I can't figure out is why I repeated the same picture of Thompson! I drew an original picture of Thompson Jr on page 1 and blurred the hell out of it so no one ever saw it. I could/should have used it here instead of recycling the one picture of him three times from the first page. As they say, "E's lovely, but e's not very bwight."

This may seem like such a cop out, but I think it got the job done. I actually drew the Micah separately and just pasted and resized him into the panels. The beauty of this page was that it allowed me to spend more time on other stuff.

If time is my budget, I found I was able to save a lot to spend it elsewhere. I think you got your money's worth... especially given it's free!

Alexandre in one of his recent comments mentioned my guns and how I try to depict them accurately. Several people have asked about this. My secret is the lax gun laws in LA. Not the gun laws in LAX. The relaxed gun laws in LA. We all the same page yet?

In Australia NO ONE has a gun. If there's a shooting it's in every paper even if the shooting occurred in another state! You can't even get paintball guns in most places and toy guys don't resemble anything like real guns. But LA... In my first few months here I went down to the awesome army disposal story on Hollywood and grabbed myself a bunch of pellet firing replica hand guns. They've got a little orange nib on the end of the barrel so you know they're fake. But they look, feel and weigh like a real gun. When I give these props to a model, the performance I get is phenomenal. There's a real feel of respect for the weapon, and then they just get an evil grin (no matter how pacifistic they are) and just go for the performance with real gusto.

So there you go, another secret exposed!

Ollie just asked me if I wanted to do the 8 page finale of REBELLION written by James Martin esq. Of course I said, "Hell yes."

My 22 page script is being looked over by the kind folks at SUMAJIN. It's a covert action thriller that puts the characters in some very interesting places. Ollie Grigsby and Alex Hammond gave me such great feedback. They really helped me crank it up a heck of a lot. Man, I learn so much working with writers I really admire. It seems that the company funding the idea is very happy with it so far. I'm just waiting on final approval. Then I can start on layouts and character sketches. It's gonna be tight but fun!

I also finished my four issue mini-series of an unannounced project. At least you know it will released on time, right? Or if it doesn't, it's totally not my fault. I will word you up when it hits the mean streets of your local comic shop.

APPEARANCE: I'm doing a panel for Digital LA on digital comics being held by MELTDOWN COMICS on July 9th. I will be there from 7pm.

Here's the link:

http://digitalla.net/

There's also a Facebook page and you can join the other 235 people and sign up for:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=91736912490

The panel will go for an hour and a half starting at 8pm. I will bring along my silver pens to sign graphic novels, but I apologise, I won't be able to do any sketches. Sorry! Hit me up at San Diego for the sketching action.

WANTED page 1

You can find the free download of the comic I'm talking about here:

http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=140

Man, oh man has this last stint of HEROES been fun and tough.

I'm sure Harrison Wilcox, writer-extraordinaire, all-round nice guy and scourge of the undead would agree that the spoiler for the big twist on the thumbnail was a huge downer. Sure we reveal that Thompson Jr is the shooter three panels in... but really? Couldn't we have picked something else? When I'm drawing I'm always wondering who writes the preview text and picks the images. I'm always wondering which panel I would use to preview it. Personally, I would have used a cropped version of Micah tied up on page 5 or page 4 panel 2 or even page 1 panel 3 without Thompson in it. It just spoiled the cool reveal and let us know too much about the story before reading it. Ah well.

I was specifically asked to come back for this story by Ollie Grigsby and Frank my editor because I'd drawn the last installment where Thompson, Donna, Fallon and Sabine had turned up. That was called INTO THE WILD (check links on the right) and it was written by Timm Keppler (who has unfortunately left the HEROES stable) and Jim Martin. It was great to come back to these characters, but I will go into that some more when I get to page 3. All things in time, my friend.

As you can see from the actual line art, I wasted the time drawing an actual Thompson for panel 2. I think I was going to re-use it for page 2, but ended up repeating the image from panel 4 instead. I don't know what sort of stroke of sub-brilliance inspired that, but I wasted time and recycled images that had already been seen. Not my finest moment.

But here it is for those who care. Yeah, that's you in the back row. Thanks. Takes a bow to the one person clapping.

Man, that background on panel 3 took some time. I don't know if you noticed the reflection of the water on the ground, but that took like, no time at all and looked far better than I expected. Is anyone else getting the impression that I kind of just flail around and sometimes stuff seems to work out really well?

Well, it's not an inaccurate impression.

I'm generally a big fan of Comicraft who do the lettering for all the HEROES graphic novels. I like their fonts and their sense of design. I wasn't a big fan of what they did on this page with panels 1 and 2. It works, but it's just a personal thing that I don't like balloons breaking over the panel edge. I don't like anything breaking outside of my panel borders. It's a personal and stylistic thing, but I like to keep my comics very simple and draw you into the action within the panel. I find that if you cross things outside the panel you suddenly become aware that you're reading a comic and pop outside the story. But that's just my call.

You can see on my layouts on the left how I indicated it. And that's pretty much from Harrison's directions in the script. Perhaps it was a stylistic choice on Comicraft's part, perhaps they thought it was just quicker. Perhaps both?

FRIDAY: Page 2. Colour palettes and repetition is the mother of saved deadlines.