THE TRIP

Parts one and two of The Trip are up. You can find them as graphic novels 160 and 161. Oh, forget it. Here are the links to the free graphic novels. Grab the PDFs if you have the bandwidth. And if you don't have the bandwidth, I'll still be your friend. I'd just rather you didn't touch me.

http://www.nbc.com/heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=160


http://www.nbc.com/heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=161

The first part was written by Foz McDermott (whom I worked with on COG) and the second part written by Jim Martin who I've worked with so often that an umbilical cord trails between his mansion in the clouds and my Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs.

This was also the first time I got to work with Nanci Quesada. We got off to a tumultuous start, but it turned into my favorite HEROES working experience after.

It started one morning when I was still sleeping in my coffin. I heard the phone go but I decided that the lid on my coffin was just too heavy right then to even check who it was, so I let it go to voicemail. Bad mistake. It was Ollie Grigsby on the Batphone.

When I finally rose from my Place of Eternal Rest I immediately checked my email. The principle line of communication for most people (the phone) lay forgotten. There was an email from Nanci Quesada asking me if I was exclusive to Aspen and would I like to do some HEROES work. I was excited to work for Nanci. I admire her stable of artists. Dennis Calero. Michael Gaydos. I'm huge fans of those guys. And to pull up a metaphorical, and perhaps somewhat hopeful, chair next to them would be really exciting as a creator and fanboy. But there was a small hitch in the road. I was booked out so solidly that I was outsourcing my bodily functions to India. This is normally a great problem to have... Except when HEROES comes knocking on your door. But maybe, just maybe if it was a nice easy story to draw (like Stuck In the Middle also written by Jim Martin which was mainly set in a closet). If it was simple enough I would be able to fit it in. So I asked Nanci to send me the script so I could take a look.

So Nanci sent me the script. I think I got to the page where Foz describes a ring-wraith flying over Arkham Asylum set in the lava stricken lands of Mordor when I finally blanched. There was no way I could squeeze this in. You could roll up the world's largest shoe horn and the biggest tub of lube you could find and it still wouldn't fit. I wrote her back telling her how busy I was, and that the story was just too much, but that I would love to work with her in the future.

I then noticed the phone and called Ollie back. Ollie asked me about the story telling me how much he'd love to see me draw it. He thought it was right up my alley, and I heartily agreed. But I told him I couldn't do the story. It was wa-ay too much work with everything I had on my plate. The way I hit deadlines is by making sure I don't take on too much work. And unfortunately this just came in too tough too late. The disappointment in his voice almost broke me. I'd never felt so appreciated in a single, "oh."

Then fortune struck. An email arrived explaining delays on another project. Suddenly what was due that week was on indefinite hold. Providence? Fate? Destiny? Or D. All of the above?

I was free to do the HEROES gig, but what if Nanci had already assigned it to someone else? I emailed her. Sent a carrier pigeon. Made smoke signals and then noticed that Nanci popped her phone number on the bottom of the email. I called her immediately and we had a great little chat. She told me the stories were still available and she'd love to have me. Yes! Score!

A quick email to Annette confirmed that she too was available. The pieces were really falling into place. This was too good to be true. Nanci told me the first six page part (160) was due on the 23rd - the same day I was leaving for Boston on vacation to freeze my proverbials off and stay with my girlfriend Heather's parents. So I told Nanci that I would have all twelve pages done before I left. Then I looked at the date. The 10th of December. 12 pages with layouts, art, colors and sign offs. It was going to be a rough one. I called Heather and checked that she was ok pretty much not seeing me until vacation. While disappointed, she saw what a great opportunity it was said it was totally cool with her.

So, pith helmets on we hacked our way into this twelve page jungle of fan boy soup.

I saw one fan asking what he was supposed to get out of these graphic novels. I'm not sure what you're supposed to get out of any of these graphic novels. But maybe you should be reading these two graphic novels as a subconscious stream of Freudian and Jungian metaphors detailing everything you need to know about Hiro's profile. Correct diagnosis should allow you to construct a mind map and psychological profile so accurate you will be able to predict every line of Hiro's dialog for ever more.

Or maybe you're just supposed to have fun...?

I know I did.

Until the thing that made it so fun did a heel turn so drastic that New World Order Hulk Hogan would have been proud.

Oh how little we knew. Back when Nanci, Annette and I were so young and innocent. With our eyes full of stars, dreams and moon beams.

GI JOE part 3

Let's finish this GI JOE action off so we can get into my latest HEROES work. You can go do your homework and grab the free comic at:

http://www.nbc.com/heroes/novels/index.shtml?novel=160

Come back in a day or so and I should have the first blog entry up. There will be a quiz.

Right. Go Joe!

<- Stormshadow Paris: Tiger stripes. Because Paris is filled with tigers. Why you would think you could camouflage in with them rather than say, getting eaten is beyond me. On the other hand, there's something distinctly and delightfully low-brow Parisian about covering yourself in a tiger-print jumpsuit. It reeks wonderfully of Euro-trash. Like something you'd see on a Eurovision broadcast.









<- Stormshadow Movie: Some sweet desert camo to hide his awesomeness before he impales you on his family heirloom katana.












<- Stormshadow Basic: Everything the power broker needs to wear to work. Urban camouflage and katana. I just read MARKET FORCES by the brilliant Richard K. Morgan and I can't help but think the characters in that would strangely love this suit.



















<- Stormshadow Arctic: Not what I'd wear to the arctic. In fact, I can tell you that I went a little more Snake Eyes - full body head to toe black. Just to prove it, here's me in the gear I amassed to brave the Boston cold on Mount Sunapee. It's Silence of the Lambs meets Snake Eyes:
















































<- Viper Basic: I always wear an armoured face mask with a tshirt. I do like the bad-ass alternative camo pants that you can get with this outfit though. I'm sure he'd give a mean head butt in this thing. Anyone else notice the ridiculously overt Army of Two reference with the masks? Cool, but seriously derivative. I wonder if the Vipers in the movie were also suspiciously homo-erotic in their over-compensation to appear the peak of heterosexual. The Army of Two guys went all the way on the dial from Hetero, to Manly, to Bad-ass, to Rambo and to finally just You're Really Just Trying to Hard Cos You're Actually George Michael Toilet Block Lover. <- Viper: Movie. Just the plain design bereft of camouflage. A little more sensible in the body armor department to. You can also get a button camera so people can watch you kill or be killed. Sweet. Reality tv to a new level.













<- Neo Viper: Some sweet badness wrapped in a fine camouflage design. <- Viper Arctic: Here he is with the urban camo design. I like their design a lot. Practical and largely makes sense except for the fact that awesome looking red visor would make a really good target. Definitely what not to wear if you ever get turned into a zombie.









UPDATE: So I'm writing the second issue of my six issue graphic novel called ORBIT for Flexchampion.com. I'm also drawing a prelude mission which is the sixth story and I'm about 12 pages into that. It's easily the best work I've ever done. And Annette is coloring that. My uber-website is coming along and I should be able to make some announcements on that in the next few weeks when it goes live. This is not a personal website. It's a website that will change the way you interact with the web. Big talk, but you can decide whether I achieved my goal.

Next up HEROES 160: Trip. Written by Foz McDermott and art by myself and the amazing Annette Kwok.

GI JOE part 2

Damn, I thought I posted this. Apparently not. So without further ado, let me bring you the blogpost that time forgot.

Not a huge amount to say, so let's let the pictures do the talking:

<- Snake Eyes Basic: Here's the base I used for all the Snake Eyes pictures. Generally I drew a head and body for all the characters and just drew over the top in various layers to create each costume change. Slower than a phone booth but more variations than a big "S".






<- Snake Eyes Arctic: His outfit looks a little bit... effeminate because I had to pull his sleeves up so that we could interchange the guns I drew. Each gun came with a hand so we could just overlay it over these illustrations. I believe I somehow merged the Duke arctic illustration here using the magic of Photoshop.











<- Snake Eyes: Movie. Take your basic Snake Eyes, and dice into small pieces. Put pieces into a searing pan with sesame oil and wasabi and stir lightly. Add belts, buckles, arm bands and enough pockets and pouches to make Rob Liefeld happy. Serve with white wine.












<- Snake Eyes: Paris. Over in France right now, if you're a super ninja, hooded coats are all the rage. Gone are the accessories and pouches, in are sleek lines and minimalism. It's so gauche to show how you're going to kill someone. Let the victim guess and then get sucked in by your designer lines, and dynamic flowing silhouette.











<- Snake Eyes Accelerator: This design was unfortunately never used. Mainly because it would have broken not just the game, but the universe itself with it's conceptual awesomeness. Snake Eyes in an accelerator suit would initiate mass suicides across the globe as humanity would have no further purpose knowing it had peaked at this moment of uber-coolness. Survivors of this zeitgeist holocaust would go into psychic shock, blocking out the entire concept of our society and go back to living in caves trying desperately to reboot humanity and society until once again they inevitably conceived the idea of Snake Eyes in an accelerator suit.





<- Scarlett Movie: I really like these armored designs for the JOE team. Drawing them I got an opportunity to get inside the thought process behind them. They look and feel reasonably practical to me. I hate stuff that looks impractical. Huge breastplates where you wonder how they bend at the waist just irritate me to look at.











<- Scarlett Fatigues: shown here modeling the desert camouflage texture. Not what I'd design for a basic fatigues outfit. But at least it doesn't make her look like a box. I remember bumping into a police officer lady I worked with when she was out of uniform. I almost didn't recognize her because she actually had a figure! Most fatigues and uniforms do nothing for either men or women.









<- Scarlett arctic: This was basically just an illustration of the outfit she wore in the film for this particular sequence. I like it. She looks cute and practical. I decided to leave out the textures for this one as I think the costume stands up quite well by itself.












<- Scarlett Accelerator: I'm pretty sure she never had one in the film, but I drew one up just for her. I used the basic Duke model and just tweaked it so it fitted over her. I tried to follow the mandate of making it still look like an accelerator suit but also let you know that there's a woman not a man inside of it.


NEXT: One last GI JOE post coming with Stormshadow and the Viper.

GI JOE

I know I've been really quiet recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been drawing my tush off. I've just been too busy to blog about it! But that's changed so let's do some catch up on what I'm allowed to talk about.

<- The Baroness in her Paris outfit modeling (of all things) a tiger camo texture. If you ever fall into a pit of tigers in the middle of a gunfight, this is what you want to be wearing. But beyond its impracticality, it looks bad ass. This whole texture is a homage to Tony "The Tiger" my housemate who coded the game.

My housemate, Tony works for an amazing company called THE VISIONAIRE GROUP (TVG). They're an incredible digital company responsible for a lot of a-level movie websites (Wolverine: Origins, Gamer, Surrogates and the Watchmen Motion Comic). He heard they needed an illustrator so he put my name forward. I did a storyboarding job for an ad for them (something I don't normally do - but this was very fun). Jeff, my contact there is a huge comic book fan so he loves my style and the way I work. The next project was the immense GI JOE FACEBOOK application.

<- The Baroness in her standard slinky and sexy movie outfit. This year in Milan they're doing full body cat suits with a large camouflage print. This is an underrated, practical design used exclusively for assaults in fake, plastic gardens. Take it into a real garden and your ass is grass.


Tony and the team designed the game and it was up to me to design the characters to fit into it. We had a meeting and a thousand and one great ideas were thrown around. The basic premise is that you start with a lowly grunt you can customize them through rewards garnered from successful battles to make a unique unstopable fighting machine. My favourite idea was that the highest level of costume you can unlock was the 1980s original Joe costumes.

<- Here's the Baroness in her plain leather outfit. I'm not sure when she wears this in the film. No, I haven't seen the film. You can read why down the bottom of this blog. I included this one without the texture because I like it just plain. There's enough going on without adding all the extra camo textures etc. I love how shiny she looks. I love drawing shiny textures. They're so much fun. Ok. Maybe it's time for me to get out more.

Unfortunately the 80s idea got shelved, but the rest of the ideas were put into play. You can choose from either three members of the Cobra team - Baroness, Storm Shadow or a Viper or the Joe team - Duke, Scarlett and Snake Eyes. They start off pretty standard, but there is an insane level of customization. Arctic gear? Sure. What color? What texture? Did you like the outfit from a particular scene in the movie? Chances are it's there and you can make it any color and any sort of camo texture you'd like. Let's not even talk about guns and vehicles.

<- Arctic Baroness was a version that wasn't in the film. But we decided that everyone would have an arctic costume. So I had to design this based off her other costumes. It's very similar to the "movie" costume with a hood and white furry bits. It's like a slinky leather version of what Han Solo wore in Empire Strikes Back. Here we see her clad in her urban texture on the arctic outfit. Perhaps she's planning on assaulting Finland or Boston in the winter?

We had to be smart about this. We had a capped budget so we had to be careful what we did within that to get the biggest bang possible. We quickly determined that if I had to draw each gun for each person, that's six versions of the same gun! I think there are 15 guns all up. So 6x15 is... a lot more than we had the time, money or will to draw. A generic gun arm pose was figured out. You will note that all of the weapon arms sit at right angles to us with the palm open towards us. This way we could draw each gun once and it would fit into anyone's hand.

<- Duke in his training outfit. I think this is what he wore all around base. I love drawing different textures, and in this illustration, playing with some very fun, very dramatic lighting. I think he's in his urban camo texture here. The texture for this illustration only went on his pants. It's like he's wearing different fatigues. He's doing what everyone does, and covering his ass.

A huge shame was that they asked me to draw the likenesses for the actors, and I think I did a really nice job. I've included them here so you can see them. But unfortunately there was some clause somewhere that the actors (or someone) needs to approve every likeness that's drawn or painted of them. Somehow that couldn't be done. It was either time or cost prohibitive.


<- Here's Duke in his combat armor outfit that he wore for the movie. I did love this design. Here it is with... aw crap. I can't even remember what texture is on it. And the thumbnail I'm staring at is too small to make it out. I've spent too many years not eating carrots and being single to make that out. But anyway, drawing it made me appreciate the subtleties of this beautiful design.

If you look at the actual game they've stuck new heads of previously approved artwork on top of the bodies that I drew. This was less than ideal, but it was the solution we all had to roll with and I totally understood why they had to do so. I was told that Paramount absolutely loved my rendition of the characters, and that many of the women especially loved what I did with the Baroness. It's a shame that the original heads didn't get used in the game, but you can see those original heads here.

<- This is Duke's fatigues with a small camo texture. There's a large and small one. I guess you might want to measure the leaf size of the surrounding foliage you're going into. Nothing more embarrassing than deploying into the field in the wrong camo size. But seriously, each camo texture created a whole different look. The small worked better on some outfits, large on the others. So we let the user decide.

I think TVG did a great job of compositing the new heads and you would never know the difference if I hadn't pointed it out.

Another thing that I did to make the characters all look like they're occupying the same space was to add a fill light. I picked the fiery glow from the promo posters that were released. It added a sense of urgency and danger. I personally love a good fill light. It can add an extra level of dimension and round out images that seemed flat before.


<- Duke in his plain arctic gear without any textures on it. I don't think Duke ever got to wear this in the movie. So I adapted it from what Ripcord wore.


The huge irony of working on this project is that I never got to see the damn film! I mean, it's not like it would have cost me anything. I could have claimed it on tax. But I dragged my poor, supportive but ultimately suffering girlfriend off to the Arclight. We got there five minutes late and they refused to sell us tickets. I mean, what were we going to do, ruin someone's enjoyment of the ads or a random trailer they could catch on the Quicktime site? Seriously people. I think we need to stand down a moment.


<- The unused Accelerator Suit that I drew. Unfortunately this bad boy never saw it into the game for one reason or another. So feast your eyes on the technological badness of the Accelerator suit. Scarlett and Snake Eyes got one too. I know what you're thinking. Snake Eyes + Accelerator suite = World freakin' Dominating Awesome. Maybe you can just pretend that he has one.

NEXT: More GI JOE

CASTLE PART 3

Andrew Marlowe, creator of CASTLE shook my hand and wished me luck with all the work I had to do. All the while you're speaking to him, you're painfully aware that you're speaking to someone incredibly intelligent who is measuring your every word and intonation. His insights during the meeting were quick and incisive. He cuts to the point quickly and effectively communicating that he had already played out all the possibilities in his head. I learned a great deal watching him work and I'm beginning to appreciate the qualities and the level of vision required by a show runner.

After Andrew had left I turned to Howard Grigsby the producer of CASTLE. I asked him if it would be possible to come down to the set and watch any of my art being filmed. He said of course and would keep me in the loop.

Unfortunately schedules clashed and I wasn't able to see the sets that were made out of my artwork. Nor did I see any of the scenes that involved my graphic novel. But I got to sit in on the scene at the police precinct where Castle explains to Beckett why people get involved in the vampire sub culture.

Gina was my guide and took me around the set. The first thing that hit me was that the precinct set is HUGE. Holding cells, corridors, office after office, interrogation (er interview) rooms, stairways to nowhere, and of course the main area where Detectives Beckett, Ryan and Esposito have their desks. I first ran into Seamus Dever who plays Detective Ryan and then Jon Huertas who plays Detective Esposito. At the time I hadn't watched enough CASTLE episodes to appreciate who I was meeting. My reaction would be very different now. They were really low key and stopped by for a chat when they realized I was new and how I was involved in the show.

Afterwards, I mentioned to Gina that I'd love to meet Nathan Fillion. I asked her if it would be "out of line" to get him to sign a couple copies of Firefly that I'd brought with me. She said he's super cool and snagged him as he zoomed past on a kid's scooter. It looked miniscule on him. I'm not small, I'm 6'1 and 215 pounds and he made me feel pretty tiny. He's gotta be 6'3 and 240 pounds and he carries it well. He was fun and gracious and signed both the Firefly dvds with his signature, "Watch this, it's good".

When I later gave my friend her dvd she totally flipped out and actually jumped into the air several times waving her arms and legs like a hummingbird. She's a pretty cool cat, and to see her lose it was gratifying and hilarious.

I'm a reasonably cool customer, but I may have gushed around Nathan and there may have been some fanboy babbling.

Maybe.




Anyway... moving on. They finished shooting the scene and it was great to watch them work. Then the crew moved across to Castle's apartment which is also huge. And it's a really nice apartment. It was all decked out for the Halloween party and Michael Courville from the art department gave Gina and I a tour through the Halloween candy that he had especially catered for it. The whole apartment is so thoroughly designed. Everything is thought of. The letters of congratulation and rejection to Castle on his wall are all proper letters not garbled words. The books on the shelves seem like the sorts of things that Castle would read and they're all real books. He has fencing statues (reminiscent of the time that he and his daughter Alexis began an episode fencing.

I ran into Barry, the first AD and a huge HEROES fan. I mentioned to him that I'd brought down my first HEROES graphic novel for Stana to sign but that she was nowhere to be found. Above and beyond the call of duty, Barry ran upstairs and asked Stana to come down and chat to me. I was taken aback. Stana was lovely, very tall and very lithe. As I handed her the graphic novel we spoke about her character on HEROES, Hana Gitelmann and how the character was the mouthpiece for the online fans. I commented that the writers probably didn't realize her rise in popularity and really should have included her in the show more. She would have been the perfect way to keep the sprawling cast together.

On the plus side, I got to draw her Death which set me on the map as a creator who cared about his work on HEROES. She had a great laugh at the ridiculous portrayal of her body and clothing by some of the artists. I told Stana how the fans agreed and how I tried to get them involved and to put their money where their mouth is and get them to design a dress for Hana. Meanwhile she's flipping through the pages of the story I drew and I'm getting increasingly nervous. I then hurriedly told her how I was going to do a competition for who gets to kiss Hana. She laughs flicking through the pages saying, "So who won? Who did I kiss?"

Then her hand moves away from the offending panel...

http://jasonbadower.blogspot.com/2007/05/hana-part-1-i-eight-hana.html

Yeah. Em-BAR-RASSING!!!!

We laughed so hard. I told her that at the time I didn't have a girlfriend, and I joked that if I wasn't getting any action in real life, I could at least get some in my comics. So I drew myself in thinking that I would NEVER HAVE THIS CONVERSATION with Stana. She (graciously) laughed very, very hard.

So she asked me if she could write something in the front of the HEROES graphic novel for me as well as sign it. "Will your girlfriend read it?"

"Yeah, but you can write anything. She's totally cool."

So Stana wrote:

"To Jason, For the best virtual kiss I ever had. Stana."

And that ladies and gentlemen is why Stana Katic is awesome.

That concludes my time on CASTLE. I had a ball and was overjoyed to see how well it turned out. I only hoped that my artwork would be integrated as well as it did. Thank you to everyone involved for making it such an awesome experience. I hope you liked seeing the extra artwork and if you go back and watch the episode again (206) you will see where it fitted in.

As a final piece of icing on the cake, I turned in my invoice. A day later I got a call from Howard, "Jason, we need to have a talk about this invoice.". I start thinking, "Oh god, I've over charged. I thought it was fair but he's going to ask me to compromise or explain some of the invoice. Here we go..."

Instead Howard says, "I've been talking to Alfred (the head of the art department) and we both think you did a tremendous job and seriously undercharged us. We think you should redo this invoice. Here are some suggestions..."

Howard basically increased the invoice by 50%. I was so humbled, and stunned. I knew I'd probably undercharged myself, but fair is fair. I quoted a price so I felt (as a man of honor) that even though the amount of work blew out, I had to stick to that price. That Howard would call me to tell me that he didn't think it was fair to me tells you the caliber and integrity of the people working on this show.

Immeasurable.

Castle. 10pm ABC.

They've made me a fan for life.

NEXT: More freelance work. The GI JOE Facebook application.