Playing a bit of catch up on the blog entries. The end of last year into this was some of my busiest months yet! Through the summer on I was juggling several different projects, including 2 board games, a colouring book and 2 comic contracts.
I’m going to reflect on the comic projects in this blog.
My absolute favorite project from this batch of work was getting to work on NPC 24, “A Thing Now”, a spin off comic of the popular web comic Looking for Group. I remember my first exposure to LFG was at my very first Fan Expo ever where I was handed free issue one, at the time I didn’t realize it was a web comic. That September I started school at Max the Mutt where eventually I had the honor of being taught by Lar Desouza, the illustrator for LFG. Though at this point I had no idea who he was or what LFG was I didn’t even make the connection to the free comic till a few years later. But Lar was our teacher for our first digital class, and I was hungry to learn and improve in my favorite medium. Lar was happy to indulge often taking extra time with me when I had questions or needed help, even after I graduated the advice from Lar always helped improve my work. So I was hooked of course and read all his web comics, and every Fan Expo I visit the booth and buy the various plush they offer.
This last year when I visited Lar he was a bit busy, and for the first time in awhile I got to chat with Sohmer. When Lar was able, he pipes in that he taught me, she’s an artist. Sohmer asked about my work and if I have a sequential portfolio. Since I was working the con, I of course I did. Later I brought it around for a review, he flipped through the pages humorously expressing relief that I didn’t suck! Then he broke down the project specifics handed me a card and said we’d start in a few weeks. I’m sure after that I was just a buzzing excited mess.
Working on a proper web comic schedule was a challenge, but I was proud and excited that I was able to rise to the challenge and my pages were finished for the most part in a very reasonable amount of time and always delivered on time. Sohmer is one of my favorite writers I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with he really understands comics! Having my pages coloured by Blind Ferret’s professional colorist Ed Ryzowski was a pleasure too.
See a few of the page images click on the gallery below, or read the whole thing at http://www.lfg.co/npc/archives/24/.
At the time I was working with Sohmer I was also in negotiations for a second comic contract called Carnival World, which originaly began life as a series of short stories written by Tawny Stokes author of Static and Michael J Lee author of My Frankenstein. See more on the creation at the official website carnivalworldcomic.com
Our negotiations panned out and I followed up with this project right after I finished with NPC. This project was a bit more challenging as I was approached with a novelization and a screen play, which I enjoyed, but were both too long and not ideal in structure to facilitate drawing a comic. So I offered my services to edit and adapt the screen play to a proper comic format I could work from. With in a few days, I ended up cutting it down to a 26 page comic script that was much easier for me to follow as an illustrator.
I began work on the pages for the first issue, unfortunately after page 5 there were funding issues and the contract was reduced to a 9 page preview for Kickstater, with, as of yet, no expected date for launch. Unfortunately this contract all breaks down in the midst of my own personal emotional breakdown, that became such an issue I decided it was in the best interest of me and my clients to take a step back from any contract work and seek professional help. I was finishing up the busiest year in my career but in some ways I was using work to run from my problems.
The work I’ve done for Carnival world is still some of my best yet! I’m holding off on showing too many pages yet in lieu of the Kickstarter still coming through. But check out page 1 below, as well a a few concept illustrations. Time lapse videos documenting its creation process can be seen on my YouTube.
