Silver Surfer Sadness

Its been interesting this last year or so. I worked on an indie game for a while doing character and backgrounds. I did some fill-in pages for a friend, as well as layouts for an ongoing series - which I'm really enjoying. Alterna's Crime Anthology hits shops on the 22nd - which I have a story in, and Chaser Platoon came out last month (which I colored). Decisions relaunched with the issue I wrote this year and Yurushi is going into Diamond in the near future. I finished a small personal project - kind of a tweenage kid's book I'm going to try and get out there with illustrations as well. I made a pitch packet with a writer that we're shopping around and am working on another. I also did a piece for the Tales From the Gutter Kickstarter that made it into the pinups section - which just came out a few days ago. And there's this: An interview I read with Ron Marz at least 7-8 years ago (and the issue was probably 5 yrs old at that point) and it made such an impact on me I held onto the issue of Write Now! telling myself I'd find this issue (which can be fairly expensive) and growing an ever larger collection of Claudio Castellini's other comics. I photoshoped the text from the page break and around a picture together to read his thoughts but when I read how long it had taken him to do it made an impact and I felt I owed it to an artist I loved to see something that had taken him that long to create. And, sadly its everything he described it as - beautiful and woefully underprinted/colored. The interesting thing is the lettering is printed sharp. It's just enough to let you know it could've been so much more. The back cover and the first splash pages show just how different even a rudimentary coloring job could've looked and pages have come out online of the original black and white art - which turns up mostly gray in the book itself (looking more like pencil lines than ink)

This guy makes Byrne Hogarth look like he didn't enjoy drawing knobby hands and anatomy. So much great stuff in the issue - you can tell he was trying to outdo himself, but I believe it was Alan More who said to Dave Gibbons after hearing how long it took him to draw the Killing Joke, and I'm paraphrasing - "It took you two years to make and I'm going to read it on the toilet in 10 mins." It really does need an artist's edition or a oversized, hardback reprint. On my end Chaser Platoon was kind of darkly colored (over inkwash) and printed even darker, but I feel I was able to add something to it. I did try to make it as colorful as I could, though it would've been easy to keep the whole thing army green and steel gray. The panel I feel I added the most to is below, where a character is reflecting deeply, with a split light source. Also got to paint this with my student's help and have been inspired to tackle large paintings like this after seeing Drew Struzan and Bob Peak use pencils over their airbush and paints. I probably used a bit too much, but it still came out pretty nice considering its only the 2nd canvas painting I've ever done.