Interviews

Me and James were just interviewed by Invest Comics about our upcoming Blue Water and Cosmic Times work, as well as our take on digital comics which you can read here and I'll be appearing on Sunday's episode of Nerd Nation for a round table discussion with Gene Hoyle, Martin Pierro, and James Whynot about our upcoming comic from Cosmic Times entitled "From Blood."

"From Blood" #1 available at Megacon 2011

I've started teaching sequential art at the Community College of Aurora here in Colorado, which has been very fun and rewarding, though just like comics you have to do it for the love of it. I heard a quote the other day that I really liked, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

Viking Battle by ~xaqBazit on deviantART

"From Blood" Issue 1 Cover by ~xaqBazit on deviantART
Here's some new art, since its been a while. Ive been hard at work and now am proud to announce me and James will have the 1st issue of our 1st series that is all us - meaning we created it all. "From Blood" #1 of 2 will be 30pgs long, black and white interior and a color cover. This is the pencil version of the cover - price should be around $3.00 and will premiere at Mega Con 2011. It will be lettered by Michael Moore.

notes from a monkey with a hand grenade

803 published "notes from a monkey with a hand grenade" which has the short story i colored "mommy said." james posted it on his da - here it is. as well as a sci-fi pinup i drew and he inked.


Xaq Bazit's Sci Fi PinUP by ~JamesWhynotInks on deviantART

Mommy said page 1 by ~JamesWhynotInks on deviantART

Mommy Said page 2 by ~JamesWhynotInks on deviantART

Mommy Said page 3 by ~JamesWhynotInks on deviantART

Mommy Said page 4 by ~JamesWhynotInks on deviantART

Mommy said page 5 by ~JamesWhynotInks on deviantART

Mommy Said page 6 by ~JamesWhynotInks on deviantART

Working Professional

Well I'm not sure how much I can say about each project but I have secured enough work for the next year or two to finally quit my day job and go pro.
The second best news is that it is all pencilling, and some of the inking will be handled by my good friend and soon to be neighbor James Whynot. We have also nearly completed our pitch packet for "From Blood" formerly referred to as "27." I will be doing some more work for Cosmic Times, Mortal World Entertainment and What the Flux Comics, and have also started getting a fairly healthy stream of commission and side work as well.
So other than having to move twice this month, getting struck by lightening and getting my identity stolen the only thing that makes this month any better is (st some point) getting to celebrate my anniversary.
I have also colored a 6pg short horror story that Whynot inked over Drew Zucker, who is already getting to work with one of my idols of a related industry - cartoons! And I am submitting to Soyfucker vol 2 - an all vegan comic anthology.

Books I'm in that just came out

trash #1 is out and Asassin's Guild #4 are both out now- which i filled in some inks for on both, though - partially my fault for not correcting the error when i had the chance - i was miscredited as having only inked pgs 22, 24, 25 in ASG4 when i aditionally inked pgs 20 and 23, which were credited to Joe Fauvel. But no biggie, it was a last minute change and job anyway. ASG is available through ICCW and Trash will be available through the WTFC website.
I also penciled 6 pages this month, and inked 26.
James Whynot was was able to ink this pinup I had done about a year ago, which will be published in Issue 1 of the Indy Comic Magazine Network.

The Industry (inking) 2

When asked why his style had changed over the years since Spiderman 2099, Rick Leonardi was nice enough to show me his thumbs, pencils, script and samples of different inkers over him over the last decade or two - and sited the inker's interpretation rather than his own style changing that may have lead to the change I referred to.

I also found this in the back of a Spectre issue, which was short and helped answer some of the questions I had about how far and inker's hand goes. Specific things to watch are the city in the background, the rendering on his arm and the musculature in his shoulder, among the other things the article mentions.


I also found this comparison a fun example of inking styles, since they are a similar composition and subject, but two decades apart. James Whynot did the inks and Drew Zucker did the pencils on the Aliens one. And obviously Brett Breeding and Dan Jurgens did the Doomsday one.
But I've really been back and forth about how much inker's are meant to do - if they only control the look of the lines and not the placement - or do you look at inkers as "art partners" and that pencils are basically glorified thumbnails, meant to be finished out in the interest of the story and storytelling, above all else. The article does point out the difference between "finishers" and "inkers." But I'm starting to learn there is a lot of gray in between.

storyboards

finished with my first 13pg story, now im boarding for the second 8 pg story.
the added my boards for the first 6 pages to the sketchbook part on the cosmic times website.
http://www.cosmictimes.net/Decisions/DecisionsBoards.htm
http://www.cosmictimes.net/Decisions/DecisionsBoards01.htm
http://www.cosmictimes.net/Decisions/DecisionsBoards02.htm
http://www.cosmictimes.net/Decisions/DecisionsBoards03.htm

been doing inking samples for "ecv press" and have sent stuff out to "papercutz" and a few others.
doing storyboards for "27" with james, which i co-rewrote and will be a 50 pg graphic novel, shou;d be bloody but meaningful. im sending him the first 5 pgs to ink soon.
also doing an 5 pg story for the indy comic creators worldwide anthology.
all these projects should be done by mid january.
also got my bio up on wtfc? site though i havent been able to do much for them as of yet. http://www.whatthefluxcomics.com/staff.html

Moving

I might be doing a 12-pg piece for Cosmic Times here coming up and just finished my cover for What the Flux comics. I've had a little extra time this week for packing and have also been able to read some comics, specifically event/crossover titles. I got the 1st two graphic novels for Batman: KnightFall and The Death of Superman. and got to read the image miniseries Fight for Tomorrow. As well as finish what I had of Elementals vol. 1 and a few scattered issues into volumes 2 and 3.
Elementals was great up until the final last few issues, that their creator/artist Bill Wilmingham had nothing to do with and according the The Elemntals Wiki page dropped off of comico's map for a while. He apparently supervised vol. 2 and I have a few good issues from it that he even came back to draw. Towards the end of vol. 1 you could tell it was beginning to get into the 90's market, variant covers, specials, spin-off titles that never got past the 1st issue. By the time vol. 3 rolls around that's all it is, and the only reason worth reading the issues are some of the writing, which is still interesting as it starts to break all the rules the 1st volume set and expand the world. Though there are various obvious marvel/dc rips and rip-offs as well as fill in stories that are self contained and irrelevant. They even did Sex-specials - originally saying it would further explore their characters, then moved onto swimsuit and lingere specials where it became increasingly aparent they were looking to turn a buck and capitalie on all the horny teenagers using their parents money to buy comics - just like the other comics at that time.

Willmingham was a good storyteller, not a great artists, but i got used to it, a very non-pc writer but he was fairly good at pacing and plotting and kept it interesting.
Knightfall and Death of Superman are similarly great for those reasons, pacing and plotting. Thank you Louise Simonson and Chuck Dixon. They are essentially the same story:
Act 1) hero gets injured
Act 2) new heroes step up,
Act 3) old hero returns and must fight to reclaim his mantle.
But they are done very differently and both explore, fairly deeply, the philosophy of the main character - through the viewpoints of the secondary characters, since the hero isn't there to do any of the things they are talking about. I also got Kelley Jones' Deadman, which is among my favourite of his work. And there is experimentation at every turn, some things working amazingly, others not. Even to the point he uses his fingerprints to put down the ink. I'm also intrigued by the plot for the story as I don't know much about his character.

I have been working on finalizing a script for a graphic novel with James that I will pencil and he will ink while im down that way. During which time we will finish plotting and writing the scripts for the rest of Maelstrom. I'm hoping to get A project done, period, with him so we have something to show for our work and as we have played off of before we are trying to mix our styles. In the upcoming series I may just let him pencil and ink himself for the flashback sequences, or something - like marvel has been doing with JRJR and Joe Kubert on X-men.

progress - almost done

these are my in progress inks for my 4 pgs, all brushpen so far. it gets sort of confusing in the jacket on the last page so i will fix it.
here's links 6-7, 8-9 to the finals.

this is a printout of my tight roughs that i tightened and mixed with the hand from teh skecth below it, the earlier can be found on my earlier post.

these are some sketches i did to help with the hand on teh covers i did on my deviantart page for maelstrom.


some awesome phantom pages i colored from nick derington on splashpageart.com.

heres a color of an awesome bryan hitch dps.

Long time, no post -sorry

So we finished leon in class and talked about bleed pages, I mentioned I liked charest but lyle hates him – says he is just pinups. But he is the best, an awesome illustrator we all agreed but his storytelling and layout is confusing – says lyle.
We got done early and all the student met about the scripts, I waited till last and did my in class assignment that was going to be homework. I brought it to him, he also mentioned that we will have t oink a few pages, and he said “when did you do this, during the movie? I said id been sitting there for 20 mins, he said “holly crap you laid out 4 pages in 20 mins. Glanced over them and said, your storytelling has really improved, you are making some really quick really good decisions, he looked at my layout and pointed out a few minor things but said he liked the look of the pages and that they were very nice, he’s going to help me with some of the more difficult perspective shots, but that I should use more angles. And I know, it was like once the summer came and I started doing layouts for 3 issues of comics all I wanted to do was move the camera side to side and up or down but never tilt up or down. My brain wasn’t in it. All summer I had procrastinated doing work, guilty about it though. I did a lot of personal art which I liked allot, very introspective though usually sad but it cheered me up and it kept me drawing. So letting that go was hard, I do have a project in art history that could tie back into that though so – yay! but i cant post or show most of it because i don't want any one to think different of me, or how i view them - its personal but like i said it kept me drawing and it kept me from getting too depressed, it came out of my pencil instead of my mouth and that is good. Over the summer I was writing and doing a lot of james work for him but I am freakishly fast, for a student, less than average for a pro but im getting better. I had seen mike manely site and that he had done 2-3 pages a day for quasar and was inking alpha fight at the same time, now I don’t know if I could do that consecutively but I have done 5 pages in about 12 hours and did it multiple times in larrison’s class, including lettering. Now if I did that during the day I could probably go even faster not being so dragged out and tired.

Here’s a layout for a dps sketch I did of spiderman I really liked, kind of has the live action tv 60’s eyes, like cassiday did on giant size astonishing x-men, though seeing his black and whites he does leave a lot of backgrounds out or even insert photocopies for backgrounds sometimes of large city shots. But his characters look great and there is some awesome layout stuff in latter issues of that series, im only missing issue 24 now before I go and read it. Anyway, wanted it to be a kind of tour de force of inking techniques and I figured it would be big enough I could ease into brush stuff, there’s a cool video on using a razor to add texture on manely’s site → drawman.blogspot.com

Also here is my “tight” roughs for the 1st 4 pages (non bleed format) of issue 2 of me and james’ story.

Inspirtaion - What I want to and have been reading

Man I've been reading some good stuff, if only I had the money to buy it. Here's what is currently inspiring me.

Graphic novles:

DC - Superman: Doomsday – ok so obviously the new omnibus, awesome but expensive. After seeing the new WB animated movie I was intrigued much more by the special features detailing the creation of the comic book arc and have wanted to read them ever since. There are alot of classic anatomy things I can learn from Jurgens and Brendings too, their good most of the time.

MARVEL - Astonishing X-men: Unstoppable - grew to love the art and always loved Joss' writing. I’ve only read the 1st graphic, I need to read the middle 2 before this one but my girlfriend has read them and loved them. Just knowing that there is an end is nice, so often in comics things are left so randomly ambiguous and open-ended.

DC - Simon Dark vol. 1 - Awesome art and very cool jigsaw/slipknot looking character.

MARVEL - Moon Knight - Vol 1. the bottom – (I did want to get the original “essential moon knight’s” since I always did like him, and guiltily Dark Hawk, but Sinkevitch did some really cool stuff when he was kind of in his Neal Adams) broken, pill popping and alcoholic moon knight broods over his bloody encounter where he cut the face off one of his enemies killing him (or so he thought) right after he was tossed down from the rooftop of an alley breaking his legs and bones w/ every fire escape he hit. Amazing art by Finch and even better writing and commentary on what a super-hero is, how far he can go etc.

MARVEL - Spider-man - One more day - heard the plot synopsis from a friend, amazing artwork. Peter dodges a bullet that kills Aunt May and makes a pact to trade his love with Marry Jane for her life back, leaving him only one more day before he forgets her entirely. The idea being if they are soul mates they will meet again, kind of like Goto's comic.

DC - IDENTITY CRISIS - Awesome art, awesome story - One of the few thing's I’ve been interested in from Dc in a while. Plus it has a artist/writer interview in the end - all for 15 bucks.

Image - Wildstar – still trying to see if this is collected in a graphic yet or not, I read an article on it in an old “comics magazine” and was excited.

MARVEL - Essential Fantastic 4 Vol 7. - I heard and have been waiting for this one, issue 141: reed is forced to shoot his own son (turning him into a vegetable and "shutting down his brain") as his powers threaten to grow out of control and destroy the whole world, despite his decision the team breaks up, sue considers divorce. In the next few issues, on his own the thing gets into trouble w/ no one to help him and Reed goes out to dinner with Medusas (I always loved the Inhumans) only to find Doctor Doom (like Darth Vader on cloud city in Empire Strikes Back), then jealously fights Namor for Sue.
Medusa: You can't blame yourself like this, you did what you had to do.
Is that good enough, will that bring my son back, will it make my wife love me again?
-It's so dark and so good. He becomes so conflicted it's amazing, though the art isn't top notch in the issues following.

Both X-men and Fantastic 4 have come out in their entirety on cd for about $40 which is what I should probably buy, FF even comes with the entire silver surfer collection now. But if I got the X-men one I'd get to see Neal Adam's do X-men, old JRJR in what I consider his prime.

I wish I could cheaply get the Daredevil book Frank Millar wrote with JRJR's art, it now comes in an omnibus with Frank's work and Sinkevitch's Electra book. Awesome, but oh so expensive.

Series:

Comico comics - The Elementals - I bought issues 1-30 off of ebay but promised myself I wouldn't start reading them until I got done writing Terra Novus. I found a few issues in the quarter bins in NY and I had dying for some more ever since. It's superheroes from an indie standpoint, no rules - sex, gore, violence - does it cross the line?

Epic comic's - Powerline Saga - Al Williamson, who also worked on Elementals - amazing realistic art, more realistic superheroes.

Marvel – Ghost Rider: Spirits of Vengeance – it was dark and drawn by the Kubert kids in their prime so you know it’s good.

Marvel - Morbius the living vampire – had all but the 1st issue and I’ve been holding off on reading it till then. Eventually the artist changed but the 1st 10 issues or so I’ve loved since I was a boy.

Vertigo – Scarab – Have all but one issue so I have the same problem as Morbius. Amazing art, psychedelic, Gaiman-esk writing – awesome.

In other news:

Legion of Superheroes Tv show – so it’s not a comic and it’s cancelled now but I watched the 1st 4 episodes w/ my little brother and they were actually really good. I don’t like the art as much but I can stand it for the stories and the change in season 2 and the finale for season 1 look to set up some pretty interesting dynamics. I’m looking forward to watching some more.

I should be able to start writing the 1st issue of me and James’ 10 issue mini-series tomorrow, we’ve worked out the plot roughly and the 1st issue rather tightly. I get new ideas daily and if I have the time and we stick to it we could have a very cool story here, longer, serialized and very fun to work on, highlighting both of our styles.