|
ComicBookNetworkEmag Archives Index
|
|
| << February18, 2006 - [ComicBookNetwork E-Mag] CBEM 563.05 |
February18, 2006 - [ComicBookNetwork E-Mag] CBEM 563.08 >> |
|
----------------------------------------------------------------- [5] Interviews Richard Vasseur richardv@sympatico.ca Andy Brase comic book cover artist interviewed by Richard Vasseur www.jazmaonline.com Rich: You have worked for many different comic book companies would you prefer to work for just one? Andy: I think it's nice to get to work on different characters for different companies, keeps things interesting. If I started working with a company that I really clicked with and they had constant work for me I would be fine working there for a longer period... Many times a company will just have a few illos for me to do or I'll get several different offers from different places...I haven't had anyone approach me for a regular extended cover gig. Rich: Do you have any favorite characters you like drawing? Andy: Well, designing my own characters or creatures has to be my favorite thing. The Darkness (from Top Cow) was one of my fav characters to draw...I 've only done one private commission illo of him, though it was really fun and I would like to do more on that character sometime. I like drawing a lot of villians...Sabretooth, Sandman and Joker come to mind. And characters where I get to add in my own ideas/creativity. Some characters I would like to do some (or more) work on include Hellboy, Conan, SwampThing, Man Thing, Spiderman & villians, Batman & villians, Nightmere, Aliens,etc... Rich: Have you or would you like to try your hand at doing an entire comic instead of just the cover? Andy: My first published work was a full comic for the small press company Hall of Heroes...I illustrated that my first year in college.... My art has developed A LOT since that first work... I started getting work on Role Playing Games and my art really grew leaps and bounds while doing that work. Also my artist inspirations shifted a bit during this time...from comics to the work of Bernie Wrightson, Frazetta, HR Giger, Brom,etc. When I first showed my work to Marvel they gave me cover work right away...Identity Disc #4 was the first cover I did for them. A few companies have talked to me about doing interiors... My style is a little more time consuming than some & I ink all my own work, so I couldn't do a monthly book... it would have to be a special project with longer deadlines. Rich: How did you first become interested in drawing? Andy: My freshman year in high school is when I really got into drawing. It was around the time Image comics started...Erik Larsen's "Savage Dragon" and Dale Keown's "Pitt" were some of my first inspirations... I spent all of high school drawing comics based on my own creations. Rich: Do you have any formal training? Andy: I have an Art & Design degree from Iowa State University...though I don't think that helped too much in my art development or getting work in comics and gaming....Most of my art was self taught...basically just spending a lot of time at the drawing table and being critical of my own work... trying to make each drawing better the the last one. Rich: Do you have any future projects? Andy: A couple comic covers are lined up, some gaming work and some other things ...I'm not allowed really to say much about this work yet. I did the cover for "Marvel Knights 4 #27" featuring the Salem 7 vs the Fantastic 4 which just came out..and a cover for "Supreme Power: Hyperion #4" which should be out shortly....I think. Rich: Would you like to spend more time remixing music? Andy: In college I spent a lot of time writing and remixing electronic music...mostly for fun... I did a remix for the industrial band Razed in Black that was released on their "Oh my Goth EP". Since then I have created a few trax, though I have pretty much set the music programming hobby to the side for my freelance art career. I just don't have much time for it. Music has always been a big inspiration though, and I keep in contact with several musicians...( Ian from Flesh Field, Romell from Razed in Black, Andy from Combichrist/ Icon of Coil are some I know....) A few bands/artists have asked me about creating album art for them, so that maybe in the future. Rich: You drew the Hulk and Black Panther for Marvel Comics covers how do you feel they turned out? Andy: The Black Panther #9 cover turned out pretty decent in print... I liked the coloring on it. The Hulk covers look a lot better in the recently released House of M: Hulk TPB...I thought the House of M red & white stripe that was covering the left part of the covers on the individual issues looked really bad...and it also chopped a bunch of art off 2 of the covers. As far as the art itself, Hulk 83 was my favorite of the Hulk covers...I also really liked the cyborg hand I designed on Hulk 85... I get a lot of feedback from people that tell me they like the B&W art or the monochrome versions I've posted on my web galleries better than the published full color comic art... In those versions you can see more of the ink shading and textures I put into the work . Some of that gets covered in the color. It would be nice to get to see just the line art in print at some point. Rich: Do you read any comics now? Andy: Hellboy, is the only book I have been reading recently. Rich: Will you be attending any conventions? Andy: Probably Wizard World Chicago , Fallcon & Microcon (in the twin cities) and maybe some other small mid west cons...I'd like to go to the San Diego con...I have never been able to get out to that one. Rich: Do you have a website? Andy: I have a couple web galleries...not an official site. The galleries have a bunch of art on them and I try to update them when I can. here's the links: http://www.pen-paper.net/artgallery/AndyBrase http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=1896 Rich: How can someone contact you? Andy: My e-mail is listed in my web galleries. (links above) Rich: Any last words of wisdom? Andy: Here's a little advice for beginning artists to keep in mind when they are trying to learn to draw and create their own style. It's really important to study from life and not focus in too much on your favorite artist's style. This way you create your own thing.... your own style. +++++ Brian Bastian creator/writer on "Tommy Chicago" from Tommy Chicago Printing interviewed by Richard Vasseur www.jazmaonline.com Rich: What is "Tommy Chicago" about? Brian: Tommy Chicago is the greatest detective in all of Chilitown. It follows the adventures and downtime of Tommy and his sidekick Jimmy the Wig: master of disguise. The series just follows their lives. Sometimes something exciting happens, and other times they sit around and eat chili. Because I don't have to worry about silly little things like sales or the integrity of the characters, I'm able to focus on telling what I think is the funniest story possible. Rich: Tommy's past is a mystery, will it ever be revealed? Brian: Maybe. Its more fun to have a mysterious past than to have it all out there. There are stories I want to tell about how he met Stella McKenzie or how Jimmy the Wig became his sidekick, or even how he toppled the Ugly Roses empire, but I felt it would be more entertaining to jump into the story further down the line, and then if there's demand or if I feel the need to tell the story I can and will. However in issue 9 we are introducing Future Tommy Chicago, so the past may not be important for awhile. Rich: Who is The Ugly Rose? Brian: The Ugly Rose is the #1 criminal in Chilitown. He failed to build a power base in other cities, but the people of Chilitown are very simple people, and he rose to power very easily. When he first appears in issue 1, he's been exposed and defeated by Tommy Chicago and is planning his revenge. He was on top and now he's not, so he's more motivated than Tommy Chicago at this point and decides he needs to get rid of him if he's ever going to reclaim his power. He's just not very organized or coordinated. He was orginally intended as strictly a Lex Luthor/Kingpin type character, but he became goofier the more I wrote him. Rich: This comic has its own theme song? Brian: It does! I have a couple friends who formed a band called The Wellgoods, and I asked them to write me a theme song. I think at the time I asked them I was trying to put together a Tommy Chicago radio series, and we needed a theme song. I then realized I know nothing about creating a radio series. Still I love the song and listen to it all the time. They don't have an official website yet but you can hear some of their music at http://www.myspace.com/thewellgoods Rich: So how did Bob Lipski become the artist on "Tommy Chicago"? Brian: I've been friends with Bob "Uptown Girl" Lipski for a long time. We actually tried to do a 12 part Tommy Chicago series before he started on Uptown Girl, but due to many reasons it fell apart. After I had written a couple issues of Uptown Girl, the ideas for Tommy Chicago started flowing and we decided to bring it back. There is never a limit on our excitement to do an issue, but sadly Bob can only draw so much, otherwise I'm sure we could make Tommy Chicago a weekly series. I bet I broke his arm just typing that. Rich: How would you classify Tommy Chicago? What makes him tick? Brian: All he wanted was to be the #1 detective in Chilitown. The series starts at the point after he's defeated the Ugly Rose, and made a name for himself. His dream has come true, and he just wants everything to freeze and stay the way it is forever. So ego and a strong sense of entitlement are all there, but there also is a fear of change. I try not to get too deep into Tommy's head. I think alot of the humor comes from the fact that you really don't ever know what he's thinking or where his head is at. In any given situation you don't know for sure what action he'll take, and because of that whatever action he does end up taking is right for the character. Rich: What future projects do you have? Brian: By the end of the year we should have Tommy Chicago 9-12 plus the Christmas special done. I am also working on writing scripts for the Uptown Girl animated series as well as some stories for that comic. I also still have my fingers crossed for the Tommy Chicago movie, but they're not crossed too tightly. Rich: This is a small press comic, what exactly does small press mean? Brian: It means you have to do everything yourself. Everything from plotting to editing to printing and stapling. You get all the credit and all the blame. You're also telling your story the way you want to tell it. I'm not worried about selling X amount of copies. I'm happy if I only sell 1, and its to my mom. I fairly certain that the small press comics outnumber the...Big Press(?) comics, we just lack distribution. Rich: Do you like chilli? Brian: I love chili! Its probably the greatest food ever! Its a meal on it's own, or you can use it as a topping or a dip. Its really easy to make as well because measuring is optional, so its really hard to mess up. Here's what you do. Get some onions and garlic and fry them in a pan. Add ground Turkey (Its better for you than beef, and the spices cover up the taste so you can't tell. I made a batch with vegetarian fake beef crumbles and nobody could tell the difference) cook that up and throw it all in a pot. Add a couple cans of beans and canned diced tomatoes and fresh peppers if you want it spicy. Add Chili powder and hot sauce to taste and there you go. You can add as much or as little of any ingredient as you want, all that matters is that you like it. That's why I like chili so much. Rich: What comic books did you read as a kid and which ones do you read now? Brian: As a kid? I started on Amazing Spiderman and Batman. Then it was almost exclusively Transformers. Today I buy stacks of stuff and complain about how I need to cut down, but I don't. The Flash is my favorite superhero, with Moon Knight a close second. Rich: Are you going to be attending any conventions? Brian: This year I'll probably just attend the conventions around Minnesota. Fallcon for sure. Any others I'll have to wait and see. I did a handful in 2005 and it had its ups and downs. People passing by can look at art and make a judgement right away if they like it or not. It's a little harder to sell someone on writing. I've got a couple ideas that I want to try out to maybe make it a little easier to reach out to people. Uh, just to be clear I don't mean 'reach out to people' in a bad way. Rich: Do you have a website? Brian: I do. It is www.tommychicago.com Rich: How can someone reach you? Brian: My email is Brian@TommyChicago.com I'm working on some sort of Tommy Chicago shaped signal to flash in the clouds, but that's still in the planning stages, so right now email is the best bet. Rich: Any last words of wisdom? Brian: Just follow your dreams. Well, unless it involves hurting someone or destroying property. If it does, then don't follow your dream. Find a new dream. If you choose not to find a new dream but instead follow your original hurting people and destroying property dream, please leave my name out of it when the authorities finally catch you. Unless there is a large national media presence. If so my website address is above, feel free to shout it out. +++++ Clem Robins letterer on comics for 30 years interviewed by Richard Vasseur Rich: After 30 years in comics are you still learning? Clem: Yeah, especially with all of it pretty much digital, and my having arrived somewhat late to that particular party. Payton passed me a technical tip the other day that will probably change my life, if I can understand it. Rich: Can you tell us a few of the comics you have worked on? Clem: Well, I don't think I have ever lettered Thor or Silver Surfer. I think I've lettered pretty much everybody else, at least among the mainstream books. Rich: How did you make your start in lettering comics? Clem: I was going to art school in NYC, and thought it would be a nice, flexible way to keep body and soul together. So I made up some samples, and shopped them around town. It was probably a lot easier to break in back then, particularly since almost all the publishers were in Manhattan, and because it all had to be done by hand. An editor at Gold Key gave me a Dudley Do-Right story, and it was more or less passable. DC and Marvel followed soon after. They put up with a lot. I saw one of these early stories in a "Super Friends" reprint book a few months ago. It was kind of embarrassing. Lettering, at least by hand, is something that looks easy, but which seems to take about ten years to learn. Rich: Why is a letterer important to a comic? Clem: I think letterers can make everybody else look good, or as good as possible. Pencillers work with shapes. Inkers ply their trade with pen or brush lines of various weights. Colorists have the whole spectrum to work with. I think lettering should provide a backdrop for all of this, a coherence, and a unity. I used to be a DJ, and have always thought that lettering is like being a DJ - setting a mood, but mostly making the artist's work look as good as possible. There are occasional books where one can really have fun. Losers was fun, just because there was always stuff blowing up and people shooting each other and punching each other. It's in places like that that lettering can come to the head of the line. But mostly it's a backdrop. It's sort of like being the family butler. Rich: Do you think letterers are over looked? Clem: We're supposed to be overlooked. That's the whole point. Stay in the background, and let the artists and writers take center stage. I don't know how much other people notice it. I noticed it when I was a kid. There was a difference between Gaspar Saladino's work and everybody else's, and it wasn't subtle. He made everybody look great, and yet he still stayed in the background. Rich: Have you ever thought of trying some other aspect of the comics field? I inked a book back in 1990, a Don Lomax project called "High Shining Brass". I think I could have been good at it after a while, but it took so long, pursuing it didn't make sense to me. Rich: A letterer adds the words, do they also add and shape the word balloons? Clem: ooh yes indeed. It took me twenty years to realize that the whole thing amounted to stacking a block of text so that a decently shaped balloon could be drawn around it. This is a little easier on computer than it was with a pen. Although it's still a lot more fun to do the job by hand. Rich: At what step in making the comic does the letterer make their contribution? Clem: That's all changed over the years. It used to take place in between penciling and inking. In the 1990s, in particular, this changed; lettering was generally done during the inking process, on vellum overlays over xerox copies of the pencil art. This was all done to buy time for pencillers. Someone would have to paste up the lettering on the inked artwork. Today, on computer, it's ideally done after the book's been inked. But we're still buying time for pencillers. A lot of books are lettered over low resolution scans of pencils, or even over layouts, and then rejiggered around once the book's been inked. The original method, working on top of pencil art, had some wonderful benefits. At least at DC, pencillers were required to rough in balloons and sound effects. Some of them were quite good at it, and letterers took their cues from the pencillers. If you look at some old Silver Age DC books, it's interesting to see the difference between the work of a first-rate letterer, like Gaspar, on different pencillers. His stuff looked different if it was on Joe Kubert, or Gil Kane, or Carmine Infantino, or Mike Sekowski, or Bruno Premiani. Sound effects looked different, balloon shapes looked different, the sense of pace and layout was different. This made the letterer much more the servant of the penciller. I think this was as it should be. I miss it. But you can't turn back the clock. Rich: What do you like to do when you're not working? Clem: I teach drawing and human anatomy at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. I draw and paint. My wife and I teach the Bible. I like to cook. Come on over sometime, Richard, we'll treat you right. Rich: Who has been the most influential person in your life? Clem: My pop, without question. He was one of the most influential graphic designers of the 20th century. He would still be, if his eyes hadn't gone bad on him. So now he's a writer, and will probably be one of the most influential writers of the 21st century. Rich: What comics do you read now Clem: I wish I could give you a better answer than this, but. none at all. I discovered real books when I was a teenager, and have found it difficult to be entertained by comics ever since. I mean, I've had the good fortune to be associated with some great projects, and I find these very entertaining. But were I not lettering them, I don't think I would have taken the trouble to read them. So I'm glad I've gotten to work on them, and enjoy them. The Vertigo books in particular. The best of them are wonderfully written. Rich: And did you read comics as a child? Clem: Oh, pretty much everything. Rich: If you were not a letterer what do you think you would be doing? Clem: Painting. drawing. teaching. writing. The same things I do now, except more of it. Rich: How can someone contact you? Clem: Why in the world would anybody want to? crobins@artacademy.edu will do the trick. Rich: Any last words of wisdom? Clem: Have you ever thought about how as technology improves, the first generations in possession of it has a habit of looking backward with it? When moveable type was invented, the great type designers all took their cues from calligraphy. It wasn't for hundreds of years before the first sans serif typefaces were designed, even though serifs are actually a holdover from calligraphy. My own digital work is a quest to replicate the look of my own hand lettering. I think this is valid, at least for me; since the inking is done by hand, I think the lettering ought to look handmade, or as handmade as possible. Still, I am a guy on computer pretending to be something I'm not. I wonder what will happen in the coming years, what kind of work will be done by people who've never seen a hand-lettered book. Maybe there are whole new aesthetics that are waiting to be hatched. There, how's that for wisdom? _________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------- COMICS OBSCURA Mike Curtis shandafa@cyberback.com [COMICS OBSCURA are facts Mike Curtis has dug out during his 30 years of collecting Superman and writing about comics. His website for his comic imprint is www.shandafantasyarts.net ] NEVER MIND THOSE CRAZY NEIGHBORS In the 1949 movie serial BATMAN AND ROBIN, one shot is used chapter after chapter to show where Bruce Wayne lives. Rather than a mansion, it looks to be a regular house, and people are shown walking in front of it on a sidewalk with cars parked alongside. Bruce is known to drive a new 1949 white Mercury, but when crooks see the caped crusaders driving the car, they recognize it instantly as belonging to Batman. In fact Vicki Vale asks Batman at one point if Bruce knows he is driving the Wayne car. Which makes one wonder...did the neighbors ever take note when two masked men drove away in Bruce's car and what did they think? _________________________________________________________________ Thanks for subscribing to the Comic Book Network Electronic Magazine (CBEM) --------------------------->Disclaimer<--------------------------- This is an ANNOUNCE only mailing list, only the Editor can send messages to the list. No one else has access to the subscriber list. Replies to these messages will be received by the Editor ONLY, so you must CC: individual contributors if you want them to get your E-Mail. The E-mail to the E-mag MAY be used in future issues at the Editor's discretion UNLESS you specifically request that they not be. It is our policy to withhold names and/or Addresses, by request only, from letters of comment. All contributors are required to use their real name and have a valid Email address for their columns to be published. Send Email comments to: ComicBkNet@aol.com Material for inclusion in the Emag - press releases, solicitations, column submissions, Letters to the Editor, guesses for the trivia contest should be sent to ComicBkNet@aol.com The EDITOR, not the submitter, has final approval and edit rights on ALL material. Printed comic books and advanced copies for review in the Emag should be sent via US Mail or UPS to David L. LeBlanc 84 Heather Circle Jefferson, MA 01522-1419 TO Subscribe send a message FROM the intended address to: ComicBookNetworkEmag-subscribe@yahoogroups.com TO Unsubscribe send a message FROM the address to be dropped to: ComicBookNetworkEmag-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com You may also unsubscribe from the Egroups Web page at the short cut below. Shortcut URL to the Egroup page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ComicBookNetworkEmag All contents COPYRIGHT 2006 The Comic Book Network. This messages may be reproduced only in its original form, and in its entirety for non-commercial purposes. Contact the original author(s) or the Editor for permission to use individual items. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ComicBookNetworkEmag/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: ComicBookNetworkEmag-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ |
|
| << February18, 2006 - [ComicBookNetwork E-Mag] CBEM 563.05 |
February18, 2006 - [ComicBookNetwork E-Mag] CBEM 563.08 >> |
|
ComicBookNetworkEmag Archives Index
|
|
|
Archives powered by Zinester's Mailing List Service
Details on ComicBookNetworkEmag |
Browse for more newsletters at Zinester's Ezine Directory
Managed by Zinester's Mailing List Management |