EricZ

Skyscraper

Lately, I’ve been playing around with a simpler coloring style in order to speed up my work. I also think it looks a lot more appealing then my previous faux-painted style. Because of this, I’ve been able to speed up a little, but not enough to make artistically doing everything (pencils, inks, colors) a practical approach. One of my biggest goals right now is to produce a page at a professional pace while ensuring that I’m still artistically happy with it. That means I should be able to get a page pencilled and inked in around 8 hours. Coloring a page should take me another 4 hours or so. This has been really tough, but it’s a necessary skill in this industry. I’m going to have to continue experimenting in order to get to that level.
 

This will forever be a dilemma. In order to advance my career, I need to be doing the best work I possible can. But I also need to be prepared to do it at the pace of a page a day. There’s no real solution to this dilemma other then to learn how to streamline my work. I could just pull 12 hours shifts, but that’s a quick way to burn out and then suddenly I’m doing horrible work at an even slower pace. I’ll try to post my updates on this front in the next couple of months.

`The Killers` poster

A graphic novel I drew way back in 2005 is finally getting published this summer by Arcana Comics! It takes place in World War 2 during one final mission an American unit has to go on shortly after victory has been declared in Europe. It’s written by Frank Tra, drawn by me and colored by Megan Spence.

After five years, I`m glad to see it finally on it`s way to publication. It`ll be previewed in Diamond`s May catalogue and it`s solicited for August.

I`ll post some more preview images in the coming months!

MvM page 1

MvM page 2

MvM page 3

MvM page 4

This is the first four pages for the seven page short story I did for Cloudscape’s Exploded View anthology. Although I did all the pages in colour and to regular American comic size, Exploded View was printed in black and white at Manga size. Unfortunately, I screwed up the black and white conversion and it printed way too dark for the book.

The story is kind of dumb and it all hinges on a cliched twist. Basically, I wanted to draw a silent story with a ruined city setting and just make it up as I go along. After I’d completed the short, I attempted to underscore the stupidity of the story by adding the subtitle “Round 238” to the title. My idea was that if I presented it that way, it would almost set the story up as “yet another story about a robot fighting a machine, please lower your expections.” I’m not quite sure if that worked, though, because everyone I’ve told this to didn’t get that when first reading it. Oh well. I’m hoping it’s at least nice to look at.

The Adventures of Hitlerbot

This is a one page short that me and my twin brother, Chris, did for “Exploded View”, the latest Cloudscape anthology. Basically this story came out of a drunken conversation at a bar that me, Chris and my buddy Colin had one night while trying to come up with ideas for a Sci-Fi short. If memory serves me correctly, Colin commented that he discovered that a girl he knew painted like Hitler. The conversation continued and Chris brought up the idea that it would be funny if, unlike the usual exploitation convention, (*SPOILERS*) Hitler was brought back to life and all he wanted to do was paint.

From there, we used the 1960’s Marvel method to create the short, which means that I drew the page based off of our discussion and without a script and then Chris attached dialogue to it.

The reason that way of producing a comic was developed back in the 60’s was to save Stan Lee time because he was writing almost ten books a month. This, however, meant that all of the story pacing and a lot of the story direction was in the hands of the artist. And the reason why that worked so well was because back then comic artists were more widely known as cartoonists, and carried all the skills associated with that title. I think a cartoonist by the more traditional definition compared to comic artists today is someone who controls the pacing and story direction of the comic they’re drawing. Pretty much all of the comic artist today, though, just take a completed script and follow the directions that are layed out in it, which puts all of the pacing and story direction in hands of the scripter.

It’s interesting to note that in movie screenwriting, it’s a faux pas for the writer to dictate camera moves, overly detailed character descriptions and emotions, music choices and any other things that should be handled by specific production experts / artists during the development. The general idea is to let those departments do their jobs and be artists. When it comes to comic scripting, though, there is no universal template. Each writer has their own way of scripting and therefor there’s no real faux pas. Alan Moore is famous for writing scripts for 22 page comics that are phone book sized due to his highly discriptive nature. That’s an extreme example, though. Most writer’s keep their scripts fairly reasonable despite the lack of restrictions. My buddy Tim Simmons’ site, the Comic Book Script Archives, is interesting to look at to get an understanding of all the various styles of comic book scripting.

I have no problem with getting full scripts from writers. In fact, I prefer it. Every now and then, though, it’s fun to try the Marvel Method because it feels like your jumping without a parachute and it truley tests your storytelling skills.

What do most artists prefer? Full scripts or complete storytelling freedom?

Vancouver, BC

The Olympics are in town and it seems like there’s a continual stream of references to the city I call home in all areas of the pop culture landscape at the moment. With all this attention, I almost feel more prideful of this beautiful city then I am of the Country. And because I’m such a big fan of the comic medium, I’m going to give a shout out to what little I know of the Vancouver comic scene.

It seems like this city’s comic scene has been growing quite a bit over the last couple of years. I don’t know much about the Webcomic scene in Vancouver, but my friend Connor Vernon heads up Natural1. I’m also not too knowledgeable about the indy scene, but I understand that indy publisher Arcana is based around Vancouver and I know that the majority of independent comic artists in the city have participated in Cloudscape’s yearly anthology. Cloudscape is a collective of Vancouver based artists that produces an annual publication. Its founder and CEO is Jeff Ellis, who’s a great guy that I happened to randomly meet at a work Christmas party over a year ago. Also, although I’ve yet to attend one, I’ve heard a bit about the Vancouver Comic Jam, a monthly pub gathering of local comic fans and artists.

Moving up the ladder to a more mainstream independent (isn’t that an oxymoron?) comic venue is Image Comics, which has had four new Vancouver artists contribute to their line of books over the past year. Those artists have been Brandon Graham (King City), Marian Churchland (Beast and Hip Flask), James Stokoe (Orc Stain) and Camilla d’Errico. (Sky Pirates of Neo Terra) It’s interesting to note that all of these artists serve as a jack of all trades in this medium because they tend to write, pencil, ink and colour/tone their comics all by themselves. (Camilla d’Errico only drew Sky Pirates, but she co-wrote her Arcana book Burn)

Other then Todd McFarlane, who lived in Vancouver during his 80’s Marvel years, Vancouver’s biggest comic star is Steve Skroce, who has a hand in pretty much everything the Wachowski brothers do these days. In between working on art for the movies The Matrix, Speed Racer, V For Vendetta and Ninja Assassin, he does the art for his creator owned comic Doc Frankenstein for the Wachowski founded comic company Burlyman Entertainment. In his career, he’s worked on The Amazing Spider-Man, X-Man, Cable, Youngblood, Gambit and Wolverine.

Vancouver is also well known for the couple that make up Pia Guerra (Y The Last Man, Doctor Who) and Ian Boothby (Simpsons Comics). Steve Rolston (Queen & Country, Pounded, The Escapists) teaches an “Introduction To Comic Book Production” course at VanArts and Kaare Andrews (Spider-Man: Reign, Astonishing X-Men) teaches at the 3D training school ThinkTank and is starting to launch his film directing career. I once also met the very approachable Steve Sadowski (Avengers / Invaders, JSA) around town.

Did I miss anyone significant? I’m sure I did. One thing we’re definitely missing in this city is a big comic convention. I’ve been hearing some rumblings about a decent sized convention starting up, but it’ll likely be a while before we get something on the scale of Seattle’s Emerald City Comicon, which has a 2010 guest list that seems to rival San Diego’s.

If I’ve missed anything, please leave a comment below!

Exploded View

I’ve done two short stories for the upcoming fourth Cloudscape anthology. The book, titled “Exploded View”, (pictured left with an absolutely beautiful cover by Camilla d’Errico) is going to be released on March 6. Despite the fact that I drew the upcoming Arcana graphic novel, “The Killers”, several years ago, “Exploded View” will be my first published work.

The Cloudscape guys are a very talented collective of Vancouver artists and I’m proud to be a part of this growing local comic scene. It seems like the professional comic talent coming out of Vancouver has been growing quite a bit lately and this anthology contains a bunch of artists who are definitley going to become some big names in the coming years.

The book’s launch party will be held at the Ayden Gallery in the International Village in downtown Vancouver on March 6th at 7pm. I’ll be in attendance, so if you’re free that night please show up!

I’ll be showing some preview images from my short stories in the coming days.

Here’s a panel from my 7 page short story for the upcoming Cloudscape anthology.

X-Men FCBD

X-Men FCBD

X-Men FCBD

X-Men FCBD

These are some Marvel samples I did back in April from Mike Carey’s “Free Comic Book Day X-Men” script, which showcases the fairly new character, Pixie. I’m fairly proud of them overall, but the N’Garai demons need a little work. While working on these pages, I learned a lot about the balance between visually appealing work and perfect storytelling. I find that this is an issue with a lot of sequential artists. There are always going to be situations where you can draw a scene in the most beautiful way that comes to mind at the cost of clear storytelling. On the flip side, there are many artists out there who always find a way to make the storytelling as clear as possible, but the page just has nothing interesting to look at. If I were to assess my work overall, I think I suffer from the latter problem. A good artist can always find a balance between the two.

Generally, I think these pages feel a little naked without any sort of inking or colour, but I think they turned out fairly well.