Wow, has it really been this long since I’ve written a blog post? I guess time really does fly whether you’re having fun or just so busy you lose track of it. Well allow me to reintroduce myself, I guess. If you’re new to my work, you might be more familiar with my 3D art but prior to that I was self-publishing a comic called “Asshole”, a ‘what would you do with super powers’ fantasy that debuted to good reviews, but ultimately led to creator fatigue, as I was wearing so many hats myself. So I took some time off to recoup, wound up going back to college, really got heavy into 3D and doing custom collectibles , and before I knew it “Asshole” was pretty far in the rear view mirror.
But I still had stories to tell. And while 3D statues and figures told little stories of their own, they weren’t MY stories. Which leads me to today. My studio, Rival Design Comics is ready to publish again, and I’d like to share with you some of the process that’s led up to this point. And it started with a photo on internet.
One of the comments was “He looks like a sharecropper assassin.” Now this made me burst out laughing, but also made me think “that’s a helluva story right there.” I sat on that idea for weeks just thinking about what life would be like for a sharecropper assassin, and what life in general at that time would have been like.
That was the entrance to the rabbit hole. I had seen plenty of movies regarding the black experience at that time and while there were a few gems, everything always seemed framed around slavery, and personally, I had had enough of that perspective. I wanted to know what life was like during that brief period of Reconstruction that we never really read or hear about. Two books I dove into were “The Souls of Black Folk” and “Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880” both by W.E.B. Du Bois. My eyes were opened wide and so was my mind as it seemed like the ideas began flooding in. However, the more I thought about the time period, the less I was interested in a sharecropper assassin story and the more I became enthralled by the story of the black cowboy.
I grew up loving westerns, but aside from a few blaxploitation flicks there was really no one telling the story of black cowboys. This of course led to more book purchases, studying the life of people like Bass Reeves and Nat Love; the book “Black Cowboys of the Old West: True, Sensational, And Little-Known Stories From History” is now one of my most treasured possessions. I was set. I knew what the book would be about, now I needed a who. Well, if you know me you know I love horror, particularly supernatural horror. And the television show “Supernatural” was just ‘chefs-kiss’ IMO (all but the series finale ☹) so a black cowboy in a supernatural western just ticked every box in my brain. Thankfully my love for what I was about to write made the process of writing the script flow in a way it never did during the creation of “Asshole”, the words were just pouring out of me. But with this being such a big departure from what I had done previously I knew the road with this script would be a long one. I attended writer's conventions, workshops, read every book I could get my hands on (within reason) about world building, character development, monster creation and motivation. I was determined for this book to be heavy in a way the humor of “Asshole” just didn’t allow. And finally, after nearly 7 months of constant reworking and rewriting, I had my script, all 160 pages of it. The thing about writing though, it's never quite finished until its published as I’m still polishing it to this day, nearly a year to the date of its inception.
Which leads to the part I was really looking forward to, the art! One of the things I got into while working on “Asshole” was the use of 3D in creating my backgrounds. Below are a few pages from the first three issues where I recreated the building I grew up in, my bedroom, and a few other areas around NYC, all in Sketchup. This time around though, because of the time period and the scope of what I want to do, Sketchup just wasn’t going to cut it. Besides, I’m now a college grad who’d studied 3D animation and grown familiar with programs like Unreal and ZBrush, so I wasn’t going to just make a few buildings, I needed to make a whole area of the country! No longer just being backgrounds, I see them as miniature movie sets that exist on my hard drive. Looking at it this way then began to change my entire approach to how I would normally approach drawing a book. Anyone familiar with the comic creation process knows that the art begins with the thumbnail, and for those familiar with the movie creation process knows it typically begins with the storyboards. Looking at the two processes, its nearly the same thing but by approaching my thumbnail process by storyboarding but capturing the beats instead of every few seconds of the scene, it’s changed the entire look, so it no longer feels like a graphic novel and more like a movie on paper. I believe this will enhance the reading experience far beyond anything I’ve ever done previously, as I’ve never been so excited to draw as I am now!
Of course, I can’t say all of this without a few reveals, right? Well, here are just a few shots of the set created, some in Unreal Engine, some in Daz Studio, just to give an idea of what to expect. Now before I lead anyone on, I don’t want anyone to think that I modeled everything you see. I purchased a LOT of assets to save me from what would have been well over a year spent modeling, though still took some months to arrange the sets as they are. Most of my actual modeling was done creating the characters so that I would have reference for any and every look, pose, expression and action.
And as promised here are a few pages from “Asshole” I mentioned. I can’t wait to show off some of the new pages so I can show the growth I’ve gone through, but what I will share some of the character art in the coming weeks to give a sense of just how different this new book will be stylistically. One day I do want to come back and wrap up “Asshole” properly, it had way more fans than I ever thought there would be, and they deserve proper closure.
So, I just wanna thank you for hanging around and reading through this long ass post. Going forward I don’t want to have years between blog posts as I really want to use this as a means keeping everyone interested in my work, abreast of my work. I’m just so thoroughly excited for this next chapter, and I really hope you’ll join me on this ride, I promise you it’ll be a wild one and well worth the wait. And please if you have any questions about anything, feel free to hit me up, because I can’t wait to tell you more!