#29 FALL 2014 $8.95 IN THE US

The Professional “How-To” Magazine on Comics, Cartooning and Animation

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1 82658 27764 2 THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAW-MAGAZINE.BLOGSPOT.COM FALL 2014, VOL. 1, #29 TABLE OF CONTENTS Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Managing Editor and Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Front Cover • Dave Dorman DAVE DORMAN DRAW! FALL 2014, Vol. 1, No. 29 was The master illustrator wields his brush like produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published a Jedi master as he demos his unique process by TwoMorrows Publishing. 3 Michael Manley, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial address: DRAW! Magazine, c/o Michael Manley, 430 Spruce Ave., Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Plan- et, Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2014 comic art bootcamp by their respective contributors. Views expressed This month’s installment: here by contributors and interviewees are not 33 Concept & Design necessarily those of Action Planet, Inc., TwoMor- rows Publishing, or its editors Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing ac- cept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of produc- tion, its creator (if work-for-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trade- LESEAN THOMAS marks of their respective owners; and said artwork or Jamar Nicholas interviews other trademarked material is printed in these pages the renaissance man of animation with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for 44 journalistic, educational, or historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. This entire issue is ©2014 Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. RIGHT WAY, WRONG WAY—ORDWAY! If you’re viewing a Digital 72 Challengers of the Collaboration Edition of this publication, PLEASE READ THIS:

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DRAW! FALL 2014 1 interview conducted by Mike Manley and transcribed by Jon Knutson

At this moment in our very own Draw!: So, what are you working on today? Dave Dorman: Today, I’ve got some juggling on a galaxy… couple of things. I’m putting together a small art book for San Diego, featuring some of my Aliens and Predator art- ave Dorman is an Eisner Award-winner, an work. It’s all production work—just gathering the art, putting Inkpot Award-winner, and a favorite among it together, getting it ready for the printer, and sending it out Star Wars fans—including George Lucas tomorrow. I’m also laying out a comic book story, a 20-page comic that’s going to also be available at San Diego, featuring himself! He’s worked on practically every major some characters from my Wasted Lands graphic novel proj- science-fiction, fantasy, and horror licensed property ect. The comic book is called Red Tide, and it’s a prequel to a at one point or another, and he’s learned a thing or three-issue series we’re going to do in the fall. two about slinging oil paint. So gather ’round, young Draw!: And are you publishing this yourself? padawans, as the master teaches us the ways of the DD: Yeah, I’m doing the whole thing myself. I have a writ- Illustrator. ing partner, Mike Bawden, who’s doing the scripting, but I’m

DRAW! FALL 2014 3 (left) Dave: “‘The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan’” was commissioned for a book on fantastical places. From the start I wanted to do some- thing different for this piece. The first was not to show Khan from the front. The piece is about the pleasure dome, not him. But I wanted it to exude strength and eroticism. This is the pencil art for the 20" x 30" painting.” (right) Dave: “After I transfer the drawing I begin the oil underpainting, adding textures in the paint by pulling the paint form the board and using the transparency of the oils and white of the board to add depth to the background.” The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan © Dave Dorman plotting it and doing all of the artwork and production, and check my email, see if anybody’s ordered anything, answer sending it off to the printer. I’m laying out the pages right now fans’ questions, and then get to drawing, whether it’s drawing so I can start on the pencil work tomorrow. I’m also juggling preliminary roughs, doing a layout, getting a painting ready, a couple of logistic things for San Diego, and intending to go or actually sitting down and laying paint on the board. to Austin for the Capital City Convention—I’m working on that. So basically, partial art, partial business. Draw!: Do you have a fixed schedule, as far as you’re usu- ally up by a certain time, to work by a certain time, or do you Draw!: Is that a fairly typical day for you, to have the busi- sort of roll with the deadlines? ness side, and then the art side? DD: It’s rolling with the deadlines. I have a son in elementary DD: No, that usually happens maybe two or three times a school, so during the school year, it’s getting him up and off to month. Most of my actual work time is penciling, drawing, school, and that’s the start of the day. It used to be, before we sketching, preparing the artwork—that type of thing. This had Jack, our son, I’d get up and basically just start working, and type of book production stuff comes up occasionally, I’d say then take a break for lunch or whatever. If there are some errands maybe three or four times a year. Mostly around this time, or things to be done around the house, then come back and just in the late spring/early summer, getting ready for San Diego work again until it’s time to go to bed. But with my son it chang- and the convention season. I look to have new product out es—good changes—the whole day, and as a matter of fact, I had for when I attend the shows. So, that’s usually when this type to adjust the schedule to fit family life. So I work a little bit more of thing happens. But my regular work day would be get up, at night, when everyone’s gone to bed, and the house is quiet.

4 DRAW! FALL 2014 (left) Dave: “Two more layers of underpainting give me a solid base to work from.” (right) Dave: “I begin rendering the details, this time mostly in oils as I want to be able to blend parts of them back into the background while it is still wet.” The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan © Dave Dorman

Draw!: I take it you don’t pull too many all-nighters any- that you’re not happy with. If I haven’t learned my lessons more, unless it’s an extreme deadline? through the years in the industry now, I’m never going to DD: Unless it’s a very extreme deadline, I don’t pull an all- learn. I learned very early on it’s better to paint when you’re nighter. Yeah, I find that pulling all-nighters causes a lot of rested then when you’re falling asleep and ending up with a anxiety, obviously, because you know you’re running late, so forehead covered in oil paint from dropping on the drawing I just basically try my best to stay on schedule, make sure that board while you’re snoring away. I know when the deadline’s going to hit. After 30 years in the business, I’m pretty good at approximating how long any Draw!: Do you give yourself time after you’ve finished a particular piece is going to take, so I know that if it’s going to job to get away from it to look at it before you send it out, or be close to a deadline, I need to work another hour or two at does that really just depend on how hot the deadline is? night to make sure I can hit those deadlines. I’m getting a little DD: Exactly, it depends on how close the deadline is. Usu- bit too old to pull those all-nighters. ally, I would take a day or two to let it set, so that I can turn away from it, and then come back with a fresh eye and make Draw!: [laughs] Yeah. The other thing is I know some- sure that it’s exactly what I wanted, whether additional detail times when you push the all-nighter, you also run the risk of needs to be made, or colors need to be adjusted, or something making a mistake that takes you actually longer to go back to make it just a little bit tighter, and a little bit more of what and correct, where if you just stop and get a little rest, you the client expects. Obviously, some of the things now, with would actually move much faster, and you would avoid... the digital technology, I can sort of paint to a point, and then DD: Sure. You just don’t want to compromise the integrity not have to worry about maybe shifting a color a little bit, of the art. You don’t want to send anything out of the studio or doing a little bit darker tonal thing on the page. I can just

DRAW! FALL 2014 5 young artists were traditional painters, but they were also ed- ucated in digital mediums. So, I started talking with them, and experiencing what digital was doing. I really hadn’t thought about incorporating digital at all into my repertoire of media until three or four years ago. This was, like I say, back around the late 1990s/early 2000s, and digital “started raising its ugly head.” [laughter] I started experiencing it more and more, and I started play- ing with it on my artwork, because at that time, I was already scanning my artwork into digital files for the publishers, rather than me having to send my original artwork to them, since they were going to digitize them anyway. It’d gotten to the point where I just wanted a large format scanner to scan my pieces in, and send them to the publisher. Then I started learning about little tweaks that could be made to the pieces. It was a slow learning process for me, as far as after-image digital manipulation was concerned. But I never thought that I would have to create an image from a blank canvas to a fully rendered piece digitally, because in my world—and I think, in most artists’ worlds—the image is what speaks for the artist. The image is what is. It doesn’t matter how you got there, it doesn’t matter what medium you use, as long as the image is good, it’s what the client wants, and they can use it for whatever they have their purposes for. Then, about three or four years ago, I got a couple of calls in a row—and if this would’ve happened maybe two or years separate, I wouldn’t have made too much of it, but it happened within like a month or two of each other. I got two calls from two companies. Both art directors liked my work quite a bit, and wanted to hire me to do these projects. These were two separate compa- nies. And we got into the conversation with my art, and what (above) Dave: “I adjust some of the background to reflect the cherry they wanted, what they expected from me, and the first art di- blossom coloring and detailing I will be adding in the next step. I rector said, “Okay, so you’re working digitally, so we can get have intentionally left a lot of the background less detailed, as I will these digital files.”And I said, “No, I’m working traditionally be covering it up in the next step.” and scan my work in and give you digital files.” He said, “Oh, (next page) Dave: “With the painted art finished, I scan it in and have so you don’t work digitally?” I said, “No, I don’t.” He said, a digital copy. At this point I add the cherry blossoms digitally, layer- “Well, we’re really looking for a digital artist for this project.” ing them from back to front to help give a depth in them and also to the painting itself.” And I really didn’t know what to say at this point, because the art speaks for itself. The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan © Dave Dorman scan it in and do that digitally very quickly without having Draw!: And once you scan it in, it’s digital anyway, so to repaint an area, or lay on an overcoat of transparent paint what difference would it make, right? to go change that tone. I can do it in the computer a little bit DD: Well, yeah! Exactly! And that was my interpretation of easier, so the digital thing has made it easier on the back end things. But, this happened, and then almost the exact same of the painting. thing happened about a month later, and I lost the second job because I wasn’t doing my artwork in a digital fashion, from Draw!: I remember reading—it was in the last year or so— a blank piece to a finished piece. So, I started thinking about on Facebook, you were asking people about scanners. I guess this, and it occurred to me, in talking with a lot of artists now- the pulse was about digital painting, and how that was a big adays, probably about a third of the artists I know are strictly deal for some of your clients, like they wanted you to do the digital artists; they don’t do traditional art at all, and have art because they like your work, but then thought that you never done traditional art. We have a generation—or prob- were digital, but you aren’t digital. ably two generations now—of artists who have never really DD: It just started out as an interest in digital work because, put pencil to paper to any extent, or put paint on board to any I’d say about 15 years ago, I started encountering a lot of extent. The whole creative process is through the computer! young guys who were coming out of school who knew my So, they don’t really grasp that traditional art is just as viable work, and wanted to talk to me about work. Most of these as digital art.

6 DRAW! FALL 2014 week on it. Ideally, with deadlines, I like to have a week per tiq, which is the tablet that you’re actually painting on so you painting. But there’re some deadlines where I need to turn it can see where you’re painting, so it’s more natural. I did even- over quick, and I can turn it over just as quickly. tually get a Cintiq. I have one in the studio here. It’s been sitting here for two months, and I haven’t touched it yet. [laughter] Draw!: And you can even do it like Frazetta, and put it in the oven and bake it! [laughs] Draw!: Did you get the arm for it, so you can move it around? DD: Bake it? DD: It’s on a platform that sort of tilts. It gives me everything I would need. But it’s a process of learning a whole new tool, Draw!: Bake your painting, if you need to to speed the dry- and I’m an old dog. I can still learn some new tricks, but it’s ing! Kidding of course. going to take me a little bit longer to learn those new tricks. DD: We’ll get into how I get my pieces done quickly later in the interview. I can finish a painting, actually putting oil paint Draw!: And you don’t want to have to learn it on a deadline. on a board, and have it literally dry and ready to scan in an DD: Well, that’s exactly right. So, I just need two or three hour. These are just techniques I’ve learned over the years. But weeks to sit and play with it, and see what it can do, talk to the digital thing? It’s lost me a couple of jobs, so what I did, a some friends. Jon Foster, a very good friend of mine, I’ve year ago or so, I started asking on Facebook and through some known him since he was one of those young kids coming out social media things, “Guys who are doing digital stuff, give me of school, doing both traditional and digital, and he’s been a some tips. What do I need to know? What programs do I need very big help for me with information and how to approach to know?” I played with Wacom tablets, and the eye-hand thing digital work, even taking partially done traditional paintings where you’re drawing somewhere but you’re having to look and scanning them in and finishing them in digital. Guys like elsewhere just didn’t do it for me. Then they invented this Cin- Jon are very helpful, and have been, and I’m looking forward

(left) Dave: “Original inks for page 22 on 11" x 17" Bristol board. I ink with a Hunt bowl tip dip pen and Black Magic ink.” (right) Dave: “I painted the color in the old blue line style, meaning the painted color is on a separate board and the black line art is mechanically placed on top of the colored art. In this case the color was scanned and then married to the black line art in Photoshop. Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman

DRAW! FALL 2014 9 Dave: “Move ahead 13 years.... I have decided to finally revisit my Rail graphic novel and this time (bottom left) “Dave Tay- finish the five-novel series left undone those many lor’s initial rendering of years back. However, I have kept working on the the bike. An amazing world of Wasted Lands and Rail and have made a job that my life so much few minor and some major changes—one of the easier!” most visual is that I redesigned the bad guys’ mo- (left and right) “Making torbikes. Below is my new design for the Hollow the changes in the bike Men bikes. I knew it was a complicated design and panels on a separate I would have problems with perspectives on it, so I page of Bristol. I took contacted my good friend and 3-D designer Dave this into Photoshop and Taylor and asked him to render me a bike in 3-D so I merged the new art could maneuver the image for proper drawing.” onto the old page.”

Wasted Lands © Dave Dorman to gaining more information as I move into the digital. As a eye, to the layman who’s looking at the packaging of a product commercial artist, I can’t lose work because I can’t work in a or a movie poster, these technicians are faking it and bringing particular medium. down the overall quality of what commercial art should be.

Draw!: If you think back to the ’50s, when modern art Draw!: I agree. Part of my thesis for my Master’s touched really started affecting illustration, you had that whole gen- on some of that. You really see it if you go into a Barnes & eration, Bernie Fuchs, Bob Peak, and all those guys mess- Noble and look at the paperback covers. They’re all photos ing around and working on different ways to try to be more that somebody is tweaking in Painter or Photoshop. They’re modern. That’s kind of what killed Leyendecker’s career. He putting filters on it to make it look like an illustration, but it’s did fantastic work, but his work looked like a certain era. But actually just a photograph that they doctored up. if you told someone it was digital, they might not be able to DD: Right, and that’s what makes them technicians and not tell it wasn’t digital! They’d just say, “Oh, yeah, these are all artists. They can do that quickly. They can go to an online digital,” because in the end you’re not supposed to be able to stock photo house, get a photo, somebody else’s magic little tell, for the most part, if it’s digital or “tradigital.” sparkles in the background, then go to another photo stock DD: Let me just bring up something else that’s really bitten and buy a castle, and then put them together in Photoshop, my butt over the last ten years, and I’m sure that your butt has and make some colors over it, and add some fancy type, and some bite marks on it too—so have a lot of traditional artists— there’s your book cover. which is the commonality of programs that are able to produce styles and techniques with the click of a button. They get into Draw!: I was in the supermarket the other day, and I went the hands of people who now, because it makes “art” easy, we past where they have their pathetic rack of books, and there have these people taking away jobs from trained, talented com- was a bunch of whatever the current Tom Clancy kind of mercial artists, and that itself is a product of this digital world. I thing is, and it looked like a photo of the White House with call these artists “technicians,” because they’re not artists. They some helicopters they’d popped in, and they put some filters know the programs, and they can fake art, and to the untrained on it, and they smudged it, and blurred it, and then you leave

10 DRAW! FALL 2014 (left) Dave: “An absolutely fun project fell into my hands when I was asked to do a tribute to the amazing Winsor McCay and his creation Little Nemo. I have been a fan of Mccay’s since I don’t know how long. His controlled pen line work was a great inspiration to me in my own pen work. So I jumped at the chance to say “thank you” to one of the great illustrators of the 20th century. This piece is the small rough idea for my Nemo vignette.” (right) Dave: “I took my rough into the computer to do a quick color comp to guide me in my thoughts—even though later I wound up throwing it out!” Artwork © Dave Dorman

I do commercial artwork as a living, so the time that I spend stuff, because I love the classic strips. Al had Carlos Garzon when I do continuous panel stuff, I don’t have need to worry help him on Star Wars, because just drawing C-3PO, there’s no about a deadline. I don’t have to crank out 30 pages in a month. way you can do him fast! [laughter] Or R2-D2, those things are I don’t have to worry about whether a panel looks right or not to so tech-heavy. Even trying to simplify something like the Mil- be able to finish the page. I can take the time to make sure that lennium Falcon is work to simplify something complex. panel looks right, because I don’t have a deadline. I’m drawing DD: Right, I agree with you 100%. It just depends on the art- for me. If I end up doing one of my strips for, say, Dave Elliott ist, but you find very few of that type of artist working in the wanted for Monster Massacre, something like that, I have a medium today. deadline, but I make sure it’s a long enough deadline for me. If I’m doing twelve pages, I have three or four months to do Draw!: Well, there’re only a few continuity strips left. One twelve pages. So, I can take the time to make each panel right, of them I do, Judge Parker, and I was looking at some of my taking photo reference, or looking for photo reference on the Leonard Starr originals the other day, thinking about how they Internet, or whatever, to make sure that what I’m rendering is were printed about five times larger than my strip, and also it what I want. But your average comic guy can do that, your av- doesn’t pay me enough money to afford a guy who’s letter- erage comic artist can render a comic book every two months, ing, or hire a guy to say, “Here’s a reference, go draw those that’s a lot of work. It’s not a habit any more, like the old strip cars and trucks. I’ll lay it out, but then I’ll give it to somebody guys used to do, doing seven strips in a couple of days. else.” Even in the old days of illustration, part of your pay that was built in was the model fee! The guys, they would go Draw!: Well, almost every single one of those guys had a to the same photographer. That’s why everybody says Steve background assistant. Leonard Starr had Tex Blaisdell. I know Holland was on every single paperback cover! Blaisdell used to do backgrounds for other guys. I collect that DD: He was the go-to guy!

DRAW! FALL 2014 19 Design

by Mike Manley and Bret Blevins

oncept Art is an ever growing field that today plays Every cartoon I have worked on has contained as part of an important role in every film, television program, the design pack a style guide for backgrounds and character video game, and yes—comic book.& Look at the recent designs, etc. It is essential in the early parts of the develop- CMarvel movies as an example. The core visuals are built on ment of a show to get everybody on the same visual wave- the visual language and designs of the great Marvel artists, length. You can’t have the dozens of artists working on the but especially Jack Kirby and the hundreds of comics he drew cartoon running in every different direction, and in the movies in his teaming with Stan Lee during the prime Marvel period. and video games you now sometimes have hundreds if not The initial character and concept designs for the Marvel Uni- thousands of artists spread across the globe working on the verse are chiefly the result of this visual dynamo, one of the same project. most important artists of the 20th century, whose work fuels In the very earliest stages of the design and concept process the fantasy designs of the 21st century. of a movie or video game, the artists, art directors, and people in charge of visual development pull together style boards to help create the visual talking points that lead to the building blocks that form these new universes. Ralph McQuarrie’s concept illustrations for Star Wars (1977) are probably the best example of the way mod- ern filmmaking employs the use of this concept of creat- ing a grand visual narrative in the preproduction story stage. Some companies may even go further, as Disney did with Mulan, by sending the devel- opment team to a location— One of Kirby’s concepts that’s become in Mulan’s case, China—to a major visual backbone of Marvel’s do research, to draw, sketch, 21st century movies is the S.H.I.E.L.D. and take pictures for authen- helicarrier seen in its original design (left) and the Avengers and Captain ticity. In the case of Mulan, a America movie version (above). very important story and her- S.H.I.E.L.D. © Marvel Characters, Inc. oine in Chinese culture, Dis- The Avengers © Marvel Studios. ney wanted to get the visual details correct.

DRAW! FALL 2014 33 (above) Star Wars is a massively influential film that has spun out culturally, and its world was built on the “style boards” of Flash Gordon and the comics and sci-fi movies that influenced and thrilled George Lucas as a child. C-3PO is just one example of a major character in Star Wars that came from a visual inspira- tion or style board from another source. In C-3PO’s case, it was Maria, the robotic woman from Fritz Lang’s silent movie classic Metropolis (1927), which sparked the initial idea. (top right) One of Ralph McQuarrie’s first Star Wars concept illustrations featuring one of his original designs for C-3PO. (right) C-3PO in the final form we have all grown to love. Star Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd.

Building Your Style Board Organization A great way to start developing your ideas, no matter the me- The next step, once you have your pile of visual information, dium, is to start by spending time building what are called is to start organizing it into folders that then you can use to style boards or inspiration boards. Graphic designers and fash- build your style boards. Once you have the folder filled, it’s a ion artists employ these collections—almost a visual collage snap to make a series of collage boards for the different sub- of images, textures, fabrics, texts, etc.—to create an overall jects for your project: “style” in which to visually illustrate the work they want to create. Interior designers will employ this as a way to show a client how the new interiors will look. Pinterest is basically a web-based style board. It’s often hard to just pull ideas out of the either. Even the great Jack Kirby, who was ten times as imaginative as the normal artist, would find inspiration for some of his fantastic machinery from household objects like his wife’s hairdryer. Even the most fantastic designs are better if they are based on something real. To start making your style board, I suggest you spend some time being sort of a detective for your project. Think about the who, where, why, what, and when of your ideas. Write these notes down and review them, make lists. You can break things down into figures, backgrounds, interiors, exteriors, etc. Once you have these lists, you can then start hunting down your visual reference. Google is of course a fantastic resource and search engine, but knowing how to ask for something in more than one way is also essential. I still recommend going to your local library and asking for help to research your list of ideas. There is more and more on the Internet every day, but not everything is online, and there are many, many research books and references that line the shelves of your local library.

34 DRAW! FALL 2014 CEO

An elf. Elves are tall, slender, graceful humanoids with brightly-colored eyes and pointy ears. They’re pretty, but they’re also alien and often a little threatening. Elves come in skin colors ranging from light green to pale blue, through the spectrum of “normal” skin colors. Elves’ eyes come in whatever color you can think of, which contributes to their alien appearance. I’d like to splice the familiar J.R.R. Tolkien elves with earlier Germanic elf mythology—so, our elves are tall and graceful and have a magic connection to nature, but they’re also cruel, superior, as comfort- able in the dark as in the light, and nearly incapable of empathy toward non-elves. At some point I’d like to write a conversation between some characters about how in the “old days,” elves would snatch children and whisk them away into the darkness of their forest citadels—in the “old days,” elf princes would happily serve a human or orcish “piglet” at banquet, a gruesome meal eaten with finest silver, crystal glass, elegant conversation and the most tasteful furnishings. The CEO can be a man or woman, I’m not particular there. The only specifics I have in mind are that the CEO has extensive neural implants, which may result in an unusual haircut/style, and that he/she should have clothes that look like they cost more than you make in a year, a combination of elven robes and corporate chic. For acting, the CEO is rich person who’s always been rich and always will be. He/she isn’t intimidated by the Dragon punks—they’re just maggots so far as the CEO is concerned. At the time of our story, the CEO has been infected with Siren, though. Elves are all about ego—their natural gifts allow them to keep their feeling of superiority despite any odds. For elves, Siren crushes the ego—it provides too panoramic a view of time and space for them to maintain their self-importance. So, the CEO is grap- pling with an implosion of identity, which leads to all kinds of strange expressions/behaviors. I guess it wouldn’t be a good idea to be overly explicit about it, but the CEO should seem slightly “off” the whole time.

ART NOTES: For some reason I could see this character very clearly right away. She was there from this first doodle.

There were other incidental character roughs done as well, but these characters—plus a dragon—were the elements of the first promotional image. I need- ed a logo so I began doodling, first filling a page with aimless unimaginative notions, then deciding I would work backward: I’d sketch out a composition for the entire scene, then let the logo design grow organically out of that. You see here how it devel- Epoch © Bret Blevins Productions LLC oped, and I found a good working idea for the logo.

38 DRAW! FALL 2014 Boom! Goes the Dynamite

an interview with

Interview conducted by Jamar Nicholas of art—because I actually hated that class. It was just the way and transcribed by Jon Knutson he treated me, and the way he would talk to me in a language I understood, if that makes any sense. He made things fun for JAMAR NICHOLAS: Tell me a little bit about when you me, he made things interesting, and it made me want to learn were in grade school. Were you a decent student, or were you what I was learning in his class. And I felt like, in my other distracted from always thinking about drawing? classes, there wasn’t a lot of interaction. It was, “Sit down, be LeSean Thomas: I was always really distracted as a quiet, read these pages.” And I didn’t know who these people kid. It wasn’t that I didn’t have good grades, or that I didn’t do were. As a kid, I was like, “Who are you? I’ll be with you eight well in school, I just wasn’t interested. I wasn’t one of those hours a day, and then I’ll go to the real world when class is up.” kids that would do everything I was told. Any chance I got to I wasn’t too interested in my teachers per se, and I think it had draw, I would, so that got me in a lot of trouble. I got in trouble an effect on my behavior in class. more for being mischievous, for not doing what I was told, than anything else. My friends didn’t help at all either, because JN: I think that’s interesting. Being a teacher and knowing they were mischievous too. And we didn’t do anything bad. a lot of teachers, I don’t think a lot of teachers really think We didn’t do anything super-crazy. It was primarily, “Okay, that hard about the students and where they’re really com- LeSean should be studying pages 247 to 263,” and you pull the ing from, and how they interact with the teachers. It’s either textbook back, and I wouldn’t be reading, I’d be drawing. you’re good or you’re not good, or you’re a problem or one The other thing too, looking back, a lot of my teachers, as of the good kids. nice as they were, didn’t live in my neighborhood, so for me, LT: I think that’s just a by-product of our system, and I don’t there was a disconnect with the teachers I had. I knew they were want to get too deep into that, just lightly touch on that. I think important because they were white, they were somebody to be it’s indicative of the culture at that time—this was the ’80s. A listened to and respected, but I didn’t understand why I never lot of the teachers that I had were very young, and I never re- really related to them much. The only teacher I really related to ally thought about them being young people, because I was so was my art teacher, Mr. Light, and ironically, it wasn’t because young myself. But these people were in their mid-20s, late 20s,

44 DRAW! FALL 2014 30s. Some of them had been there for a very long time, so obviously they were much older. My principal, Mr. Raggio, was actually in his mid-60s; he was an old dude. They didn’t come from my world; they spoke a different language than I did. It’s not a knock on them, I just felt like... it doesn’t seem like it’s changed that much today from then, but teachers, to me, were just there to get their paycheck. They weren’t paid very well. They weren’t from the neighbor- hood. They were from nicer neighborhoods, a lot of them, and they came to the projects in the South Bronx from 152nd between 10th and Union. They’ve got Pau Rouge, they’ve got Latin Kings—this is dangerous, B! This is the crack era. It was just get in, get out. “I don’t have time to get to know you. This is what you have to learn. Oh, you’re not learning this? There’s something wrong with you. You can’t learn, so you need to go to Special Ed class.” And it’s dumb! The system was set up to leave people behind. If you judge a person by their ability to do something that may not be in their personality or learning curve to do, and then you automatically categorize them as not being able to learn, or as inadequate, or damaged goods... I never really adhered to that. Everybody learns differently. Some people are more hands-on, other people can just read something and get it, and then other people, you kind of need to repeat it to them a bunch of times. Everyone is different. What’s that Einstein saying? “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” That statement is pro- found to me, and it correlates to a lot of these children, and I think that part of it is a cultural thing. You have a lot of teachers that are not from that culture, who are not speaking that language. The other thing is there aren’t a lot of African-American males teaching, either. Especially in my community, growing up, there weren’t a lot of Afri- can-American males. There were a lot of broken families, a lot of single-mom homes, and there weren’t a lot of black male teachers. A lot of people don’t know this about me, but after I wrapped up working on Lizzie McGuire as an assistant animator in New York City—this was before I started working on Arkanium for Dreamwave and started doing some freelance for Warner Broth- ers—I took some time off. I taught at a charter school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, not too far from my apartment. I had a brownstone I lived in across the street from Boys and Girls High School, Boulson Street Subway Station. They used to have the African-American Arts Festival there in Boulson Park. I lived right across the street from that, and there was a really dope charter school right down the block from me, and I taught in an afterschool program. I didn’t have a teacher’s license, but I think my girlfriend at the time had hipped me to their looking for some extra help for afterschool, and I was like, “Oh, why not? It’ll be a cool opportunity.” So I taught there for about a year, and the whole school was run by black parents! It was crazy, and I was one of the only brothers there, you know what I mean? They had a lot of young moms, single moms, so they see a handsome 6' 3" black man handling their kids, they’re like, “Oh my God, this is what’s up!” There was a need for that, a male... I didn’t have that in my school. I think that was another reason why I felt the need to act up. It could’ve been some kind of subconscious plea, like I needed a man to put me in shape every day, because my dad was around when my mom got divorced, but he was only around at really, really important times. He wasn’t there every day. I don’t know, I think I said a lot just now, but I think it’s all tying in to a point of... because I didn’t have that attention, I used that as an opportunity to act up. It could’ve been a plea for help or attention, but just thinking about that now, for the first time in many years, I think I kind of sum it up to that. LeSean’s boards from Adult Swim’s cult hit JN: All those things tie together in weird ways, when you look back at them animated series Black Dynamite. all. I’m sure you weren’t a “bad kid.” Black Dynamite © Black Dynamite, LLC

DRAW! FALL 2014 45 moved upstate. I was the dude who would draw all of their characters for Dungeons & Dragons. I was doing that kind of stuff. When I came back, I had a penchant for fashion at that point. It was being young, just turning 18, and being legal, and fake I.D.s, and all the clubs… that whole thing. I think it was towards the end of my senior year that I decided to take it seriously. The moment escapes me, but there was a catalyst in my life that made me like, “This is what I want to do. I want to do this art thing.” And when I turned 18 and I was doing the art thing heavy, that’s when I stopped going outside, and started going to comic book conven- tions, and I started discovering anime, and I started really, really focusing on my art. I got a drafting table for the first time in my room. This was a big deal for me.

JN: That had to be a huge thing for you. LT: That was a big deal, because up to that point, I was drawing on the floor with a lamp, or I would use a win- dow as a lightbox. My brother and I didn’t value comics back then. We would rip out the pages and put them un- der looseleaf paper, and use the sunlight on the windows to trace drawings. So when I got a drafting table, it was just heavy, B. It was a big deal! “I’m a professional now! What? Come outside? I’ve got my drafting table. I’ve got my Nintendo behind me. I’ve got my snacks. I’ve got comics.” [laughter] That was me! That happened! It’s just so funny how it all turned out, but that’s when I really started taking it serious.

JN: When I got into ninth grade, I remember being overwhelmed by, like you said, being on a subway going (above) Promo art for Aaron downtown, being around McGruder’s The Boondocks. all these people I’d never (right) Sean’s model sheet imagined I’d be with in for Riley, one of the main the same place, and then characters in The Boondocks. having to turn in decent The Boondocks © Aaron McGruder artwork. LT: It was mind-blowing, to an art college. Would man, and it was even more I be the same individual? weird for me that I started Would I be doing the same to have different perspec- things? I don’t know. But tives of class and economy everything happens for around that time, because a reason, and everything to me, the Bronx was nor- doesn’t happen for a rea- mal, and when I went to son. That was pretty much Manhattan, I was kind of my experience with high school, as far as art school was con- like, “Man, I don’t want to go home. I like these tall buildings, cerned. Just that whole process, and dealing with peer pres- and the fact that they have a 7-Eleven that has Slurpees. I’ve sure. Especially when I came back, because after I’d moved never seen anything like this before!” I discovered Forbidden upstate, I wasn’t drawing at all. Planet on 59th Street—a good ten-minute walk. They had two locations: the one on Union Square that kind of shifted around JN: You put it down. the same block area over the years, but there was another one LT: I put it down. I mean, I did a couple of illustrations here on 59th between Second and Third Avenue. I used to live at and there for some of my friends in the neighborhood. All that spot. The top level was classic art cover books, and figu- of my friends were white. There were no black kids when I rines, and stuff like that, but downstairs was where they kept

50 DRAW! FALL 2014 LeSean’s model sheet for Bushido Brown for The Boondocks. The Boondocks © Aaron McGruder that there are usually a couple of people who are really in it to thing popping off, because logic would put you in that direc- just push the boundaries, and other people get dragged along? tion, you know what I’m saying? What I’ve learned is that LT: You know, that’s interesting. That topic comes up quite there are guys who are super-talented, amazingly good, and a lot, and I think I’ve gotten a different perspective on that, they have no aspirations to do their own stuff, for a number of especially when I left the country for a couple of years to live reasons. They don’t want to have to deal with the politics of in South Korea, having that experience, working late nights, the industry, they’re uncomfortable with the business aspect, 20-hour days with Korean animators, and the Korean produc- or they just want to draw. And some people just don’t have a tion system. It’s a very interesting, symbiotic relationship be- story to tell! Those are the types of people that I run into a lot. tween Korea and America when it comes to television anima- But the reason I bring up the outsourcing aspect and the tion production. creative aspect is, in answer to your question, I’ve learned Every job, every place has those people, you know. There’s working with Korean animators... their culture is completely always the archetype, the person who has the vision and the different. They’re really prideful in their work, but they’re ex- dream and the hustle, and the aspirations to do something tremely humble, in my experience—extremely humble. I’m that’s never been done before. And then you have the person not entirely sure where that comes from. It could be part of or the people who are hand-picked, who are about it, down their culture; it could be a religious thing, a Buddhist thing. I for the cause. And then you have those people, like you men- don’t know what it is, but the type of drama I deal with, as far tioned, who are just kind of along for the ride. They see an as talent is concerned in Korea, is nothing compared to the type opportunity—and it’s not to slight those types of people, I’ve of drama I deal with in Hollywood. In Hollywood, the system just learned over the years that not everybody wants to be the is established that if you’re really good, you can kind of be an boss, not everybody wants to tell stories. Some people are, in asshole. It’s so prevalent that when you meet someone who’s fact, just infatuated with drawing, and it doesn’t matter what really good, there’s a popular saying, “Man, he’s so good. Why project they work on. isn’t he an asshole?” [laughter] “He should be an asshole!” Coming from New York City, it’s always been about the Because we expect that. We’ve enabled that behavior, which hustle for me, like every single day. Out in L.A., everything is pretty sad. And I run into that all the time in Hollywood. In seems a little more laid back from my point of view by com- fact, I had culture shock when I came back to working in Hol- parison. So if I see someone that good, I’m automatically lywood, because I was so used to working around immensely assuming that they’re hustling the system. Yeah, they’re do- talented, creative monsters who could do everything—back- ing this stuff for this guy, but the real stuff [laughs] is on the grounds, props, layout, key animation, in-between, color. They side. They have to cut off a piece for them, because they can’t can do it all—storyboard, character design. And I come to the spend the rest of their lives making everybody else’s dreams States, and there it’s so compartmentalized. There’s charac- come true. You can’t be this good and not have your own ter design—you just do character design; you’re not good at

56 DRAW! FALL 2014 and stuff like that, and that was my first project, Arkanium.

JN: You’re really hard on yourself now, looking back at it. Did you just have a different idea of what you wanted when you...? LT: I had no idea what I wanted. I’d been dreaming about making my own comic for so long, and when it finally fell in my lap, I just kind of scatterbrained it. “Okay, now I want to do this, now I want to do that.” When you look at the book, it’s just all over the place. I was breaking all kinds of 180° rules, panel mistakes, but I knew that as long as the energy was there, people would feel it, and that was the one thing I can really say about that book, is when you look at it, it’s just energy all over the place. Hard to read energy, but energy. It was an interesting time, and when the book was about to get cancelled.... You know, Arkanium A wallpaper promo for Cannon Busters. was competing with a whole bunch Cannon Busters © LeSean Thomas of books at Dreamwave. First there were Transformers books, and then they released three titles only guy who saw value in me when nobody at Marvel or at once: Theta the Blade, Arkanium, and I don’t know if it DC gave a crap about my work. And I was drawing like Jim was Dark Minds or Sandstorm, but they released three titles Lee.... Dude, I had batches of pages that were like nothing I when they originally launched their Dreamwave Comics im- would draw now! The one time I drew like me, Pat was like, print, and we were Phase One of that imprint. I just felt like “This is dope. I like this. Let’s do a comic.” Pat should’ve released one book at a time, released Arkanium first, or Theta the Blade first, and after six months you see JN: Especially when you were younger, and you were trying what happens, then you launch the second series, so that each to figure out just the right formula to gamble on, how hard book had a chance to shine on its own. I felt like we were was it for you to just let your own style shine, and stop trying competing for a lot of space. to emulate somebody else’s stuff? But it wasn’t his fault, it was his first time running a comic LT: It was right after I stopped pursuing comic books, and book company too. We were all young at that time. Yeah, that started getting gigs in animation—storyboards, character de- was how I got in to comics, was through Pat Lee. Pat Lee was sign—where that kind of dead line style was acceptable. It the only guy who believed in me. He saw my stuff—and I was mandatory! I started being in an environment where my didn’t even have any pages; he just saw my concept designs. dead line weight was important to the process. So, by the time He didn’t even know I was black. Pat Lee, real talk, was the I hopped into comics after being in animation for four or five only guy in comics doing associated color comics, you know years, I was just like, “This is me. I’ve already gotten my ap- what I mean? Dark Minds, Wreck of the Lotus Lord—which proval from the people who not only paid me to do this stuff, was Warlands, but I call it Wreck of the Lotus Lord because but paid me and forced me to stay in a clean line weight.” No it was the clearest inspirational homage or whatever. He was one was telling me anything else. By this point, I said, “This the only guy interested in producing that associated, animated is me. I’ve done this for five years. If I’m going to do a comic comic book style. He was the only one doing that really big. book, it’s going to look like a cartoon.” Over the years, I’d talk to people about working on Arkanium, or Dreamwave, and they’d go into their “Dreamwave sucks” JN: I was going through your Seoul Sessions YouTube vid- diatribe, and how messed up it was, and the messy politics eos, and those are really great man. behind Pat Lee and that stuff, but when I look at Pat Lee, I LT: Oh really? Thanks, man. I didn’t really watch those see a guy who gave me a shot. I didn’t deal with those issues. things. I put them out, I wasn’t expecting to get lots of re- I will forever be in gratitude to Pat Lee, because he was the sponses. I was just happy that people sent back responses, and

DRAW! FALL 2014 65 The Right W ay, The Wrong W ay, and The OrdWay!

Challengers of the Collaboration by Jerry Ordway

n this issue, I will go into detail about working with a col- laborator on a comic, and the give and take necessary to accommodate each person’s vision of the story. In this in- Istance, I was asked by Dan DiDio, one of the head honchos at DC Comics, to co-write and draw a “New 52” reintroduction of the classic DC comic Challengers of the Unknown with him. Dan knew I was a big fan of the Jack Kirby’s Challeng- ers, but did not want a “retro” comic book here. This would be a new origin and setting for the existing characters.

We started by having a few conference calls with the edi- tor, Wil Moss, where Dan outlined his basic premise of mix- ing the team’s origin in with Nanda Parbat, a mysterious land in the Himalayan mountains. This brought to mind James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon, and the great movie version directed by Frank Capra. (I later took the DVD and made some screen captures of the settings and the palace for visual reference.) By the end of the call, we had mapped out the five-issue story to our satisfaction, and I began writing longhand notes before typing my draft of the first-issue plot.

Somewhere after the first issue was plotted, I was in- formed that editorial had cut the story to three issues for scheduling reasons. This forced us to re-think our pacing, and ultimately forced storytelling restrictions on me as the penciller. This, along with other editorial edicts often happen in the course of any project, and you need to be Jerry’s handwritten plot notes. flexible, and think on your feet to make the best of things. Part of being a professional is to do your best in any situation, and not to abandon a project when you don’t get your own way. Of course everyone has their own threshold for just how much they can take. I make no judgments.

72 DRAW! FALL 2014 Once my characters are set, I often start a job by drawing tiny thumbnail images in the page mar- gin of my plot or script (right). These are often un- decipherable after a few days, even to me, but are my way of figuring out how much will fit on a page. They’re building blocks, really. The blue scribbles lead me to the more thought-out prelims, which leads me to the pencil stage.

The initial two pages of layouts or prelims shown below were done for my own purposes to work out the panel arrangements and allow me to en- large and lightbox clean pencils in deference to the inker. I penciled the third page (bottom of next page) right on the drawing paper, as it was pretty straightforward, and didn’t need to do a separate prelim. The editor and I had chosen an inker, and it was my first time working with him, so I didn’t want him interpreting messy pencils. It always takes a bit for an inker to get the rhythm on a penciller in my experience. I need to get a comfort level for myself as well, so prelims can be the way into any project, but especially one with so much to stage, as on these pages. Challengers of the UnknownChallengers © DC Comics

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IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

DRAW! #29 DAVE DORMAN demonstrates his painting techniques for sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book cover, LeSEAN THOMAS (character de- signer and co-director of The Boondocks and Black Dynamite: The Animated Series) gives advice on today’s animation industry, new columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only. (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1168 $IBMMFOHFST
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76 DRAW! FALL 2014