The Work Journal of Artist John Amor

Parsing

I’m writing this for me.

Drawing at three in the morning, it gets to a funny point where I just put the headset on even when I don’t plan on listening to anything — the extra weight and pressure on my head is comforting.  Helps me focus.  Like a soft vice.  Or a tactile laser.

By the bed is a stack of trades I haven’t burned through yet.  Giffen-Maguire Justice League is about done, but catching up on GL will have to wait… and that Frank Frazetta Testament book looks fatter every time I ignore it.  Reading Comics? Serious Business.

Alex made me read Grant Morrison’s New X-men five years ago, and that’s what brought me back into comics.  This is all his fault.

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Two days ago, had a sitdown with Politician XOXO’s people about putting together campaign strip.  On the fence about the whole thing, and still feel a little dirty.  Fairly certain candidate isn’t all that bad (as far as candidates go), but that substrata of professional cartooning just registers as… soupy.  And not in a good way.  Comics should be fun.

Dad bought me my first trade when I was eleven.  Finished The Dark Phoenix Saga in one afternoon.

I can’t stop watching videos of mice getting eaten by piranhas and snapping turtles on Youtube.

Roby let me read his Teen Titans comics when I was too young to care about the words, and George Perez Starfire had a weird habit of making me feel funny in the middle.  Stupid alien.

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PLUCK went live on Zuda twelve hours ago.  I am irrevocably valid.  It’s funny working with a weekly deadline.  You’re forced to parse your style down to its essential components and bare necessities.  You draw three lines where two years ago you would have put six, and an alternating crosshatch.  You develop go-tos — fixed solutions for compositional problems.  A mental laundry list of Wally Wood shots.  Grids.  You read Blacksad and anything Quitely to keep from becoming repetitive and boring.  You devour Stuart Immonen.  Because you still have those four other pitches you’re working on, and you sure as hell don’t want those falling flat.  It’s a constant and hectic chase of self-criticism and improvement.  This is the lab, and the scientist is the rat.

Glad I’m seeing my girl this weekend.

Noice (Part 2)

Here’s the rest of my favorite soundtracks to listen to, especially when working at night.  Of course, it’s an ever-growing list and has a few left out… partially because I’ve gotten sick of them, but mostly because I can’t remember them all.  But yeah, below are a few more of my staples.

Transformers

I know, I know.  But like I said in the previous post, these are my favorite work themes precisely because they’re not iconic.  They don’t muddle what I’m working on, creatively.  Jablonsky filled this score with powerful anthemic melodies that helped me enjoy reading the Sinestro Corps War like a pig in shit.  And that’s a good thing.

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Neon Genesis Evangelion

And while we’re dealing with big robots and proud majestic themes, we contrast good guy music with my absolute favorite bad guy audio.  Anytime an angel shows up in the cartoon, the music jacks up the tension ten-fold, which is why the Eva OST always has to be on queue for sinister shots.

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Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

But sometimes ominous music has to be big and grandiose too, and that’s where Jin-Roh comes in.  Evocative of dystopian scenery, this OST has a healthy balance of destructive melodies and sentimental snippets.  And on a side note, this feature had one of the most man-tear choking endings of any animated film.  Ohgoddamnit.

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Iron Man

Among the most recent of my favorite scores, Djawadi’s compositions had the upbeat feel of Ghost in the Shell, but de-personalized it to the point where it feels more like an anthem than a personal soundtrack.  Conversely, while GITS has a more textured feel to its sound, Iron Man’s as sleek as the hotrod-hued suit itself.

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Moon

It seems fitting to end this list (for now) with my latest favorite.  Mansell’s soundtrack is lonely and emotive — equal parts uplifting, equal parts haunting.  The string symphonies and piano-drum pieces both succeed in saddening without being depressing, a definite must-hear.

Noice (Part 1)

Can’t not have music playing when I work.  The pencils become stale and the inking tedious.  Sure I listen to a handful of bands, but I tend to prefer instrumentals so I don’t have some guy telling me what to think the music is trying to say — know what I mean?  And I guess, by that same logic I don’t stick to the iconic scores coz they’ll get me thinking about the movies they came from, even subconsciously.  I mean I love Williams, Zimmer, and Horner, but few things are weirder to me than drawing a superhero sequence to the Back to the Future soundtrack.

“This ends NOW!  Face the wrath of my… MARTYYY!!!”

No.  So here I poke at you with five (of ten) of my  favorite movie scores to listen to when bands don’t cut it.  The list tends to change depending on my headspace and the actual material I’m working on, but this is the soul of it.

The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

You can’t go wrong with Yoko Kanno when you’re looking for a mix of classical and tech.  The GITS score’s rich strings inspire grand themes worthy of everyone’s inner Shirowe.  I make sure this is playing when any piece of art calls for something epic or a climactic scene needs sprucing up.

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Signs

This is probably the single most-listened-to soundtrack I own, as I most enjoy it in conjunction with a suspenseful read.  The Hitchcock-esque pulses have served as accompaniment for such books as Locke and Key, The Surrogates, 30 Days of Night, Fell, and most recently Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing.

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Cowboy Bebop: Music for Freelance

While Kanno’s original jazzy score for the series continues to be among the best ever for any animated work, I find it to be too upbeat for working late at night and can be a bit jarring.  The remixes in this volume are a great alternative while still capturing the happy-go-lucky essence of the initial Seatbelts renditions.

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The Matrix: Reloaded (and Revolutions)

Sure, The Matrix films have one of the most identifiable themes around — what I can only describe as drunken warp-trumpets on speed — but the second and third film’s action sequences didn’t use as much Manson and Zombie, and so the musical score’s energy is much better distilled.

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Now and Then, Here and There

Not since Glory have I heard so rich a dramatic symphony, and I first found it in an unsubtitled cartoon that literally got me all man-teary more than once.  I listen to this soundtrack when drawing dramatic and altogether uplifting scenes, though the darker melodies aren’t anything to scoff at either.

Proof

Out this week from Image Comics is the 25th issue of Alex Grecian and Riley Rossmo’s cryptozoological indie book PROOF.  There’s a pinup gallery in the second half of the book that includes such talents as Tim Seeley and Andy Kuhn.  I somehow weaseled my way in with a shot of the Dover Demon.   The guys had mentioned that they found my Horror Classics portrait-style illustrations interesting and asked if I was up for doing a page for their  silver anniversary issue.  Me being me, I jumped at the chance to just draw another cool monster.  Up there beside the cover is a little peek.

A – B – C

So I figure now’s as good a time as any to wrap up the 2009 set of entries to this thing.  Maybe in a year or so I can look back and marvel at how much (or how little) I got done.  Hopefully the latter, by comparison of course.  Don’t begrudge me my optimism, it is Winter Time in my Summertown Country.

As with the year prior, 2009 saw me taking on more indies as a promise to myself to build a semblance of discipline for the grind, as well as take as many shots as I humanly could.  Learning how many chambers my pistol’s got, as it were.  How much I learn and retain remains a work in progress.  That said, DAMN that was a busy year.

JENNY STRANGE is on hold as Justin and I scout for a colorist.  SOVENA RED got shopped around and may yet continue with Scholastic.  Taking Christmas breather from game design gig as suits prepare second ongoing contract.  Might shelf it or bow out if other ongoing book projects begin to pick up steam.  Speaking of which…

JUDAH trudges on in healthy machine gun spurts.  I am convinced Will is trying to see how much more he can shock me with every five-page set.

HARBINGER WAR concept art is steadily taking shape as Jad and I have poured over Moebius, Frazetta, and Ash Wood art books to see how much writing we can get done with just visuals.  If that didn’t make sense, trust us… it will.

PLUCK scripts are beginning to pour in just as I do concept sketches for characters who may or may not be little more than cannon fodder.  Yes, Gabe is keeping it THAT close to his chest since he knows I’ll reveal just about anything if I’m not careful.  The Brothers White and myself  look forward to pissing on D&D tropes on ZUDA next year!

1888 is in retool mode as Wolfgang and I are streamlining that beast of a book into a prestige-format monster and I gotta say… just because artists need to read scripts and put pencil to paper before anyone else gets to see anything, doesn’t mean all the twistedness only comes from him.  Damn it, WP.

And 2010 will see me dipping my toes into new properties CLOSETWORLD — a planned webcomic much akin to Little Nemo, with Matt Yocum; and GEEK GODS — a contemporary fantasy combining sword and sorcery with the familiar charm of Archie, with Wade Alan Steele.

There’s a couple of other exciting things I really want to share but can’t yet, but suffice it to say that the ol’ work journal is thankfully going to be regularly updated for the next few months at least.  It seems like a ton of work… and it’s certainly not a walk in the park.  But I always take the Zen of Glengarry Glen Ross with me, and it helps to simplify what would otherwise very easily cause me to burst into flames.  It’s the closest I’ll get to a mantra when trying to simply get things done — A — B — C.

Always Be Closing, Baldwin said.  And as far as I’m concerned, it keeps you focused enough to not look back as you try to keep moving forward in a narrow and tricky road.

Always, all ways, be closing.

Gleep gloop, 2010.  Gleep motherfucking gloop.

Avatarded

Warren Sanchez is a 3-D animator.  A damn good one at that.  Warren Sanchez and I used to work together at an advertising/animation studio.  He knows I like to read a lot of comics and watch a lot of effects-heavy films.

Warren Sanchez knows I like to curse a lot.

Warren Sanchez has never heard me curse out of sheer awe of a movie’s visuals.

And then we saw Avatar.

2009 in Film is a closed book as far as I’m concerned.  Thanks, Jim.  After the Star Wars prequels, Transformers, and G.I. fucking Joe… I badly needed that.

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On the other side of the bowl of awesome sauce, I was at first worried about a project Jad and I were working on that was superficially similar.  HARBINGER WAR is a sci-fi tale pivoting on the premise of cavemen battling an extra-terrestrial threat.  The parallels are all there, but then I thankfully unclenched when I realized Lucas had beat Cameron to the punch with Phantom Menace, and Burroughs spanked them both with the Barsoom books decades before.

So yes, I’m good.  This, as they say, is fuel for a hopeful and mighty fire.  A movie hasn’t thrilled me like that in a long time, and if nothing else… it felt amazing being a wide-eyed kid again.

Horny Chicks

Here’s a page from JUDAH.  Immortal undead.  Fallen angels.  Shady dealings.  And of course, boobies.

I Know a Place…

This is the thing with me.  And it’s rung true (present perfect tense… what.) for as long as I’ve cared to notice — I do my best work at night.  Set my workstation up in a brightly lit room and I will get nothing done.  I don’t know how you weirdos do it.  I’m like a raccoon, I’m very easily attracted to and distracted by shiny things… so a well-lit area just leeches off my productivity.

I come alive in total darkness.  Oh yes.  Like Batman, minus a butler bringing me vichyssoise.  (What kind of idiot brings you cold soup when you’re working in a dank cave in the middle of the night anyway?) And as if I were in a cave, I like my work area to be illuminated by a singular light source, so that I am surrounded by darkness and thus almost shrouded in a cloak of indistractibility.

I don’t know if it’s an emo thing, or an eyestrain thing, or an ADD thing, or a headspace thing, or a body clock thing, or even a mixture of all of those eccentricities… but it is what it is.

And as I get ready for bed around half past four in the morning, I wait until that sliver of time between when the street lamps die and when the sun starts to rear its ugly head.  And for just long enough, I find myself in complete darkness… and it stops being a moment and starts being a place.  And it is a place no one can infect.  Because it is nowhere.  And here I revel in the lost silence of dreaming.

Medium View

We are not smart people.

The night of the Watchmen premier, one of my friends asks the table if any of us thought all this knowledge of Star Wars, Marvel continuity, Mass Effect side quests, and Chuck Norris jokes actually meant anything.  There were about six of us, with a beer tower in the middle.  It was as close as we got to quarterlifing, and that tends to shake me pantsless.  “No,” I said.  Coz this stuff is important to me, sure, and I love it… but by no stretch of the imagination does it kick our IQ levels up any.  What we are, are a few of many kids hanging ten on a mortal wave.  I remember tossing the term Creative Zeitgeist out… but I don’t remember why.

See? (Read first sentence)

Been having fun lately.  Got to travel with my girl up to one of the country’s highest peaks to help shoot her music video.  Hummer was a bit cramped with crew and tech, but the view and how the music carried up there was well worth it.  Don’t get a lotta chances to do that, y’know?

PLUCK won Zuda’s October competition, so now Gabe is working like an animal for you people, making sure we give you a story well worth following.  I’m on creature design duty for the next week or so, that’ll probably gimme an excuse to update the blog. Also… FUCKYES!!!

Local comic scene has been gaining steam, and monthly Drink n’ Draws (bastardized DnD for you paladin-types) are proving fun and energizing, to say the least.  Never hurts to be around fellow fanboys to help you feel like a real person. Oh snap. Related to this, in the Public Validation Department, I recently got talked to by a local newspaper about working in comics and the scene in general.  Managed not to curse too much, so I’m fairly proud about that.  Interview should run near the end of the month if they don’t misplace the transcript amid post-Manny fight analyses and 2012 reviews.

Need to see that movie.

Looking to wrap up JUDAH and a coupla other projects and commissions by year’s end, as January is already looking busy.  Not quite ready to talk about the new projects yet, but it’s all pretty exciting.  Haven’t gotten to finish that Glutton God piece either, but it can wait.

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Wolfgang Parker is polishing the knobs on a previously discussed project.  Be afraid.

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Finally, shopping Tres Komikeros around to find it an FM radio home.  Each podcast episode runs for roughly an hour, which is way too much geek talk than is healthy (trust us, we know), so we’re looking into making only the half-hour review portion air-friendly, while the rest is online bonus stuff that’s bad for your children.

Bonus.  What a funny word.

Behind the Pluckery (Part II)

Zuda’s October competition ends in a coupla days.  Things have been crazy exciting so far, so I figured I’d do a bit more blabbing about what qualified as work behind our entry… just to take my mind off things for a bit.

I was honestly thinking about showing a bit more of action in this page, like an actual sequence of moves, but space constraints would have forced me to make them too small and possibly a bit muddled.  Instead, I settled for showing key snippets of how violent the battle was, because that’s all we needed to know anyway.

This page required a different approach than the first five because it’s the first daytime sequence in the comic thus far.  Not being too comfortable with it all being too bright, I made sure to play with line weights to at least hint at a sense of depth.  There’s an occasional big black shape to add character to each panel, but having to limit my use of them took a bit of doing.

I walk away from this page fairly pleased with myself and my use of the hand as a gestural tool.  To be totally honest, as I was just learning to draw, I was one of those guys who would use any and every excuse to obscure a character’s hand because I dreaded having to draw them in.  Not saying that I draw hands perfectly now, but I’ve surrendered to them often being a indispensable tool for expression sans dialogue.

Let’s just ignore my failed attempt at a Bryan Hitch-style camera lens flare and move on to panels 4 and 5, shall we?  The thumbnail will tell you that i planned for the characters to appear a lot bigger in the middle panel, but it killed too much of the castle’s… regalness (yes, that’s a word now)… if you can call it that.  Not too happy about how those small figures ended up looking, but I guess it carries the action across.

The last panel was actually a bit of an issue because Gabe and I needed it to act as a strong enough hook to make people want to read more… but without over-dramatizing the scene.  The script actually had the king saying something to Pluck, and we also thought of Pluck sheepishly introducing himself.  Ultimately, we decided that a relatively subtle one-point perspective shot would emphasize that all eyes were on Pluck, and his looking up would show that not only is he being looked at… but actually looked down upon.  Fidgety hands and a sheepish grin helped bring the panel home.

Anyway yeah, that’s what went into the PLUCK Zuda entry and my layout process in general.  Was it good for you too? *huff

You can read the first part of this commentary here.

If you haven’t yet read the comic, I’d really appreciate it if you checked us out and dropped us a vote.  Enjoy the comic here.