A Girl Called Ana Teaches Kittens How To Draw

Last week Chris Arrant covered former Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Professor Bob Pendarvis’ Kickstarter effort to fund A Girl Called Ana Teaches Kittens How To Draw. In today’s email interview, Pendarvis discusses his aim with the book, as well as Sugar Ninjas, the all-female sequential art anthology series aimed at drawing a spotlight on female creators. My thanks to Pendarvis for his time, and Tom Feister for putting me in contact with Pendarvis. His Kickstarter site gives more background on Pendarvis, including  that he “created and taught the first comic book illustration classes at the Savannah College of Art & Design, going on to co-found their comics-based BFA and MFA degree programs (along with writer Mark Kneece and artist Bo Hampton).” If you are interested in helping Pendarvis with his Kickstarter effort, please act now–as there are less than 20 days left to meet the $15,000 goal.

Tim O’Shea: How soon after leaving SCAD did you realize you wanted to develop Sugar Ninjas?

Bob Pendarvis:  Sugar Ninjas was originally a project I came up with to showcase the amazing variety of female artists in my classes. In the summer of 2009, as my official association with SCAD was coming to an end (on mutually acceptable terms), I decided to expand the concept of the Sugar Ninjas to include not only SCAD students, but also female artists and storytellers from around the world. All material in the book is copyrighted exclusively to the creators and the books are printed at lulu.com, each one priced at printing costs only—I don’t make a penny from any copy sold (although I encourage the ninjas to add sketches and charge a few dollars more). Volumes 1 and 2 are available right now, and a revised edition of Volume 1 will be back in early 2012.

O’Shea: Care to discuss some of the talent working on Sugar Ninjas?

Pendarvis:  Some of the ninjas are comics professionals, like inker Rebecca Buchman (Green Lantern) and penciler/inker Heidi Arnhold (Legends of the Dark Crystal). Popular web comic creators include Jennie Breeden (The Devil’s Panties), Laurel Shelley-Reuss (Olive Peril), Becky Dreistadt (Tiny Kitten Teeth), and Elena Barbarich (Sister Claire). Former Tokyopop manga artist/writers Christy Lijewski (Re:Play), Erica Leigh Currey (Sea Princess Azuri), and Mara Aum (Silky Pink) are all Sugar Ninjas. Gally Articola, my assistant and co-editor, is a colorist/refurbisher working on the Official Marvel Handbooks. Kat Shea is a costume designer/illustrator/voice actress for the Archer TV show. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty diverse group, especially as most of the girls are still relative newcomers just starting out.

O’Shea: Why did you decide to break up each volume of Sugar Ninjas into two separate Sweet and Spicy books?

Pendarvis:  Over the past two years, the Sugar Ninjas three volumes have featured contributions from close to 200 hundred girls who were all given total freedom to write and draw whatever sort of material they deemed fit, regardless of whether it was mainstream-oriented, experimentally alternative, manga-influenced, unapologetically feminine, or anything in-between. Right from the start, some of the girls have preferred sticking to relatively family-friendly material, while others love producing edgier pieces, possibly with partial nudity, naughty language, controversial subject matter, and a wee bit of ultra-violence. I realized the best way to accommodate everyone would be to have both a Sweet book and a Spicy book. Of course, a number of ninjas have sent in material for both books every time.

O’Shea: How important is gender diversity to the success of sequential art?

Pendarvis:  “You draw like a girl!” shouldn’t be considered an insult, but to a depressingly large number of comic book editors and professionals, it most certainly is. It’s tantamount to saying their work has little-to-no commercial appeal. I rejected that attitude all those years I taught at SCAD and I reject it now. The truth is that generations of comic book creators and fans have become accustomed to accepting that there are rules for drawing successful mainstream comics, and an equal number of rules regarding publishing and marketing comics. But the reality is that the number of people still buying comics is embarrassingly lower than it should be, making it way past time for publishers to stop sticking to misguided, outdated ideas of marketing almost exclusively to young males.

For the first dozen years or so, SCAD’s Sequential Art program had no female professors, which I always felt bad about. In the early years, we all considered ourselves a great big family. Sort of a “comic book fans vs. the world” situation, as it took a long time for our new major to be accepted by the world at large, including the academic world. And even though I worked hard to make sure I had a female-friendly classroom, I knew full well that some of those pioneering girls felt overlooked and underappreciated, solely because their styles and interests didn’t match the expectations of many of their male peers (a generalization, of course). Too many of these girls succumbed to the temptation to change their work in ways that pleased their critics, but failed to address actual structural issues inherent in their comics storytelling.

O’Shea: How did you decide you wanted to use your Kickstarter project to embark upon a graphic novel “…meant to provide inspiration for the next generation of young sequential artists and storytellers…the first in a series of  books aimed especially at young girls, but hopefully entertaining for readers of all ages, girls or boys.”?

Pendarvis: Before I started teaching at SCAD, I taught k-5 art classes for three years. I saw firsthand that too many young girls AND boys were giving up on learning how to draw before they’d really given themselves a fair chance, partly because kids are told early on that artists are just “born talented.” Some of the best art in those grade school classes was produced by kids who just refused to accept their supposed limitations, letting their imaginations fly free, regardless of the “accuracy” of their drawings.

As much as I love Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, both of those books can be a little daunting to young readers. A Girl Called Ana Teaches Kittens How To Draw is designed to be accessible and easily understood by children, while hopefully providing enough entertainment to keep the attention of older readers, too.

Not a how-to textbook, ANA is an actual story about a girl who teaches drawing to kittens, and many of the lessons included are to be found between the lines. The first book ends with the kittens realizing that drawing is only part of what it takes to create their own comics. The next book in the series centers on the principles of two-dimensional design, and how they’re used in tandem with drawing to communicate effectively. The third book has Ana dealing directly with the basics of visual storytelling. All three books work together to show that learning how to create comics isn’t that far removed from learning how to read and write, period. On top of all that, I throw in a superhero or two, spooky ghosts, monsters, robots, and more.

O’Shea: You are a teacher clearly beloved by your former students, were you hesitant at all to ask for their help in donating art for the project? Looking at the list of folks who donated, does it leave you speechless to realize the scale of success your collective group of students has achieved?

Pendarvis:  Well, as grateful as I am for all the love and support I receive from so many of my former students, I’m not so conceited as to think I’m universally “beloved.” In fact, I can easily think of quite a few students who never seemed all that impressed with me, ha ha. But I’m very, very happy that so many of my former students HAVE become successful, working for comics companies like Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Oni Press, and IDW; gaming companies like Bioware and Konami; and cartoon studios producing animated hits like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Archer, and Kung Fu Panda. But to be honest, they had plenty of other professors, too, including amazing guys like former Disney Imagineer Paul Hudson and comics writer Mark Kneece, both of whom are still at SCAD and I can’t recommend their classes highly enough). For that matter, there are also a large number of successful SCAD students who never took my classes at all, so the only thanks they might owe me would be for having created the program in the first place.

Since my departure from SCAD, I’ve received hundreds of emails and messages from former students, pledging their support and promising to let people know what my classes meant to them. For awhile, I thought about doing a straightforward textbook which would incorporate interviews and artwork from a wide group of alumni working in comics, animation and video gaming. Ross Campbell, Andrew Robinson, Christy Lijewski, Heidi Arnhold, Dean Trippe, Ron Chan, and Tom Feister were among the first to sign on.  I ultimately decided to do the ANA books first, primarily because I wanted to take advantage of my sudden abundance of free time, but also because I thought it would be a good idea to let people see I have plenty to say all on my own.

O’Shea: Besides the Sugar Ninjas and your ANA kickstarter project, is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Pendarvis:  Over the past two years, while appearing at conventions like Atlanta’s AWA, MOMOCON, and DRAGON CON, I’ve had the chance to meet hundreds of people who ask me where or when I’ll be teaching again. Frankly, I spent so much time all those years at SCAD promoting my students and helping them find jobs that I never really prepared for my own life post-SCAD. I’d be very happy to return to a classroom setting, especially at a school wanting to develop their own sequential art or comics-based courses of study. Other than that, I’d love to develop ANA into an animated series, possibly with my friend and former student Sam Ellis (the original head illustrator for the FX show, Archer). If not that, I still have my dream of forming a rock band and solving mysteries, hopefully involving pirate ghosts.

Daybreak

For the last few years, when not busy with his day job teaching sequential art at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Brian Ralph has been busy working on his latest graphic novel, Daybreak. The book is a slight departure of sorts for Ralph — best known for his early work as part of the highly influential Fort Thunder collective and for books like Cave-In —  in that it delves into the horror genre. Yes, it’s another zombie book, but it’s a zombie book with a unique twist, with everything viewed from the perspective of an unnamed survivor (i.e. the reader), as he explores a foreboding landscape and finds a potential friend amidst all the devastation.

Daybreak makes it debut at Comic-Con this year, and Ralph will be on a panel at 5 p.m. (Pacific time) 14today with Anders Nilsen and Jeff Smith on the subject of “Epic Literary Adventures” (in Room 9).

I talked with Ralph over email about the panel, the new book, and the adventures of teaching comics to college students.

Daybreak is a horror story told from a unique, first-person perspective. Which came first for you, the desire to do a horror tale or the unique way of telling it?

I don’t play video games, but I felt there was something exciting about how a person could be immersed in the world of a video game. With comics the reader isn’t an active participant in the storytelling. I wanted to make a comic that, in it’s own way, achieve some feeling of participation and immersion. I was looking for interactivity of some kind.

I had not seen a “first-person shooter” style of comic before. It turned out to be very exciting approach to storytelling. I was constantly trying to figure out new ways for the reader to feel like they were interacting with the characters and become characters in the story as well. I made some decisions along the way; to never show the reader’s “character” such as in a mirror. I didn’t want the reader to talk with a word balloon. I felt those things would break the illusion. It was tricky to work with those constraints, but such a fun challenge.

The horror direction just happened naturally at the same time to be honest. I love zombie apocalypse movies and books. But it’s not the gore or the violence or even the zombies that I’m attracted to. It’s the landscape, and the constant need to explore and move around the landscape that I found the most compelling to depict in this comic.
During the process of making Daybreak over these years I’ve had people roll their eyes, “oh the zombie apocolypse thing is so played out” or whatever. But I would hate for my book to be thrown into that pile, because I feel that if you give it a chance you’ll see that it’s unique. But also, a part of the challenge was in fact to work within a genre where I had seen it all. It’s exciting to try to bring something different to the genre.

From 'Daybreak'

You originally serialized Daybreak with Bodega but opted to go with D&Q for the final collected version. Why? Are you still a fan of serialization? Did serializing Daybreak give you any benefits or feedback that you wouldn’t have gotten if you had just released it as one book?

I was drawing two pages at a time and putting them on the Bodega blog once a week. That kept me on a schedule, I knew that there might be people expecting to see the work every Monday. It also kept the pacing pretty snappy, it was like every two pages was a cliff-hanger or an exciting page turn. I got really used to that rhythm. It kept the story moving at a brisk pace.

In terms of serializing the work with Randy at Bodega, it seemed like an interesting way to present it. I’m used to the artist sequestering themselves away for years and then emerging with this massive tome. But in this case, we presented it online and then did a yearly serialized book at SPX. It was exciting. It really got me talking to the readers more at conventions. They would tell me things they wanted to see. They were curious about how it would end. People were very open to discussing their ideas. With other books, the work is done — there’s no discussion. I was always interested to hear people’s opinions and theories about what I was trying to accomplish. “It’s going to turn out to all be a dream” was something I heard a lot. One reader sent me an email pointing out panels where I had made errors. Especially where I had reversed the missing right arm to the left.

My understanding was that Randy wanted to take a break from publishing, and so he and Tom at D+Q discussed the idea of D+Q doing the collection. Tom and I are close friends from the Highwater days, so it seemed like a natural progression. Randy was involved with the whole process of collecting the books so it was great that he stayed involved.

You talk about exploring the landscape, which is a trait that’s shared with your other book, Cave-In. And the Fort Thunder group, of which you were a part, were all very much interested in using comics to explore a space or landscape. Why is this? Where does that interest come from?

I’ve heard this type of comic described as “Walking Around Comics” or “Video Game comics” which I think would refer to the fact that they aren’t really written in a traditional way. I think everyone at Fort Thunder came upon this style of non-writing in a genuine way. We played video games, we explored abandoned buildings, we wandered around Providence, we lived in a cavernous and weird space. I think the stories emerged from all of those things.
We never talked about it, so I’m just guessing, but I think there was an interest in very pure, stripped-down storytelling. Just moving characters through spaces. That’s it. Exploring the basics of storytelling.

From 'Daybreak'

You stick to a very basic six-panel grid throughout the book, which I don’t think you ever vary from. Why? What did this format give you in terms of storytelling that a different set-up wouldn’t?

I felt as though the consistent six-panel grid would help the reader lose themselves in the story. I believe it helps the read forget they are reading a story drawn by an artist’s hand, instead they can completely experience the story as if they are there. That’s the hope at least. I didn’t find it limiting at all, it was a lot of fun actually. Also, this story is unlike a traditional comic because it’s meant to actually feel like this is actually happening to the reader, through their own eyes.

What was the biggest challenge of maintaining that “first-person” look for the book? Was there any point where you worried you were going to have to break one of your rules?

I had to really carefully consider the dialogue. Our one-armed friend in the story talks to us, the reader, and asks questions. I wanted it to feel like he was carrying on a conversation with the reader. There’s a couple times in the book where we the reader pick up an object. Since I didn’t want to show our hands, I would do a panel of the object that we’re picking up, an axe for example. I would hope that the reader would then understand that we did pick it up and could use it. My favorite sequence is where we shoot a weapon, that was a leap of faith and I think it worked.

You don’t show the main character at all, but you also don’t show the zombies much, apart from a leg or arm here or there. Why? What did that decision give you in terms of building tension in the book?

I made a couple attempts at sketching the zombies thinking, of course, that I should include them, but I kept finding ways to avoid them. I wasn’t sure why, but it never felt right. Ultimately I decided that it just wasn’t necessary for the story I was trying to tell. The story is about traveling around with a stranger and becoming friends. Are any zombie stories really about the zombies? I don’t think so. The stories and movies are about the survivors having to form relationships. The blood and guts cheapen that. Plus, what a fun constraint, to draw a zombie book without ever showing a zombie? That’s crazy.

The main relationship in the book is between the main character (i.e. the reader) and the one-armed man. How important was that relationship to the book’s coherence and story arc?

I think that’s the whole story. It’s about making a friend and then having to say goodbye to him. I really came to like that character and I didn’t want to let him go.

From 'Daybreak'

Peggy Burns at D&Q mentioned that you are teaching comics at SCAD. How did you end up doing that? What has that experience been like?

I had been teaching Illustration for years at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore and really enjoying it. SCAD has an actual Sequential Art major and that really interested me, so I traveled to Savannah to visit and really fell in love with the department, the faculty and the students.

I teach classes like Character Design, Introduction to Sequential Art, Alternative Comics, Cartooning, and Materials and Techniques. It’s funny, because I feel as though I’ve learned so much about comics and cartooning by having to teach it. In order to teach a subject you have had to clarify what it is in your head, broken it down, carefully considered everything about it. I’ve critiqued hundreds of pages of comics, maybe more, and I never get tired of problem-solving with the students, figuring out ways to arrange pages and panels to help them tell their stories.

I also understand you’re going to be doing a panel at San Diego with Anders Nilsen and Jeff Smith. Can you give me a preview of what you’ll be discussing?

My version of what I think we’ll be discussing is our thoughts on building and inhabiting these fantasy worlds in our comics. I’m not a big fan of the term “world building” but maybe that’s what it’s about.

When I draw these fantasy landscapes and fantasy characters, I really have to visualize them in my head and inhabit those spaces in order to really make the drawing believable.  The artist must fully believe it in order to pull it off.  It has to be real to the artist.  I think you have to draw what you know, and even though I am drawing fantasy apocalyptic environments and caves, etc, I am pulling from places I have know.

I imagine the panel discussion will be me just nodding my head and agreeing with everything Jeff Smith has to say.

American Queen by Erin Gladstone

With the Black Panther set to become American Panther during the Fear Itself event, the students at the Savannah School of Art and Design decided to “patriotize” other “colorful” heroes, like Green Lantern and the White Queen. Head over to their blog to see American Widow, Omega American, siblings American Witch and Quickamerican, and many more.

(Thanks, Chris!)

A Friendly Game

SLG Publishing‘s booth at SDCC [Booth #1815, right next to DC Comics] is going to be extremely busy this year with a number of SLG creators making appearances. Three first-time graphic novelists, Joe Pimienta, Lindsay Hornsby, and Lauren Affe, will be debuting their book, A Friendly Game, at SDCC–and will be at the SLG booth as well. The book (which SLG gave a 10-page preview here) is described as follows: “Friends play many kinds of games with each other: cops and robbers, checkers, tag. The best of friends will make up their own games. Todd and Kevin’s friendship is built on such a game. However, the rules and premise are far from the typical childhood games. A dispute amongst the two splits them into very different directions: one sees the game for the cruel act that it is, while the other decides it must move to the next level. Imagine No Country for Old Men crossed with Lord of the Flies, or even imagine if Johnny the Homicidal Maniac were once a little kid. There you have a Friendly Game.” Thanks to assistance from SLG’s Dan Vado and Jennifer de Guzman, I was able to email interview all three characters. If you’re at SDCC, be sure to check this book out while you’re there–and even if you’re not, once you read the preview–SLG’s made it quite convenient for you to order the book. It was a pleasure to interview the three creators and I hope this is the first of many times we’ll be seeing their names in years to come.

Tim O’Shea: Did the idea for this story find its start at Savannah College of Art and Design ([SCAD] where all three of you attended)?

Joe Pimienta: Yes. It originally started as an 8-page story I did for scripting class. But part of the assignment was to have drawn pages and character designs, so, I asked Lindsay to do that. Once I finished the assignment, I put it away and didn’t think about it until 6 months later when Lindsay took advanced scripting and asked me if we could develop the story more. I was surprised, since the subject matter was so different from what she normally does. We talked about a bigger story arc, making my short story only the first pages for the final story arc. It wasn’t until senior project, 2 years later, that we actually started drawing pages for it.

Lindsay Hornsby: When I took Advanced Scripting, I really wanted to do something different. The focus of the class was to create longer narratives, and the idea of expanding on Joe’s original concept had kind of been floating around in the back of my mind. Typically, I write and draw more cartoony and comedic storylines. Basically, the complete opposite from what occurs in A Friendly Game. By the end of the class, I had a pretty good chunk of the story worked out, enough for us to start on the pages in Senior Project.

O’Shea: How far along in the creative process were you when the project landed at SLG? Can you share your various reactions to the SLG development?

Pimienta: Our first meeting with Dan Vado was in May 2008. We had 82 penciled pages, 36 inked, no tones, no letters. Dan expressed interest in the story but told us that since it wasn’t finished, there was not much for him to do. A year later, we showed him 188 penciled pages, 100 inked and 4 pages toned. Also, we went from a duo to a trio, since we asked Lauren if she wanted to tone the book. After that meeting… we had a lot of work to do, re-do and celebrate.

Hornsby: It felt like we’d had a completed book even though we still had a good amount of work ahead of us. Not just from adding Lauren to the team either, since the lettering hadn’t been touched yet. We had a big binder of all 188 pages plus Lauren’s toned pages to show to Dan so he could see how far we’d gotten since the year before. No dialogue whatsoever. I was a little worried we might seem overwhelming (it was a really fat binder), but Dan still was genuinely interested. He stressed that he really needed to see the ending with dialogue, so the next week I lettered the last 10 or 15 pages and we sent him the full pitch binder.

Lauren Affe: At the time I was asking a bunch of friends whose art I admired if I could grab a hold of some of their finished comic work to color for practice and to add some bulk to my portfolio. I approached Lindsay and got a section of pages of A Friendly Game to play around with. I had only about 3 story pages plus one chapter spot illustration toned and in my portfolio on Editors Day 2009. Lindsay and Joe really liked the approach I took to their work and I found myself talking to Dan Vado with them that day. It happened really fast and I can’t say I was able to process what I was undertaking. After that the work began, toning the other 195 pages.

O’Shea: Could each of you speak to what you appreciate about the other two colaborators’ storytelling talents?

Pimienta: Lindsay is really good for making dialogues flow naturally, which is why I was glad she did the scripting part. Whenever I ink, I go all over the place with splatters and gesture lines; Lindsay, on the other hand has a tighter brushstroke and clean-cut style, which I thought was very fitting for the story. Lauren’s eye for value is flat-out superb. Originally, she tried coloring some of the pages just for fun, but then she tried a monochromatic scheme and it took Lindsay’s inks to a whole another level. When I first saw her toned pages of  A Friendly Game I got excited about working on the book again.

Hornsby: Joe thinks of some really awesome shots that most people wouldn’t consider. Sometimes a single panel will just jump out at you, but at the same time the entire page flows together so smoothly. His pacing seriously strengthened several of the scenes that I wrote. Lauren’s tones bring out subtleties in the pages that I didn’t even know could have existed. Both Joe and I had gotten so deep into this project that it had started to wear us down, but Lauren’s tones started the spark back up again.

Affe: Joe has an excellent sense of timing in his visuals. He’s not afraid to just let in an extra couple panels after the dialogue has ended to put great punctuation at the end of a scene. Its a great bridge between Lindsay’s dialogue that really gave the story structure. Much the same can be said for her inks. They did a fantastic job of editing Joe’s pencils-blocking out what was important on the page to draw the eye really effortlessly through a page without getting hung of extraneous detail.

However, what I appreciate about them both this their ability to collaborate so well together. Much too often there are often disagreements on what is important. Each person, whether it be the penciler, inker, or writer, are bringing their own vision on what the project should be and if they aren’t on the same page, their individual ideas can ultimately weaken the final product. Joe and Lindsay are able to communicate and step back to ask if what they’re doing is serving the story they’re trying to tell. For as much collaboration that happens in comics, it’s rare to find a team that is so able to work instep with each other like these two.

O’Shea: Can each of you single out a favorite scene or character in A Friendly Game?

Pimienta: My favorite character is the dead mouse in the prologue. No, not really. My favorite character is actually Kevin, because I’ve been that scared about confronting big responsibilities. But overall, I think my favorite scenes are the dinner scene with Todd, Kevin and Kevin’s mother and the tension between the two boys in front of the parental figure who has no idea what the boys have done. Plus, the whole scene was a challenge to draw. The other favorite scene is Kevin in his room after running out of the basement, because it’s all pantomime.

Hornsby: I can’t say too much about my favorite scene because I think it would give away too much…It’s toward the end of Act Two and involves Todd interacting with his dad. I also really like the prologue with the two boys; it’s two friends hanging out before everything goes to hell. I’m going to feel like a creeper f or saying this, but I really do like Todd. He’s a really great antagonist to write for, and Joe gave him some really creepy faces that were fun to ink. And the puppy, because he starts this series of events without any intention of causing trouble, and I feel like I’ve run into those sort of situations before.

Affe: Since Joe and Lindsay have already picked the two main characters and already made points I was going to make…In the interest of adding variation…the puppy dog?

My favorite scenes seem to always be the ones without dialogue, where characters are just LOOKING at one another building up tension or having moments of self reflection or horror. If I had to pick one, the bridge from End of Act II to Act III stands out to me. The main character, Kevin, has just found his resolve to confront his psychotic friend, when he’s suddenly thrown another…uh “curve ball” so to speak. You’ll have read it to find out I guess…

O’Shea: Can each of you explain how important you think it was to go with tones for this story visually, rather than straight black and white?

Pimienta: The book was originally intended for black and white. Before we asked Lauren to join the party, Lindsay and I were always sure we wanted to keep it black and white. Once we saw Lauren’s approach to the pages, it became clear that there was always something missing to the end result; something we couldn’t have seen on the script page or the inked page: mid-tones and a value range. Lauren’s gray tones filled the gaps Lindsay and I couldn’t put our fingers on to point out what was missing. It enriched the visual aspect of the story above and beyond. I think the common analogy is “the tones are the icing on the cake” and Lauren’s tones are icing plus a cherry.

Hornsby: I actually saw Laruen’s toned pages for the first time on Editor’s Day before we were going to see Dan. Lauren had them in her portfolio and I honestly just couldn’t stop looking at them. It was like seeing the pages completely finished, like Joe said, the missing element. And it was really spontaneous, but we asked her to sit in with us when we talked to Dan because her tones completed the book.

Affe: I love stories told in just crisp black and white, which is actually something a colorist shouldn’t say. But I’m saying it. I LOVE images that are able to carry themselves without any “filler” between its lines. So, when it came to Joe and Lindsay’s project, it was at first a hard balance to strike- keeping the integrity of the black and white imagery that I have such great enthusiasm for, while still being able to enhance it.

Very early on, I tried straight color, but there was so much black that had such great weight to the pages, that adding layers of color seem extraneous and quite frankly stupid. I had to start over and limit myself to a pallet of five values. I had much better results.

If done right, colors and tones should be there helping tell the story along with the dialogue and inks, not slapped on because all the cool books are doing it.

The tones allowed me to help add a middle ground between the heavy lines and spot blacks without being obtrusive. I could add shadows and help describe times of day or give more form to a face or more atmosphere to an environment that may have been lost when pencils went to ink.

I am so appreciative to Joe and Lindsay for being open and allowing me to put the finishing touches on something they had already been “married” to for years.

O’Shea: What was the hardest part of the project for you?

Pimienta: The hardest part of working on this book was after finishing school in June -09 and all three of us ended up living in different parts of the country. Lindsay moved to Kentucky, Lauren stayed in Georgia and I moved to California.

O’Shea: Could all three of you discuss the challenges of collaborating while living in three different states?

Pimienta: Well, I’m glad I got to collaborate with artists and friends I trusted. there were periods where there was no communication and i just had to trust them. we all had side jobs and with the hour difference, it was obstacle to get together via skype and talk about our progress and our status. I cant speak for them, but I felt lucky to work with them.

Hornsby: The FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the best invention to date, right after the Internet. At least, when you’re in three different states anyhow. Lauren and I spent a lot of time tossing pages back and forth with the FTP; she’d finish toning a chunk of pages and I would grab them to letter. Joe did mail me some pages that he had redrawn because he no longer had access to a scanner. I warned him ahead of time that if they got lost in the mail, I would be really, really mad at him. But they didn’t, so it turned out okay.

Before we left SCAD, when he was almost done penciling the book, Joe started to draw at a smaller page size because he wanted to go faster and save paper. I was stubborn, and did every single page at what now seems giant, 10 x 15. The three of us were in our separate parts of the country when the time came to create the cover of the book, and Joe and Lauren convinced me over Skype to ink the cover digitally instead. It turned out great, but still kind of sets off my OCD tendencies that it doesn’t physically exist.

Affe: The distance did make things difficult at times. Clearing up mysteries of misnumbered/absent pages would have probably easily been solved if Lindsay and Joe were still five minutes down the road. But as Lindsay has already pointed out, the internet helped close that gap. Especially working around graduation and two part-time jobs. It was great to be able to come home and hop on Skype to “talk shop” for a while, go offline and then get to work.

Katelyn Rae Rochelle

While the actual recognition ceremony for the first recipient of “The Ringo”: The Mike Wieringo Scholarship Award was on Saturday night (prior to the HeroesCon Annual Art Auction), Matt Wieringo posted the full scoop on his personal blog on Tuesday. The recipient of the $1,100 award is Katelyn Rae Rochelle, a Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) student who hopes to pursue a career in comic books after graduation. To quote Matt from his announcement: “Remember that name. I think you’ll be hearing it a lot in a couple years.”

Rochelle attended HeroesCon on Saturday and spent some time with one of her instructors, Tom Lyle, at the SCAD booth. She also hung out with Matt and his wife Suzanne. When asked about her genre preference, Rochelle expressed an interest in working in horror–potentially something with werewolves. According to Matt: “We took her around to meet a few of Mike’s friends who offered her some free, friendly advice. Todd Dezago, being Todd Dezago, teased her at every opportunity.”

When reached for comment, Dezago denied Matt’s vicious allegations. In all seriousness, Dezago said of Rochelle: “She was a good sport and is a very talented young artist. I loved the work that she sent in as samples and think that, as Matt says, we’ll be seeing more of her in the future.”

“Though Matt and Suzanne and I were friends before, Mike’s death certainly brought us closer and I can’t think of two nicer, more caring, or generous people,” Dezago said. “Their desire to create the scholarship in Mike’s name, and all the very hard work they’ve put into it, is such a wonderful tribute to his memory and, hopefully, a chance for some struggling students to get a leg up as they rocket toward their artistic futures.”

Matt conceded in the official announcement that the selection process was more challenging than he had expected it to be. “We assumed we’d get the portfolios from the three finalists and one would stand out above all others immediately and that would be that,” Matt admitted. “But this was not meant to be. I guess the finalists wouldn’t have been finalists if there wasn’t something there and the decision was very difficult, almost heart-breaking.”

The criteria for the $1,100 award is detailed at the SCAD website: “The recipient of this scholarship must be a full-time undergraduate student studying sequential art. All applicants must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 and demonstrate financial need. Finalists will be expected to submit a portfolio. This scholarship is renewable up to three times as long as the recipient continues to meet established criteria.”

Future plans for the scholarship fund include developing a website, according to Matt. Robot 6 will provide a link to the new website once it is live.