The story of how I found my people in the world of SF fandom AND found a way to finally get my Star Wars comics to an audience, both of which happened on the same day in the same place! (Plus a complete comic story as a lucky special bonus.)
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I've had the honor of transforming some of my favorite anime into comic books for American readers, including the Captain Harlock series created by the great Leiji Matsumoto. My entry point into that world was this 4-issue miniseries from Eternity Comics about the mysterious pirate queen who wanders the infinite eternity of space...
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This looks like a comic book, and it is, but it was also a game from Dark Tower Enterprises, an Illinois-based company that wanted to fuse comics and games into a single experience. 1991 was my first full year as an inker and this was my first opportunity apply those skills to a superhero project. The results: not great.
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It's hard to describe what a rush it was to make this series during the ascendency of the MCU. I've worked on plenty of shows that were tied to well-known IP, but nothing compared to this. This was the season of the Squadron Supreme, Thanos, the infinity stones, AND Ultron, in addition to other villains destined for the big screen, not to mention a complete shift in digital storyboarding techniques, so we had a LOT to chew on.
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This was my second project for "how-to-draw" author Christopher Hart. It was a chance to peel off the surface stuff and look underneath. I'd been drawing comics for over ten years, and it gave me a rare peek under my own hood. Always a healthy exercise for an artist.
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Armored Trooper Votoms is my favorite mecha anime of all time. It's one of the things that made me what I am today. I participated in its import to the US and various other projects, but never got the chance to take my fandom online...until now. This right here is a website-within-a-website that will explore Votoms like never before. Keep watching as new content is added!
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If you've even glanced through the "kid comics" section of ArtValt, you may have been impressed by the number of projects I carried all the way to the finish line as a youngster. To balance the scales, this collection rounds up five separate homemade Star Wars comics that didn't reach their respective finales for one reason or another.
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The finale of my six-issue series! For the mech-pilots of Chaser Platoon, galactic war was a way of life…until one mission changed them forever. When the speartips of two armies meet above the bleeding scar of a secret planet, strategies collapse and everything shifts in the blink of an eye. One way or another, the mission ends here!
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Though the majority of my illustration work for West End Games was in their Star Wars RPG line, they occasionally threw other assignments my way. This was one of them. Before I knew it, I was drawing zombies and swashbucklers and haunted houses for the first time and actually doing pretty well at it. It's kinda nice when you can feel the gap closing between what you aspire to do and what you can actually accomplish.
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Here's the story of my brief tenure on the Jackie Chan animated series, including a complete copy of my one and only storyboard, AND the story of my even briefer encounter with Jackie Chan himself at the start of it all.
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In Part 1, I described how I got the assignment to draw robot designs for the first segment Chris Hart's Mecha Mania book. As I explained therein, I was not 100% thrilled with Chris' presentation choices. Shown here is my work for two subsequent segments, which I also took issue with for...reasons.
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Pursued by a sadistic Imperial admiral, Luke, Leia, and the droids take shelter on a neutral planet where they both find old acquaintances on opposite sides of the conflict. But the empire is ready to bring this refuge down on all of them! I took a LOT of creative steps forward with my third Star Wars graphic novel, created in the summer of 1981 when I was 16.
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The middle issues of my 6-issue series were all about expanding the story and building tension. In the same way the plot-heavy issue 1 set the table for the action-heavy issue 2, 3 and 4 both set the table for 5 and 6. They also used up all the previous material I'd written for my Votoms fanfic, so after I crossed that line it was all fresh territory for me, too.
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I'm at a real loss to say anything substantial about this project because, well, I don't know if it ever actually got published. All I can do is step aside and share the work itself. If anyone out there recognizes it or knows something that can help me sleuth out the details, I'd be ever so grateful.
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Avengers Assemble was hands down the toughest show I ever worked on. Not only was I tasked with matching MCU production quality, I was given a team of untested artists to direct over long distance with the tightest deadlines I'd ever seen. Surprisingly, it was a challenge I was ready for and thrived on. Here is the story of how I ate that thing for LUNCH.
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One day in 2001, artist/writer Christopher Hart invited me to contribute to his next proejct, a how-to-draw book on Japanese-style mecha design. The timing was good, and mecha design is close to my heart, so I relished the chance to turn it into a learning opportunity. But I have to report some mixed feelings about the end product...
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This tale was inspired by a couple different sources: the original Battlestar Galactica (specifically the Fire in Space episode) and a summary for a sci-fi story (I think) in which a spaceship had to maintain a specific weight to reach a destination at a specific time. Any idea that would spark another Star Wars comic was fine by me.
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For the men of Chaser Platoon, galactic war was a way of life...until one mission changed their lives forever. In our enlightened times, stories and rumors abound in the popular culture about corporate greed and indifference. This is a story of accountability. Here you'll find the first two issues of my 6-issue SF mecha action series, originally published by Aircel Comics.
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Someone at R. Talsorian games decided this novel by Larry Niven was a good basis for a role-playing game, so they published one in 1992 and hired me to contribute some illustrations. Looking at them now, I can tell it was an assignment that came and went while I was still figuring out how to ink with a brush. Getting better, but there was still some distance to travel.
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I didn't keep track of which Teen Titans episodes I worked on, but I certainly remember what I did for the TV movie that brought the series to a close. it was something special. Trouble in Tokyo wasn't just the grand finale, it was...set in Tokyo. Knowing that we could dial the anime influence all the way up made it extra exciting.
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