OUAT Artist Interview - Bevan Thomas

What is your story about?
“The Happy Prince,” illustrated by the talented Ksenia Kozhevnikova, is about a swallow flying south who befriends a golden bejewelled statue of a prince. The swallow is so filled with love for the Prince and the Prince with love for his own city that they offer up everything of themselves, destroying themselves for love. In the end, an angel takes their souls up to Heaven so that they can be rewarded for their selflessness.

Where did you get your ideas and inspiration for your story?It’s an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale of the same name. Oscar Wilde wrote numerous tragic tales, such as “The Angry Giant” and “The Star Child,” in which the protagonists martyr themselves for compassion and love. They’re very sad and mournful, but also very powerful and beautiful. I wanted to adapt one and “The Happy Prince” seemed the best fit for the anthology.

What made you decide to do a story for Gurukitty Studios anthology project?

I’m always interested in getting involved with local graphic novel anthologies and I really enjoyed contributing to Gurukitty Studios’ first book, “Ghost Tales.”

About the artist

What other comics have you done? Tell us about them.

I wrote “Ghosts of the Capital,” with art by Jayleen Weaver and Donut, for Gurukitty’s “Ghost Tales,” an exploration of various ghost stories and hauntings within the city of Victoria.

I’m also a frequent contributor to Cloudscape Comics’ various anthologies. For “21 Journeys,” I wrote “Flyaway,” featuring art by Reetta Linjama, which juxtaposed a woman escaping a toxic lifestyle with a swallow flying south for the winter. Then for “Giants of Main Street,” I created “Fallen Star” with Ksenia Koshevnikova, the story of “Theseus and the Minotaur” from the Minotaur’s point of view, and “My City” with Oliver McTavish-Wisden, about a man who keeps a city in a bottle. For Cloudscape’s next anthology, “Waterlogged,” I intend to create an autobiographical story about my relationship with my late maternal grandfather and also a story about a woman’s fascination with a powerful female pirate.

Oh, and I’m spearheading “All-Canadian Comics,” an anthology of Canadian superhero stories inspired by 40s Canadian comics. That’s a big personal project for me. I’m the editor and wrote three of the anthology’s stories. Basically, I like to keep busy. 

Where else can people find your work? Are you included in any other publications or a website?

A lot of my work is linked to off my portfolio at http://www.bevanthomas.ca. That’s also the location of my blog, where I post news about my professional and creative work, as well as various articles about things I find interesting. A lot of my work can also be read at http://www.cloudscapecomics.

com, the website for Cloudscape, the comics society I’m prominently involved with.
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Once Upon a Time Atist Interview - Jason Hart

As part of our indiegogo campaign to raise funds to print our anthology, we are doing interviews with some of the artists.

First up is Jason Hart, artist of "Small Wars of Inconsequential Beings" and the cover artist for the Special Edition Variant cover, available now only through a $30 donation on the Indiegogo campaign.
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What is your story about?

"Small Wars Of Inconsequential Beings" is a take on an old Greek/Roman story, "Batrachomyomachia," about a war between mice and frogs (which has been speculated may have been a satire of Homer's Iliad). My take doesn't modernize it necessarily, but attempts to make the story a little more universal.

The king of the frogs invites his friend, the mouse king, to a celebration at the frog lodge. On the way there, the mouse king accidentally drowns, and a war between the two species ensues...



Where did you get your ideas and inspiration for your story?

I was looking for a tale that had what I saw as a flaw to it – so that I had somewhere I could improve it with a re-imagining. The latter part of the original tale brings in the Greek gods, which for the sake of the parody, worked at the time, but didn't really make sense from a modern perspective.

I also really try to have a theme or driving message with my stories, and the basic setup of the frogs/mice war lent to something I wanted to say about the interconnectedness of our world today – that any war or struggle, even of a very small or seemingly unimportant people, today has a very significant impact on its neighbors and on the world balance overall.


What made you decide to do a story for Gurukitty Studios anthology project?

I've been writing comic scripts for a few years now, and about 6 months ago, I just sort of hit a wall, where I had all this stuff written, but nothing published to show for it. My wife suggested I look into anthologies, and so I started hitting up any comic anthology that seemed legit and that I could find a story to develop under its theme.

I have a long love of folk tales, so Once Upon a Time... was a natural fit. It was also only my second time illustrating my own work, something I'm developing more now. (And yes, there was a reason I chose a story with very few humans in it.)


About the artist

What other comics have you done? Tell us about them.

I have upcoming short comics in Melaina Comics' Cartoonists Against Bullying and Grayhaven Comics' The Gathering: Kids Fairy Tales, with a few more pending – as well as a 7-issue circus mini-series that's been scripted and a 4-issue adventure/comedy mini-series that an artist and I are developing. Currently, I'm illustrating two new stories for anthology submissions.


Where else can people find your work? Are you included in any other publications or a website?

The two listed above haven't been published yet. Updates on my work can be found at my blog: showerstorm.tumblr.com



About the cover

How did you come up with your cover design?

Even with single-image illustrations, I really get excited if I can tell a story, or at least hint at one. The hard part was finding an image that would evoke the genre without being too specific to any one tale (while still being interesting). I came up with a scene of a young adventurer who seeks out folk tales to collect in her snake-skin cloak. She confronts a spider in its lair, who also collects tales and hoards them in its subterranean web. A sort of parallel to the idea of the anthology within.
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Bad Kitties - Web comic

So today is the day I'm launching a web comic! YAY!
Its called Bad Kitties, and its based around random scenarios that our kitties torment us!
 So I'm not entirely set on the timing for this, but it won't be weekly I don't think. Maybe Bi-Weekly. I'll see how much interest there is (that means the more enthusiastic you are, the more you see).
 I'm trying to still work on Hello, Albertosaurus, and we have many conventions and stuff so time is tight, but I'll do my best for this :D
Additionally, some days there will be 1 page, some will be 5 pages. Whatever is needed for the Gag, But each blog post with comic will be a complete gag. They'll be inked traditionally and coloured digitally, but simply! well, you'll see :)
So this is going to be Blog only content! I won't be posting these comics ANYWHERE ELSE! so it's in your best interest to follow this blog if you want my random insane kitty comics! You can follow with Google Friend Connect, or add it to an RSS feed!

So here we are, Issue one of Bad Kitties!

Close ups and Behind the scenes

Hello!

a quick note to say that we will be at Vancouver Comiccon again on May 15th and the Tiks in a bottle will be back in stock in time for that con. We ran out of them last convention which was a little embarrassing but we've been busy making tiny tik sculptures and mixing and dying resin and popping it all into tiny little bottles.

Also, Chapter 5 has just been shipped to us and if the comic faeries are with us, they might arrive in time for the May 15th Comiccon! Please note that Chapter 5 is not part of the Daqueran Clearance sale, only 1-4 are.

Also, Chapter 6 is the final Chapter of Daqueran. Sad I know, but We need to move on and get more projects on the go.

I thought I'd show you some close up shots of some panels in Daqueran. You don't really get to see all the details in the hard copy comics and especially not on the web.
So I thought this might interest some of you watercolour lovers.

Just click the image to get a larger view.

Sorry for the watermarks, but you know how the internet is...

This is the page as a whole before it's scanned and gutters and text are added. All the panels below are part of this page. 

I put lots of time into this panel.  I think it turned out pretty snazzy, it was much better after I added the pink into the whites.

Typical Daqueran grumpy face, but he looks cute. 

Iada's a spaz.

I likes the inking on her profile, unfourtunatly lots of it got covered when the background was added.

Colour Tests: BATP

Did some skin colour tests for The Bachelors and the Python, even though the comic is in black and white, it’ll have a colour cover (done in watercolours of course). Also, it’ll help plan how I’m going to do the black and white in the comic, i haven’t decided on if I’m going to do greytones at all.


What do you guys think? Do you like just ink comics, or do you prefer greytones?
Would it look funny to have only a couple things in the whole comic greytoned?

The Bachelors and the Python

I finished the comic course with Steve Rolston I was taking, where i created 4 teaser pages to a Graphic Novel project I've been planning for a little while.

Please note, these pages wont actually appear in the finished book, as the book will be in a shorter-wider format. Also this section of the actual comic will be paced out more appropriately with more fun surprises.

Also, I have a website in the works to go with this teaser where you can see progress on the novel, I'll link it when it's done.

Without further ado, here it is! I'd love to hear your comments!

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Daqueran and his wife

Here is a special bonus content for you bloggers. This is a quick sketch of a character design of Daquerans wife from when he (and she) was alive. I have her skin, eye and hair colours in mind but I haven't done any colour examples of her yet, though she has been the subject of many sketches.

I have some name choices for her on the image there, in order of which ones I like best. I wouldn't mind knowing which name you like best of the four listed.

She most likely doesn't appear in the comic much, if at all, she's there for my own character developing purposes. I'm visual and I needed a visual representation of Daquerans past.

So what do you think of her? Which name do you like the best?

Also a reminder, we will be doing some giveaways of comics, artwork, and products from the GK shop at random to commenter's and followers of this blog as soon as we've generated some readers. So if you want to get in on that, get commenting and following now because the first giveaway is going to be a rare item!

We will announce what the item is before we select winners, so you'll have a chance to get in on them.