Working Process

A late blogpost.
 Feeling quite sick, and having a few days of vacations while a friend's birthday.

 Anyway.
 As you have seen, most of my recent works are digital. From A to Z.
 I'm working on a Cintiq 21UX, using Manga Studio, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Page 4 from Uss Indianapolis #2 - Damien Maric / Kevin Enhart ©Overlook Publishing

 The quality of the layouts I produce depends of the technics I'll later use for inking, and the complexity of the page.

 Here, a character from Uss Indianapolis, kneeling in a safety boat. Except for the position of the character, the work here is not that hard : the safety boat, the ropes and the background characters are mostly the only elements of the page, and I'm used to add all the details while inking.

 Usually, especially for Uss Indianapolis, I make my pages in three row : layouts-pencils, inks and, finally, the add of the ocean and clouds with Illustrator and Photoshop.

 The interesting thing about working this way is that most of my "tools" are ready : my clouds and ocean are vectorized with Illustrator, then re-worked with PS.

 That only fact saves me at least two hours, spent for the inks : the script needs a quite gritty, realistic work, and the fact that the book will be in b&w obliges me to think about the shadows at the inks stage. The clair-obscur work takes me lots of time, and every minute saved in the process is a realy gain.

 Tomorrow, I'll talk about the usual process for artworks like Apes With Uzis or The Heindrich Project.

Uss Indianapolis

Today, let's talk about my project that the the closer from its ending : Uss Indianapolis.

 Not only the comics, but also the real event that is beyond.

 If you'r as fan as me of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, maybe will you remember that amazing sequence on board of the Orca, when Quint (Robert Shaw), Brody (Roy Sheider) and Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) are having a drink, comparing their scars.

 Here is Quint's monologue (as it appears in the movie) :
"Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like ol' squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He's a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."
 Dialogue by John Milius and Robert Shaw.

 Art by Giancarlos Olivares - Uss Indianapolis #1 © Overlook Publishing

  So, there is a real event, behind that dialogue - event that was told to the public in 1974. But most of us, who were not born at this time, know it from Jaws.
 Even if we keep apart the Japanese torpedos and the mission of the Indianapolis - they're, as we say in France, des faits de guerre, (facts of war) - that particular event remains one of the most deadly of the US Navy.
 Only a few crewmen died from the initial attack. Actually, most of them died in the next two days - drown or eaten by the many sharks laying in the Pacific Ocean.
 Finally, 321 of the near 1.200 crewmen survived, and were rescued. With the trauma, and as they were not recognized officially (more than a secret mission, it was unprepared), many committed suicide in the next few years.
 The ship itself was never found, and we still don't know where it really sunk.

   Damien Maric, the writer of the comics, is - like many of us - a Jaws fan, and had the brilliant idea to look a little bit closer behind the story to find what really happened. Even if many things can be questionned - as it is with every witness, and more when that witness is emotionnally shocked - he wrote an amazing story, the kind I love, really emotionnal.
 The Italian artist Giancarlo Olivarès produced the art on the first issue, and I'm near the end of the second which, hopefully, will be pre-released at the Geekopolis Festival at the end of May.
 The comics is a mini series of 3 issues, set around the sinking, the survivors and the trial that followed the events.

 That's it for now.
 Due to the particularities of the comics - a long development - I'll only post sneak peaks in April and May, once the complete artwork will be done, and with permission of Overlook Publishing and Damien.

 Anyway, I invite you to join the Overlook Publishing Facebook Page :
 http://www.facebook.com/OverlookPublishing?fref=ts

 And order (only in French so far) the first issue on their website :
http://www.overlook-publishing.com/Projets/accueil_projet.aspx?theme=Indianapolis


Uss Indianapolis
© Overlook Publishing & Damien Maric

Written by Damien Maric
Art by Giancarlos Olivarès (issue #1) and Kevin Enhart (issue #2)

Inks

I've just read an interesting blog about inking - for once written by a reader, and not an inker or penciler.
 http://benjaminherman.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/thinking-about-inking-the-role-of-comic-book-inkers/

 I don't considere myself as a good inker. I'm not, even, an inker : I'm able to ink my own work, but that's pretty much it. To be honest, my last attempts at inking Greg Capullo or anybody else was, for the best, awful and crappy.
 Except Troy 'Don't' Zurel - and I was only coloring after him, I've never worked with an inker and, I have to say, I absolutely don't know what my art could look like properly inked.
 Thus said, inkers are by the most important artists in the comic book industry. Of course, without writers and pencilers, you couldn't read those comics. But inkers, man! They just give it the feeling!
 Give a bad pencil work to a good inker, and the reader will be thrilled.
 Give a good pencil work to a bad inker, and it will just be disgusting.

 Let me explain :
 Here is a before and after view of the same panel, coming from Apes With Uzis - Arc & Chain : Thugs Electro, page 18.
 Pretty clear, hu?

 I work a lot my pencils : specially here, since Mark Bertolini, the writer, loves to see the progression. Also, it makes things clearer for him and Rolf Lejdegard to see what I have in mind, and if I properly follow the script.
 But, still. With no doubt, the inked panel is way more dynamic, and filled with hundreds of tiny details. Most of them will be near invisible once the book printed, but their absence would be noticiable.
 All those little, tiny things also add lots of effects : the rust and the dust, reflections on the metal... Many things that are just annoying to do when you're penciling your page. I don't always fill the blanks when penciling. As many, the "x" technics is way faster and easier. See the grey filled parts in the penciled version? Imagine just some few lines, with dozains of "x" marking the black parts.
 It's something we usually do when we need to work fast. Sometimes, I just try to make my layouts clean as possible, and directly ink over them (that's what I do, for a matter of style, on Satanic Hell and, sometimes, on USS Indianapolis).

 I have absolutely no idea what that page could have looked with any other inker. Imagine it inked by Troy Zurel, Jonathan Glapion... I think it's closer from what could have done Danny Miki, a few years ago (and without any knowledge of inking, of course). I think that amount of details was a kind of his signature, and a part of his style.
 Because the ink work is definitely not just "tracing". It's an interpretation of the artist's style. The inker have to understand the penciler's style, feel it, and render it WITH his own style.
 That's why the best inkers are also great pencilers : they have just chosen to ink. I'm not ashamed : Jonathan Glapion and Danny Miki are better artists that I am. They have a natural understanding of the lines, their effects...

 Anyway... Time to go back to a new page of AWU.
 See ya next time!

I'm back!

Hey all!

 I've decided to re-open that blog to share some of my thoughts on the job, colleagues and more, as much as I can, talking about some upcomic projects and, well, try to show some few social abilities.

 So, let's begin with the projects I'm working on.

 For the published ones, let's begin with the beginning :
 You can buy the Satanic Hell digital comics at their website : www.satanichell.com
 3 issues (on 7) available so far.
 Written by Grigoris Douros
 Art by Kevin Enhart
 Colors by Jimmy Kerast
 Published by Zeno Telos Press (USA)

 I've already done 5 of the 7 issues, and the last two ones will be ready for May (but you'll read them later, of course).

 White Walls and Straight Jackets will be available on paper and digital release on May 11 from http://www.deadstarpublishing.co.uk/
 Written by David Owain Hughes
 Art by Kevin Enhart
 Published by Deadstar Publishing (UK)

 Uss Indianapolis #2 will have its pre-release (hopefully) at the end of May, at the Geekopolis Festival I'll be attending with writer Damien Mari, and enventually its release in Juy.
 The first issue (with art by Giancarlos Olivares) is already available on the publisher's website : www.overlook-publishing.com (so far, only in French)
 Written by Damien Maric
 Art by Kevin Enhart
 Published by Ovrlook Publishing (France)

 Apes With Uzis - Arc & Chain : Thugs Electro (created by Rolf Lejdegard) is my new baby, and will be released in May or June. The previous issues and series are available from www.215ink.com.
 Written by Mark Bertolini
 Art and colors by Kevin Enhart
 Published by 215Ink (USA)

 That's it for the upcoming releases.
 I've still got a bunch of projects aside : The Heindrich Project is in discussion, and I'm currently writing a mini series called The Fear and the Pain with the help of Mark Bertolini, which I hope to see published before the end of the year.

 More coming soon!