Spotlight on Legends of the Guard contributor Dirk Shearer:

Both Issue #4 and the Hardcover of Legends of the Guard come out tomorrow (Archaia, BOOM!, & I apologize for this odd release, due to a printing issue it was unavoidable). Dirk Shearer contributed the epilogue story for the Legends Hardcover. A bit of background before the interview though. I had already planned the focus of the epilogue story to be about June's printmaker husband Alistair (Alley) to tell a story through prints. When thinking of who could draw a story that looked like woodblock prints, I immediately thought of the scratchboard art of Dirk Shearer. He was the perfect fit. Like the epilogue from volume 1, I did a framing piece at the beginning to lead into the story. But enough of that info...on with the interview:

David: Dirk, Thank you for doing this interview and for contributing such a great epilogue to the Legends Volume 2 Hardcover! Let’s start with your background in art. Did you start showing an interest in art early? Any formal training?

Dirk: Dave, it's absolutely my pleasure! I've been a fan of yours for a while, and was stoked to do this. 

I'm one of those "drawing back when tricycles were cool" types, and, being raised by wonderful grandparents who fostered my growth, having a half-sister 4 years older with a more consistent drawing style, along with other family and friends, I was often challenged to do more, which all just kept me interested, growing, and producing. Outside of the people who influenced me, cartoons, animated films, superhero comics, illustrated books, and my interest in the natural world all had quite the influence on my growth as a young artist. For the latter half of my public education, I was friends with another artist who was also big into comics, and simply put, was better than me, which pushed me to spend time on my work to create equally good art.

David: You are known for your scratchboard work- what drew you to this media for many of your illustrations?

Dirk: Jokingly, but perhaps not, I'd say my fear of painting and strength in value, focusing on the lights and darks. Although I love to view good artwork in color or black and white, my forté has leaned toward drawing than color. I'm improving that with myself, and maybe I'm not as bad at it as I think I am, but it's something I'm always conscious of. 

In middle school I discovered how, in my opinion, good black and white art can be just as relevant and aesthetic as color. Black and white art often carries the stigma of existing due to being a cheaper vehicle over colored work, but when you place Wrightson's artwork from his Frankenstein book next to a Jeffrey Catherine Jones cover piece, Barry Moser's wood engravings or Stephen Gammell's art up to Eric Carle, or Franklin Booth next to Howard Pyle, they stand up! All four of those artists I'd been exposed to by middle school. Heck, Gammell's Scary Stories, which everyone is obligated to love, (I mean it), possibly initiated that interest at a younger age as my cousins and I incessantly stared at his illustrations while reading those stories. It's an honest, damned shame HC removed his illustrations for the 30th anniversary print of Scary Stories.

Unfortunately, I didn't really jump into executing true black and white until college, when I brought those influences back toward the front of my conscious, Barry Moser's work being the obvious beacon. At the same time, both he and Jae Lee were affecting my view of black and white art like no other artists during those years. I began to cut down on the abstract, cartoony, or ultra-muscled, double-bicep'ed characters, and began digging into mood and atmosphere, often more solemn and introspective. I had a black and white illustration class taught by illustrator/ writer Brian Kane, and this was the one class that I really had the chance to experiment with the scratchboard style. The first two pieces stank, but by the third, I knew I was capable of producing professional work. After graduation, I waited a couple of years before I did anything more with the medium, until I decided to create a little niche for myself at comic conventions. I created a series of Justice League portraits in scratchboard, which led to my first freelance projects with the medium.

David: This isn’t your first panel by panel comic work, but is this the first time doing a comic all in scratchboard?

Dirk: Multiple editors, publishers, and my own curiosity have been pushing me to do a comic in scratchboard, but I would often get sidetracked with other projects or freelance. When you approached me to do the story in the medium, it was an opportunity to finally jump at trying it out, no matter what size or restrictions the project might give.

David: For the epilogue story, I gave you a seed of it being about a printer who changes the course of mouse events with his humble trade, but you took it from there and put shape to the story with narration & images. How did you approach the writing portion?

Dirk: Ha, the high school kid who sucked at conceptual writing in me would respond with "um... in English, with paper, and a mechanical pencil."

But seriously, since these panels were done to imitate block printing, I wanted the story to be mostly void of dialogue. For much of block printing's history, and illustration in general, there wasn't dialogue placed over top of the image. I wanted to maintain some of that antiquity in my own way, (unique from say, the too-awesome for words Jeremy Bastian), so I focused my story on a narrative text, with emphasis on the visuals telling the story apart from the text. I've allowed the popular instruction that the art should be able to tell the general story without need of text to sink into my thought process for long enough now that I like to go and prove it sometimes.

David: For your script, you broke down the panels with descriptions and narration for each. Were you just visualizing the pages as you typed? or did you do some thumbnailing to figure out panel shapes or the number of panels per-page?

Dirk: For my own work, I jump into ideas akin to Kurtzman's style. I allow plot, script, and thumbnail sketches to work organically with one another to create the story- both the artist and storyteller inside work together to complete the work. If I get stuck with a sketch, I move onto writing in an attempt to fill the gap. Eventually, both thumbnails and rough script are finished almost simultaneously. Otherwise, my thumbnail sketches might be too messy to comprehend later, or the images in my head may disappear before I can record them in writing.

Once that script was written, what is your process for developing your roughs/pencils? And how do you transfer that work onto the scratchboard? Is each panel its own piece of scratchboard?

I might create a couple more thumbs to secure my confidence with the page layout. Once I'm satisfied, I'll create a larger sketch, often at print size. Or, I may skip that and go straight to final work size, which in the case of my scratchboards, is a hair larger than print- I don't want to work much larger than print size, lest I lose my smallest line detail.

I have a couple methods for transferring, depending what seems to be more convenient per image. I start out by drawing my panels on the board with either a tech pen or black colored pencil, and all the straight lines get ruled out. To transfer the drawing, I either 1.) draw it on with those same tools, 2.) trace the drawing onto the board with a ballpoint pen to leave a slight impression, or 3.) my favorite method- I take a little bit of Xylene (paint stripper that one can purchase at hardware stores), and with paper toweldipped in the xylene, lightly rub the back of a black and white laser copy, (reversed), onto the board. The Xylene melts the toner from the copy onto the board, leaving an image that's blacker than the ink of the scratchboard. This is preferred when I'm lazy and don't want to draw everything again onto the board. Watch it, though- too much Xylene and you begin to affect the scratchboard's ink; not enough, and you simply don't transfer the drawing, and it may affect the paper. It's fun, regardless, like silly putty for adults, but with more vapors entering the sinuses. I should probably caution about that part, but I won't.

I had large enough boards to design each page onto one board, with panels for the most part laid out as they were sequentially in the story.

David: What tools do you use to clear away the black of the scratchboard? 

Dirk: I use the two standard scratchboard tools that you can get from Ampersand- their diamond blade and wide blade. They may have different names than what I just gave, but basically, there's one for small to medium lines, and I use the wide blade to scratch off much wider or areas, similar using a standard crow quill pen nib and a brush when inking. I also use a clay needle tool for my smallest lines. The diamond blade has the most versatility, while the other two take the line widths a little bit further in variety. Sometimes I'll use X-Acto blades, but I often resort back to the aforementioned, eventually. It's all decently cheap.

David: How long (on average) did it take to do the scratchboard work for a single panel?

Dirk: Longer than I thought, but not much so. Once drawn and transferred, I'd guess that each page took maybe 12-15 hours to complete, some panels requiring more or less time than others.

David: Creating tone in scratchboard is a trick of fooling the eye with optical mixes of line thickness and spacing. Do you have any mental process for how you want to approach making those tonal values as you work?

Dirk: Before I work on rendering an object in the drawing, I do some preliminary scratches on the side. It helps me to visualize the overall texture, to set the tone of the object, and to work out any kinks when it comes to the next adjacent object or specific part of the drawing. It's not as easy as one might think, because with any hatching where both values (or colors) vary in thickness to create the value or hue in-between, you may also create a variance in graphic appearance. If I create 10 bold black and white lines next to each other, they may produce a space of 50% gray. Placing 20 black and white lines next to each other in the same size space may create an overall similar value, but the former is going to have broader, more noticeable lines, while the other seems finer. That affects the style. I'm always conscious of that, and have a love/hate relationship with the medium as I make those tiny but important decisions.

David: What other projects do you have coming up?

Dirk: I just finished up a mural for a child grieving center. I'm about to dive head first into a couple architectural concept illustrations for an art space in York, PA; getting ready to start a comics-related art residency with a school in December. I'm preparing for my next season of classes at one of the art galleries near my hometown. All that, along with other, more boring freelance work- color this photo, create that packaging, clip out the giant bear mauling a human in the background of our lovely vacation photo. Oh, and plotting my next personal projects. The life of versatility!

David: Where can fans find out about you and your work and keep up with your projects?

Dirk: Awesome people can follow me on my Facebook page, ambitiously titled 'Dirk Shearer International Experience Of Visual Entertainment,' on my blog at 'Alone In The Dirkness,' or my Twitter account, '@DirkShearer'.  I'll hopefully be getting a website back up in a couple of months, too. I misses it. Dirkshearer.com is now a Japanese food blog. I hear it's dirktastic. In the meantime, my online portfolio can viewed at www.coroflot.com/dirkshearer.

Dirk's story Just a Printer appears in the Hardcover of Legends of the Guard Volume 2 along with stories by Stan Sakai, Nick Tapalansky, Alex Eckman-Lawn, Ben Caldwell, Christian Slade, Rick Geary, Jemma Salume, Eric Canete, C.P. Wilson III, Cory Godbey, Bill Willingham, Jackson Sze, Justin Gerard, &Cliff Monear.

I encourage you to pick up the hardcover collection of this new anthology & all this wonderful work.

2014 Appearances:

MSU Comics Forum: February 22

Emerald City Comic Con: March 28-30

C2E2: April 25-27

Motor City Comic Con: May 16-18

Comicpalooza: May 23-25

Phoenix Comic Con: June 5-8

Heroes Con: June 20-22

San Diego Comic Con: July 23-27

Boston Comic Con: August 8-10

Baltimore Comic Con: Sept. 5-7

NY Comic Con: Oct. 9-12

Spotlight on Legends of the Guard contributor Bill Willingham:

David Petersen: Bill, Thank you so much for doing the story and also for doing this interview.

Bill Willingham: You’re welcome. I’m happy to do the interview. I was absolutely tickled to be able to do the story.

David: I’ve been touting that this Legends story is your return to drawing comics. What (and when) was the last comic you drew before this Legends of the Guard story?

Bill: I think I did a small two-page story for one of the Hero Initiative fundraising books a few years back. Before that, it was the two issues I did of my own DC series Shadowpact, when I foolishly thought I’d have time to both write and draw the series, without surrendering any of my other work – like Fables, for instance.

David: Why had you taken a break from the art side of storytelling?

Bill: More of a breakdown than a break. No, wait. That’s too glib and also makes it look like I had a breakdown. Scratch that. I only meant to imply that something in the artist side of me broke at some point. As near as I can piece it together, the pathology went something like this: 1) I started as an artist only. 2) Strong opinions about the overall quality of the scripts I was given, along with a recognition of how much effort goes into producing page after page of art, led me, pretty quickly in the game, to start writing my own stories, under the notion that I can write as well as some and would have the advantage of producing scripts the artist part of me will want to draw. 3) Gradually I wrote more and drew less. 4) Eventually I settled into the realization that I could tell more stories as a writer than as an artist, or by doing both. I never entirely gave up the art side. I’m about to publish a book of what I've been drawing all along, mostly of false-starts on longer works. I suspect I could still draw a monthly book, as long as that is all I do. However, one drawn book a month isn't enough for me. That would preclude too many other story projects.

David: Last spring, you brought a group of comic storytellers together (including myself and the Mice Templar folks) for Fabletown and Beyond under the banner of us all being "Mythic Fiction". Can you explain how you see that category of story and why it’s important?

Bill: Mythic Fiction is our first heroic storytelling genre. It’s Beowulf and Gilgamesh and The Iliad, and so much more. Superheroes, if anything, are a subset of that genre – one that is currently having a bit of trouble keeping in touch with the wondrous aspect of the form, but I’m confident they’ll find their way again. I can’t say for certain why Mythic Fiction is important in the grand scheme, but it’s vital for me, because most of what I want to say lies within its magical boundaries.

David: For your Legends of the Guard story you have a mouse outwitting a cat to save his own life. Where did the seed of this story come from?

Bill: In our current pop fiction, most professional warriors are portrayed as dimwitted thugs, whereas the opposite is true. The best soldiers have always had to be smart. I liked the idea of an old retired campaigner who no longer had his strength and martial skill, but still had his wits about him.

David: When you start a story that you are going to both write and draw, do you start with any visuals? or does the writer cap get donned first for an outline or script?

Bill: Both. Depends on the story. In this case, I wrote it first and drew it following the script. In other cases it’s a more organic thing, creating art and story as I go.

David: From veteran writer/artist Sergio Aragonés to me when I was starting out on a writer/artist path: Never allow the artist side of you to bully the writer side of you into writing something easy to draw. And never let the writer in you bully the artist to draw something that doesn’t work visually. Do you ever wrestle with the two roles when writing and drawing the same project? Or do you work in harmony with yourself?

Bill: I constantly wrestle with the two halves of the Jekyll and Hide artist/writer relationship. And I think that’s the only way to do it. If both sides are in harmony, I would immediately think that both sides are taking it easy.

David: For the artwork how do you start? With thumbnails or straight to the final paper surface?

Bill: Straight to the final page. Any joy I find in my own art comes from the spontaneity of the drawing. Start with thumbnails or layouts, or what-have-you, and that spontaneity gets leached out along the way. If I have the script and am doing my own lettering, I also letter each panel first, before a single line is placed on the page, to establish the real space I have in which to draw.

David: What are your preferred tools for drawing and inking?

Bill: I use a standard lead holder with a # 2 lead (although that can change, depending on the surface of the paper). Then I ink with Black Magic ink applied with a Windsor Newton # 2 brush. Can’t ink with a pen to save my life.

David: What artists influenced your work as you developed as both an artist and writer? Do you still look to certain artists for visual inspiration today? or certain writers for inspiration?

Bill: All of them. Anyone who caught my eye. The greatest influences art-wise today can be found in the classic age of magazine illustration (now sadly passed). Writers are the same. Anyone and everyone who writes well inspires me.

David: Bill, Thank you again for the story. Where can people find out more about you and your work?

Bill: You can find my main project, Fables, at any comic shop. We've been doing it for eleven years now and about 140 issues. By the time this is posted, Telltale Games will have also released the first of its many video games based upon Fables, called The Wolf Among Us. We keep the Fables books in print, in about 20 collections, and most shops are good at keeping those in stock. To find out more about me, I sort of have a website that I sort of keep up to date. I think it’s at BillWillingham.com. I also tweet via @BillWillingham.

Bill's Story The Vetran will appear in Legends of the Guard

volume 2 # 4 along with stories by Jackson Sze & Justin Gerard

Upcoming Appearances:

North Carolina Comic Con: November 9-10

Spotlight on Legends of the Guard contributor Justin Gerard:

As a note to the readers, Justin’s story is a little different from the others. The story takes the form of a song with musical notation. Each page is a verse and has a 1/3 page illustration of the verse by Justin. Because I don’t want to spoil much of the story, this interview will focus more on Justin and his work and process than the Legends story itself.

David Petersen: Justin, Thanks for doing the story on short notice! And I appreciate you doing the interview too. I was very glad to get you on-board for this project. When I’d asked you before the song framework was an option, you’d been worried about doing sequential storytelling. Do you have the desire to tell stories longer than a few illustrations allow? either with comics or prose? When I look at your sketchbooks I always feel like there is a bigger story you are itching to tell.

Justin Gerard Oh definitely. Most of them start out as just little doodles without much meaning or context.  Just a character that seems interesting.  But then you kind of can't help but start designing a world around them that seems appropriate to them. And once you've done that it's hard not to start populating it and exploring it.  And then the story part sort of develop naturally whether you mean for it to or not.  
So most of these worlds end up with stories that I definitely wish I could cobble into some kind of larger and more cohesive whole.  Sadly, I am not the most gifted writer, and when I try to mesh the writing with the images, it doesn't always work as well as I'd like.  
But I do have some plans in the works for the next sketchbook that will involve a lot more writing with the images...  (Can't really say more at the moment, but check back on my blog in August!) 

David: Talk about your background in art. Were you one of those kids that was drawing before you were walking? Did you have family support to continue in art? What was your pre-college art education like?

Justin: Haha, yes I probably was one of those kids who was drawing before he was walking. My memory is terrible, so I can't say that for sure, but it seems like it. 
My mother claims that she drew pictures in my peanut butter sandwiches and then takes all the credit for my stuff.  (Which probably answers the second question) My parents were definitely very supportive and I owe them a great deal for everything. 
I went to Bob Jones University for art. My college art experience wasn't much to speak about.  Most of what I gained from college was probably taste, rather than technical ability.  Bob Jones has a really incredible collection of religious art, in particular a gallery with quite a few enormous Benjamin West paintings in them. 

I stole a step by step guide from the library while I was there. It was the one with the Peter DeSeve tutorial in it. (The one with the pirates.)  I studied it voraciously and never returned it.  To this day it has probably had more impact on how I work than anything else I ever came across.  

However, probably the best education I got, I got at the universities book press, where I worked while I was in college.  It was awesome experience and did tons to prepare me for the professional world and freelance illustration.  I am really thankful for the opportunity to work there during college.  

David: You now teach art and illustration through a few venues including the Lamp Post Guild. Was there something from your education you felt really needed to be passed on or a case of you wanting to help new students fill in all the gaps your formal training lacked? What is the best piece of illustration advice you have even been given or could give?

Justin: Hmmmm…  Actually, what it is I think, is that I want to teach at a school someday; But not yet. 
For now I would just like to do smaller presentations, and classes and demos where I can.  Right now I still have all these ideas and things I want to try. Clients I want to work for, projects I want to do and shows I want to have. I would like to gain a bit more experience in the commercial art world before feeling like I would be ready to teach full-time. That way, when I go to teach, I will have the benefit of actual market experience, and won't just be theorizing about the way I think the market ought to be.    

As far as advice goes, I would say, only do this if you really love just sitting alone and drawing. And if you do find that you love that, then just do it a lot. Just draw a ton, and draw the things you love.

David: By looking at your blog, it’s clear you do a great deal of process work before the final image including character studies, layouts, color composites, and preliminary paintings. How do you keep from going too far in an image’s development so you don’t feel it’s overworked or that you've overstayed your creative welcome in that image...all while still doing the right amount of preparation?

Justin: Oftentimes this is taken care of for me because deadlines and client needs only permit me to do a certain amount of preliminary work.  It does get a little more tricky when it is purely my own work and I sometimes do overwork the preliminary stage. It is definitely a delicate balance.  In general though it is just how much patience I can muster up.  I think drawing and redrawing an image almost ALWAYS makes it better.  You may lower the overall amount of work you put

out, but you will definitely raise the overall quality of your work.  

David: My readers enjoy hearing about tools of the trade, please share what you like to draw with, paper surfaces, color methods, etc.

Justin: I tend to switch things up a lot when I work. It is rarely the same method twice. 
However, my approach is generally the same. Basically, I do a lot of drawing and then do an underpainting and intiial colors traditionally, and then I scan this in and finish everything digitally in Photoshop. (Adding darker darks and more intense colors.)  
I will work in pencil or oil or acrylic or watercolor depending on what I am wanting to do with the piece. 
But perhaps the method I end up going back to the most is colored pencils and watercolor on Strathmore 500 series vellum bristol which I then work digitally over top of.  

David: Who would you cite as creative influences?

Justin: The list is enormous and it would be impossible to mention all of them.  DeSeve is a great one obviously, Gustafson, Bonner  and Meseldzija are perhaps some of the most influential for me as far as contemporaries go. Rackham, Rembrandt, Leighton, Friedrich and Dore for the classics.  But really the list is enormous, I am always interested in discovering new talent and stumbling on classics I never knew of.  Last week I stumbled on a French Academic painter named Vibert Jehan Georges whose oil paintings are just amazing, and everyone should check out his work.  It's just fantastic. 

David: What projects are coming up next that folks should look out for?

Justin: I have got the aforementioned sketchbook that I hinted at earlier, as well as an illustrated book in the works.  They are both still in development, but I am hoping to announce the details of it in August this year.  Likely, there will be goblins, dwarves, trolls and dragons with bad table manners...  

David: I'm really looking forward to that project! Justin, thanks again for doing the story and interview. Where can people find out more about you and your work?

Justin: I am terrible with social media. I promise to reform and get my act together later this year.  For now, the best place is my blog: www.quickhidehere.blogspot.com

Justin's Story The Timber Mice (with music written by Cliff Monear)
will appear in Legends of the Guard volume 2 # 4
along with stories by Bill Willingham & Jackson Sze

Upcoming Appearances:

North Carolina Comic Con: November 9-10

Spotlight on Legends of the Guard contributor Jackson Sze:

David Petersen: You are not normally a comic-guy, tell the readers about your work and background.

Jackson Sze: Thanks for chatting with me, and also, thank you so much for allowing me to spend some time in the world of MouseGuard. I am truly grateful for the opportunity! I am a Concept Artist based in Los Angeles. Right now I’m working in movies, but I’ve been fortunate enough to work in other areas such as videogames, television, advertising… and now, a little bit of Comics! Environment Design is what I concentrated on in school, but lately I’ve been trying to do more storytelling with my illustrations. Working on MouseGuard has been a great way for me to explore visual storytelling.

David: I am very pleased that Legends of the Guard is your comic debut! Had you wanted to do comics before? or did I just twist your arm enough?

Jackson: Comics has always seem an intimidating medium for me. I don’t have comic experience, and to be responsible for everything at once was a terrific challenge. Thanks to the support both you and Paul gave me, I think I managed to tell a coherent short story. Thanks for asking me to do it. I am so glad I did. 

David: I really admire your paintings of settings and locations. So, while I try and stay as hands-off as possible with these Legends stories, I did encourage you to do a story based on the theme of visiting several locations. Tell the readers about the process you went through to shape that push of mine into a narrative and give us a tease of what it’s about.

Jackson: Thanks for the suggestions! Environment design is what I am most comfortable with, so that is a great starting point for me to think about the story. In order to showcase the locations, we needed a tour guide of sorts to bring the readers along. Things will hopefully feel fresher if our characters are experiencing these areas for the first time as well. A cartographer mouse seems an ideal character to be our guide on this journey. With this short story, our characters will travel to foreign lands beyond the known mouse territories. Hopefully there will be some character growth as well as actual journeying accomplished by the end. 

David: Since you normally are doing single images or a series of images meant to shape the viewers’ understanding of an environment’s atmosphere and design, did you find telling a story in pictures a great departure? or did it come naturally?

Jackson:  I had to find a balance between character driven storytelling, and showcasing the locations. In the end I treated the comic like an animated film, imagining the shots I’d like to see, while working in the panel structure of comics. 

David: What artists inspire you and your work?

Jackson: Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa is why I am an artist today. His movies inspired me greatly as a child. Otherwise, impressionist painters, California Impressionism and the many excellent contemporary digital painters continue to inspire my love of painting. 

David: How about telling readers the process of making your artwork. It’s all digital, but walk us through your process and tell us about your set-up.

Jackson: My process is pretty typical, and yes this comic was done digitally. After writing the script, I’d imagine the shots I’d like to see and loosely lay them out on the page. These will be rough sketches. Often I’ll have to adjust what I had in mind to what is actually working on the page. Mostly I hope to communicate clearly what is happening in each shot, while maintaining some sense of continuity. A change in the camera’s perspective here and there helps add contrast to the visuals. The panels were often regarded as a series rather than a single image. What came before, what’s interesting after… that kind of thing. After the lay in, I’d do a color pass on the entire comic, adjust and refine till it’s done! Setup wise I have a dual monitor setup with a PC. I went back to using a Wacom tablet after a few years of using the Cintiq… it’s all about screen real estate! 

David: Lighting & atmosphere is very strong in your work. How early in image making are you thinking about the color palette and it’s lighting? Do you have a clear image in your mind before you start painting? or does it develop through early sketching and blocking in shapes?

Jackson: I knew I wanted a color scheme that makes sense throughout the story. So as I do the first color pass, I’m thinking about the mood I want to achieve, time of day, weather conditions, seasons, things like that. The rough pass acts as a mini color script and I adjust for continuity and variety. The plan was to start with an overcast morning, vary the colors of their journey, and end with a sunset. 

 David: Thanks Jackson. Where can readers find out more about you and your work?

Jackson: Thanks again David, for letting me do this. It has been educational and rewarding. My website is www.jacksonsze.com and my blog is at www.jacksonsze.blogspot.com

Jackson's Story Back and Forth will appear in Legends of the Guard
volume 2 # 4 along with stories by Bill Willingham & Justin Gerard

Upcoming Appearances:

New York Comic Con: October 10-13

North Carolina Comic Con: November 9-10

Spotlight on Legends of the Guard contributor Eric Canete:

David Petersen: Eric, Thanks for taking the time to do the story and for doing the interview. Let’s start the interview with your artistic beginnings. When did you first start thinking about art as a career? Were you a child who knew you wanted to draw for the rest of your life, or did a specific moment get you on your creative path?

Eric Canete: Thanks for having me. Doing the story was probably the most notable highlight in my career in recent memory - it was such an honor and so much fun to do.
I was prompted in a career in art by an older cousin, Ferdinand, who drew really well when we were young. I was very jealous of his ability and recall him being able to draw anything in any style - from fashion illustrations to Star Wars; anything he saw, he could draw. So whenever he would doodle, I would always try it for myself - with less accomplished results. But that friendly competition really started me in the physical act of trying to get better at drawing. From there, it was just being influenced by all the cartoons and comics I was looking at and watching at the time.

David: While you've drawn comics in the past, your background and day jobs are in animation, storyboarding, and design. Obviously comics and storyboarding have similar qualities, but from someone who does both well, can you talk about what makes them very different from one another?

Eric: Like you said, there are a handful of crossover in both disciplines. It's sort of funny that, whenever I do comic book pages, I draw them almost as if I'm storyboarding. I know many of my peers are really involved with page lay outs and what helps best draw the eye from panel to panel - there's a whole science to it all. I used to really invest in learning those theories, but these days, I just draw my pages like I'm storyboarding.

The biggest difference, when it comes to drawing comic book pages versus drawing storyboards for animation, is the sheer pencil mileage involved in doing an action adventure storyboard for the screen. Every beat has to be spelled out, every acting nuance has to be drawn. Whereas in comics, the artist can expect the audience to fill in between the lines as to what happened from one panel to another, animation can't do that - it's simply not good cinema. There are instances when you can 'jump time' and not show Point A to Point B, but for the most part, ALL action has to be spelled out. That takes a lot of drawing.

David: While I like giving the freedom to Legends of the Guard contributors to come up with their own stories, you specifically asked me to give you some story direction and outlines. I provided you several story seeds including: a story about a mouse with a flaming sword, a mouse who carved puppet children for himself, trees that could talk to animals, and an old world mouse who first brought fire to his species...but you opted for the one I suggested as a re-telling of an Aesop fable with a war between mice and weasels. Was there any reason you chose that story over the others?

Eric: It was such a HUGE deal for me to be involved in Legends of the Guard. I asked for your help in writing brief story ideas because I didn't want to miss the overall tone for the series. I'm a novice writer so I can't say I'm 100% comfortable doing things on my own yet, and it takes me so long to ideate on a story that in this particular case, I just really wanted to get the task of drawing without the worry of being too far off center with the story. I figured, if I went straight to the source for what's a good fit tonally, then it's that much easier and sooner that I can get to the task of drawing.

As far as choosing this particular story over the others - it was the challenge of it all. I had the opportunity to draw an epic battle between mice and weasels, and I got excited and jumped all over it. I figured an artist - even within the context of this series -  doesn't get a chance to do that every day. Also, I really wanted to draw pages that was somewhat out of my comfort zone. Between all the synopses you had written, choosing this story really offered that opportunity.

David: In the development of your thumbnails, you asked if I could give you more space for a splash page...and it turned out, I was able to shift things around and offered you a two-page spread (the first in Legends of the Guard). This spread is incredible! And does exactly what a two page spread should, give the reader a sense of awe, grandeur, and scope. You are known for dynamic designs, but this must have been a killer series of pages to layout, draw and ink! Describe what it was like to work on them. 

Eric: Wow! I didn't know you accommodated that double page lay out. I'm so grateful!


Your description of the hows and whys of doing any huge spread is exactly the motivation for my request in having it. I try to deeply immerse the reader into the feeling of the story I'm drawing. In this specific case, the story called for an epic battle of heroic warrior mice and evil deadly weasels. I was inspired by that and strove to give that scene as much weight as possible.
I wanted to capture a moment in time where it was just the absolute chaos of battle as those forces clashed and fought. But also, in order to add a different texture beyond just drawing tons and tons of detail, I tried to draw little stories within the story. I tried to give groups of mice their own set of characteristics, their own personalities. I scrutinized the weasels and convinced myself that they weren't all evil just for the sake of being evil. I would think, "I bet these mice over here are all pals and train together," or, "I bet this weasel in the back isn't sold on this whole idea, but he's involved only because he was bullied into it by the others." 

That type of thinking allowed me to compartmentalize the task into smaller, more manageable sections - which made it less of a daunting task because it stopped being about the details. Most importantly, it allowed me to believe each mice and weasel I drew had heart. I believe that's an essential aspect any big battle scene like that - I have to care one way or the other for the people involved or else seeing them get hurt or watching them win feels a little empty.

David: What is your process of going from a script to the inked pages? Do you transfer thumbnails to larger board? or do you essentially redraw them all on the final surface? What tools do you use when penciling and inking?

Eric: I draw with the most rudimentary materials. I'm the least professional when it comes to the inking and penciling tools that I use. I say, whatever gets the job done. My main inking tool is a brush marker that's made by Staedtler Mars called a 'Graphic Duo 3000' - which is a watercolor brush that has zero lightfast properties. Also, if there's any sort of moisture in the air, the ink will just infuriatingly smear at the least opportune time. On finer details, I ink with a really simple, disposable set of technical pens with widths ranging from 005 to 08.

I used to do the painstaking process of drawing really tight thumbnails, using a photocopier to enlarge them on a bigger piece of paper, then using a light box to transfer the images onto bristol board in pencil before going to ink. But as I learned, a lot of the spontaneity of the page went away when I did that. So now, I just draw a small thumbnail, then using that rough drawing as a guideline, I redraw the page larger. My attitude is, 'The simpler, the better'.   

David: Comic storytelling aside, you became a hero to me when you announced your new commission policies a few years ago, saying that after drawing countless Iron-Man, Bat-Man, Wonder Woman, and every other major character you wanted to only do original drawings in the spirit of certain characters. I know you’ve covered this before, but for the readers of my blog would you explain why you made that decision, how it’s been received, and after over a year of doing it how you feel about it now?

Eric: That's very kind of you to say. It's been a challenge to stay relevant to an audience who clamor for that sort of fan service, but I think that this new policy I've adopted speaks toward my over all mental and artistic longevity.

The story goes that I was in Lucca, Italy drawing for a fans who've never seen me in person and who were very kind to drop by my booth to buy a copy of my art book called 'FOTO' published by Lateral Studio. It's typical in European conventions to draw free sketches with every purchase  and considering that I was there under the good graces of my publisher, I was more than happy to oblige. 

Whenever a fan would buy a book I caught myself asking them to choose a character for me to draw and when they did I would get to the task of drawing that character. Only this time, I'd recognized that I no longer had the same fervor that I used to have whenever someone asked me to draw for them. I guess you could say that I just wasn't into it, but I believe it was more than that. And until I found out what the reasoning was, I felt terrible about charging good money to people if I wasn't investing myself in each of the drawings. I didn't think it was fair and I didn't thing it was right - they came all this way to meet me, they had spent their hard-earned money in supporting my books and I couldn't even give them something (even if it was only for a brief moment) I was excited about? Like I said - that wasn't right.


After that experience, I went home and did some hard personal evaluation. The simple version is that I had drawn SO MUCH fan art which I updated on my blog, that I had inadvertently drawn any and all characters who I'd wanted to draw already. I spent five or six years drawing for myself or at conventions for other people (all the versions of Character X, Y and Z) that all the while I had somehow run out of an artistic opinion about them. Does that make any sense at all? Put simply, I had drawn so much... I don't know, let's say... Captain America, that I had simply nothing else to say about the character now. And it stopped being fun.

So instead, I would inform people who were interested in getting a commission from me that I have a policy called '"n the Spirit of...". Basically it meant that I would decline their request for drawing Captain America specifically, but I would be more than happy to draw my version of Captain America for them. Sometimes they'd decline for whatever reason - and I respected that. But more often than not, they'd see it as an exciting opportunity to get something new and original, and they'd be totally excited to be involved.

It's been a year a few months since then and it's still been a pretty exciting endeavor for me. The point of the whole thing is that I wanted to make sure that each fan willing to pay me money for an original is getting all my time and effort. With this new policy I find myself vested, excited, and most of all, I've found that the fans of my work are VERY happy to walk away with something that's not the typical fare. People are really amazing when they're given an opportunity to be. That's what I love the most about my fans.

David: When you aren’t storyboarding or making comics, what do you like to do for fun?

Eric: There's hardly any time for extracurricular activities these past few months. But any time I can get away, I love spending time with my fiancée Cassandra. She's an accidental comedian, so she knows how to crack me up without even trying. We do really super-simple activities like go to movies and different places throughout the city. I've been such a home body throughout my life that experiencing new things when we go exploring is really easy.

We have dogs that we love taking for walks. The sort of adventures they get themselves into in a the span of 45 minutes is pretty entertaining. I know this sort of sounds mundane and boring, but I get a lot out of it because I spend a bit too many hours sitting behind the desk.

Exercise is huge for me. I try to maintain a consistent work out regimen, but that can be challenging due to deadlines and daily things that get in the way. But I am convinced that health and longevity is an important investment you have to make in yourself so as best as I can, I try to eat well, work out 4-5 a week and get regular sleep.

David: What projects are coming up next that folks should look out for?

Eric: I'm on a huge sabbatical from doing anything that's going see publication or air any time soon. I'm just working on the next phase of my career and right now that involves the simple act of actually working and not talking about it. I'm not trying to be vague, but when the time comes, it'll be easier to talk about. I hope that makes sense? In the mean time, fans of your blog and your books should really keep an eye out for 'Legends of the Guard' - I would love to hear their thoughts and feedback about my contribution.

David: I think that's pretty exciting, it means big things are in the works :) Thanks again Eric. Where should Legends of the Guard fans find out more about you and your work?

Eric: It's my pleasure, David! They can find me in the usual social media haunts. My blog is updated less and less frequently these days: kahnehteh.blogspot.com. I have joined the present and opened a Tumblr account: ericcanete.tumblr.com. And if you want to track me in my semi-daily shenanigans, I'm on Twitter more than I should be: @EricCanete. Thanks again for the interview and the opportunity.

Eric's Story The Mouse Generals 

will appear in Legends of the Guard Volume 2 # 3

along with stories by C.P. Wilson III & Cory Godbey

Upcoming Appearances:

Granite State Comicon: September 28-29

New York Comic Con: October 10-13

North Carolina Comic Con: November 9-10