San Diego Comic Con

www.fluidfriction.com

My apologies this has taken me so long to get up, as everything has been really hectic in the last 2 weeks since I got back, but I thought I would finally put up something about my trip to exhibit at San Diego Comic Con.

Comic Con is kind of an insane experience! People call it the geek convention of the world, but in reality it goes far beyond that. No doubt it holds more than it's fair share of lifelong comic fans (often referred to by misunderstanding non-believers as geeks), however nowadays Comic Con goes way beyond the small and focussed fair to promote comics and artists and bring hardcore fans together that it was years ago. These days it is the premiere international bridge between the comic, games, movie and merchandise industries. An incredibly vibrant event, it is full to bursting with everyone from your neighbourhood kid, to the world's most famous stars, producers, directors and of course the ever amazing Stan Lee.

Walking around the booths you are quietly amazed at the unbelievable range and extent of creativity which is showcased across these 4 industries, with more and more often the original inspiration and creativity coming primarily from the comics field. Gone are the days when comics where adults only read in the hidden quiet of their spare rooms while their wives slept, guilt and enjoyment hanging equally over them, now comics are the driving force behind the most original creativity to hit films, games and merchandise in years and it's all there at the SD Comic Con!!!

Now enough blathering, time for some photos!

A glimpse of a typical corridor of the event. Now imagine 13 halls full of this:



Yours truly working hard:



Homer:



Star Wars is always HUGE at these events:

Viilal - the life stealer

www.fluidfriction.com

The assassins from the spine of the world instil deep fear into the hearts of men throughout the lands of Bhumi. Not truly alive, they exist only to take the lives of those they have been hired to. Unwavering focus and unshakeable resolve leads them relentlessly towards their assigned targets. Only the sun god has the power to strike fear into the life stealers.

Viilal is a member of this ageless clan from the land of Shyatha and his target runs fearfully in front of him...

The appearance, movements, clothing, weaponry and expressions of Viilal were developed over sometime. Here is a breakdown of some of the stages:


Firstly our penciller Keith Burns builds the basic stature and movement style of the character through rough sketches known just as "roughs"



Then we develop some of his more advanced and unusual movements in roughs



After that, we produce more detailed pencil sketches of his face. Pencils are usually done intitially in blue, as it is easier to remove the lines later if they are in blue.



Then we produce pencils of his upper torso



And eventually his entire body



Then we move on to the inking stage, where our inker Ken Cheung paints black ink onto the pencilled drawings in order to add in shadow and light, bring out important aspects of definition that have been created by the penciller and in some cases, outline the strongest lines.







In this case we also experimented with adding in a little red colour to create an unusual effect





This last inked image of Viilal that we used for our Character Design Competition is both sinister and somehow amusing at the same time



Finally we scan the inked images into the computer and our colourist Johnny Tam paints the colours in using a WaCom touch screen. In our office we call him the Wizard.

East Meets West

What makes our product unique? That is simple, DevaShard is the first ever graphic novel series to be produced by a team half made up of professional artists / writers from the Eastern comic industries and half from the Western comic industries.

Working side by side on a daily basis, they have developed our product from the first seeds of an idea to the finished issue 1 which will be hitting the stands soon. Sharing experience gathered from working on small circulation independent graphic novels to mass circulation comic titles on both sides of the globe, they have been able to produce a truly original book with high quality artwork and intricate storylines.

To read more about our unique comic book team, check out our bios at:
FluidFriction.com


Ken - Inker


Johnny - Colourist


Keith - Penciller


Zen - Writer