“It was easier just to draw it all than describe it to you.”
ZooshWolf, who illustrated the story “House of the Rising” for HC Vol. 2, is a traditional-media kinda guy. Pen and pencil, ink on paper. He’s an artist with the balls to roll up his sleeves and invest weeks in an image on a sheet of Bristol board which might well be ruined at the last minute by a spilled drop of coffee or an inadvertant swipe of a wrist over undried inks.
That takes guts, and Heathen City is all about guts.
ZooshWolf had previous experience with comics, but after some unpleasant experiences with the industry he focused on his own art for several years. When Alex approached him with the proposal to ccome on board and do an ungodly amount of work for an unprofessional salary, bright lights seemed to flicker on in that rugged wolf’s dark eyes.
I first heard of HC by seeing a banner come up on FA. The art looked intriguing enough so I did a search to find the main HC page. I read a bit about it and saw that there were some other folks that had some fan art that they had done. Though I had never really done much fan art in the past, I thought I would give it a whirl and came up with something moderately OK. I guess this attracted Alex Vance’s ire, because he made me work many days and many long hours with little sleep, poor nourishment, The Captain and Tennille, and whip-cracks across my back. But I toiled through my servitude and earned my freedom! Right? … Alex?
In all seriousness, I used to have a serious want to do comics growing up from a pup. Granted, it was super hero comics that I had always wanted to do. Throughout the years since then, and they are many years, life took me through many rides…none of which had anything to do with pursuing comics (or comic oriented art, panel pages, sequential art, et. al.). It was through no fault of my own that this project came about, and it was something that I found and had been pointed out to me by my partner. It seemed like it would be a good opportunity to head back into something comic oriented again, and see what I could come up with. Honestly, I figured at the very worst that Alex would just say no. At best, I would have a chance to do something pretty spiffy and see what I could cobble together!
What I didn’t realize is that Alex was interested already, and thought my style fit some of the thoughts flitting through his head. We bandied about some ideas, and came to a focal point on which direction our collective creative energies were taking us, and set sail (sorry.. The Captain and Tennille all over again.).
Even Alex had trouble keeping up. Where he delivered twelve pages of script, ZooshWolf returned fifteen pages of sketches, insisting that this was only a proposal – if Alex didn’t like it he’d be perfectly happy to draw them all over again. An artist to the core, he said it was easier and faster just to draw it out than to explain why he felt the panels flowed more smoothly with a little more breathing room.
I have to say that I bit off a huge bite in what I set about doing. It was a pretty big undertaking with the amount of pages, and that I pencilled, inked, and colored all pages before passing them along to Charha and Alex to properly gawk at. I am talking about this the very day after completing my final page. I can say that I had spent many many hours working on this over many months. My poor paws are crying right now!
Initially, Alex had given me a story plot line for roughly 9 pages according to him. I started roughing out some pages and figured out that it wasn’t long enough, wasn’t spaced out enough, needed to have some concepts of timing and flow. He felt like it needed to be 7 pages, I felt like it needed to be 15…. then he felt like it needed to be 16! hindsight being what it is, I think I would have still done all 16.
Alex and I got to trade off on some ideas and commentary on the sketching. Once we got to the final stages of plotting and planning, I went to work on penciling every page out. Once I got the OK, I went to work on the inks, and finally the colors. During the final weeks of production, I spent 14 hour days at my art desk finishing up the colors and reworking some minor items that did not work for me. The last thing I wanted to do is pass along shoddy work as complete… the fans would know the difference.
Having finished, I am terribly happy with the work that I have done and it has been incredibly hard to sit on the art work and not show a soul. My partner is the only one to have seen them (and he’s a harder egg to crack than I am).
The process itself, in retrospect, was incredibly fluid and very malleable, sparking a myriad of additional ideas beyond the initial story and set of pages. It also rekindled the desire to continue with this type of work, large projects, stories, bigger and better art. More importantly, its cemented the want to get more of my art out to more people. I can do art all day long for myself, but it’s no good unless it’s seen and appreciated by everyone.
While HC embraces the evolution of digital art (Charha added a digital pass to fine-tune the black inks and enhance the images with HC’s signature Sparta) Zooshwolf casually proves that India ink and markers are by no means costly fossils of a less sophisticated era. They inspire an artist with boldness, discipline and confidence – and a quick glance at the stunning compositions of every single frame is easy proof of that.
Zoosh was born with a pencil in one paw, and inking pens in the other… much to his Mom’s sheer agony. From the time he was a pup, all he did was spend hours entertaining himself with nothing more than something to scrawl with, and something to scrawl on. A white wall and a box of crayons earned him many an ass-whipping.
Throughout schooling, Zoosh irritated most of his instructors by drawing in class, drawing on homework, drawing on other people’s homework, and basically getting lost in his own little worlds. Even art teachers would get a bit irrate at him drawing comic styled art for assignments instead of a drawing of a still life (bowl of fruit).
It’s 2009, and the years between are vague and fuzzy.. but the end result, as well as a rekindled beginning, started with a short message to one Alex Vance. It was all innocent enough in the beginning. A quick congratulations on the upcoming publishing, a short response of “Ur drwngs r teh s3xx0rs!1!111!”…. and holy shit!
There’s 16 pages milked out of the poor wolf’s aching and decrepit paws.
- ZooshWolf’s gallery: www.furaffinity.net/user/zooshwolf
