New Neozoic previews, TPB Vol 1 preorder info

Neozoic penciller J.Korim was generous enough to post up some previews of issues 3-7 up on his website - JKorim.ca - as we wait on pins and needles for the trade to roll out this spring.


Diamond order code - JAN094410

Speaking of the trade, online comic retailers TFAW and HeavyInk are taking pre-orders right now. If online isn't your thing, by all means head down to your local shop and ask to keep a few trades in stock.

Retrospect on issue #8

Shyte. It's done. IT'S DONE. NEOZOIC 8 IS DONE! That was the most amount of YELLOW I've put into a comic. Ever. And it's the damn prettiest issue I've slaved over all year to boot.

Dinosaur stampede orgy was in full effect when I got to work on 'em, I'm happy how they turned out by the time I was done. It's like you can reach out and touch them and come back with a few digits missing! Or something like that.

Thankfully there wasn't an insane amount of debris I had to flat like in issues 3 and 4, but then there were a small handful of crowd scenes I had to wrap my head around.

There was some blood in this issue, and I almost wished for more until I remembered Neozoic was supposed to be PG-13. [Darn it!] There was one fight scene that made me go all "OOOOUUUGH" looking at it, sure it had a little to do with shish-kabobing living things but if I were to so aptly describe it, it'd be the term "marinating".

Some of you guys might get what I'm talking about once you read the issue, heck, I'm sure you've seen it happen at least a couple times by now. Yum... Food analogies.

On a completely different note, this blog design is really starting look old. I'll probably have to start working on a new layout soon enough. Wish me luck in figuring out all that CSSery.

Chewing away at issue 8

Right now Korim and I are doing our damnest to make #8 the best damn issue we've ever done on Neozoic. Just finished a very nice double page spread, pretty happy how it turned out. This month's colour inspiration is Hiromasa Ogura and Makoto Shinkai. Those guys have a large collection of wicked background layouts in their animation projects.

Here's an IGN review of #7 . I'm not surprised it also shares the MAKE-NEOZOIC-MONTHLY-PLZ notion with the one on "Comics and Other Imaginary Tales". Not that I blame them, not at all. It's been a given since the very beginning that Neozoic's meant to read better back to back.

Seeing the actual pages in print, over-saturating the colours on my comp was a good idea after all. There's a slight hint of desaturation and darkening but more importantly the pages read well.

There's quite a lot of stuff going on in the new issue so far, course lots of fight scenes but also there's the return of the dinosaur stampede orgy. Those made me feel very nostalgic, I used to go crazy trying to make sure each one didn't all look the same.

I'd probably still feel the same way now, hehehe.

Retrospect on issue #6 and #7

It's been almost a couple months since the last entry, I'm happy to say that I just finished colouring Neozoic #7... 15 minutes ago.

September had been a crazy month for me, some freelance work kept me busy on top of winning a couple film festival awards and hitting NYC to attend the New York Anime Festival [run by the same people behind NYCC]. Soon as I got back I had to scramble to get the next issue out the door. By far it's been one of the toughest ones Korim and I worked on, for the amount of detail the both of us put into the pages this time around. Me I'm pretty happy how a lot of them had turned out.

There weren't a lot of reviews of issue 6, but here's a couple I found:

Kleefield on Comics
Comics and... Other Imaginary tales

In issue #6, many of the pages had been either night scenes and dark interiors, it's been difficult making the colours pop just right. Overall that book had been a joy to put colours on, at least for the first 5-6 pages where I got to paint a jungle scene or two.

I braved about 3 tropical thunderstorms and power outages to finish this particular beast, which by far is my favourite double page spread -


[Read more ▼]
To my horror, Quebecor had been the new printing company we had been using since issue 5. The paper they used was so thin, much of the ink soaked into the paper fibers resulting in a very dark desaturated look in the pages. In addition to having the same paper stock for the cover again for the second time, you can imagine the look on my face when I flew into a great flaming inner rage.

I died a little inside.

So in order to try to overcome that, I started overcooking the colours on issue 7 - by overcooking I mean cranking up the contrast and the saturation. WAY UP. A good chunk of the book takes place at dusk, sort of like with issue 3 and 4, for me that instantly means the green light to abuse all sorts of atmospheric effects.

Which I did in excess.

Issue 7 was by far one of the toughest books Korim and I worked on for the sheer amount of character detail we shoved into the pages. And we got to see more blood spilt, yay~! Crowd scenes still kinda scared me though, I haven't done those in a while. Time flew by pretty fast in the book, I got to do vary up some colours in the sky to show how much time had passed between each scene. Took a few all-nighters looking out my window to figure out which ones to try using, watching the sun rise was fun. And it made my eyes burn.

The work files I kept had varying levels of brightness of the pages, one version of those would be for the final print at Quebecor, and the not-as-bright version in case we switch printers again for the trade-paper-back.

Yes you read right, there will be a trade.

I got the affirmative from our writer Paul Ens that we'll have one for next year. When? I have no idea at all.. Might get a better inkling once we finish the last issue, from there we can start planning book tours and all that jazz.




Moving on forward, I had already coloured the issue 8 cover a while ago but I wasn't too happy how it turned out. I'll need to go back and fix it before we start working away on the last issue. I got no idea what to expect in the next script other than the slim possibility of a massive dinosaur stampede orgy. Ahhh... How nostalgic. Fun times.

FanEXPO day one-three!

[Edit 18.10.08]
Forgot to throw in some photos I took of the whole event, so here they are!


It's been crazy sitting in the same area as J.Scott Campbell, Adam Hughes and Tim Sale. The people traffic was through the roof for all three days. Would've been nice if all the Red 5 guys could sit with us but ah well. Maybe someday.

=======

So Friday's come and gone, but overall was pretty chill.

High points:
- pretty much broke even
- met old friends from previous conventions
- EAST SIDE MARIO'S PASTA!
- Curry's Art Store gave us some free art swag
- Korim and I did an impromptu interview on camera with FanEXPO staff
- took a photo with J.Scott Campbell
- grabbed two of Adam Hughes' new sketchbooks, the ones left over from the mad rush at SDCC

Low points:
- Liana K didn't seem to be around FanEXPO today, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was too busy to attend
- I got lost around the harbourfront area this morning
- the convention was not in the MTCC's North building, but in its South building [up 3 escalators, 5-10 min trek in the skywalk, down 4 escalators]
- con food sucks, not a single decent place to get grub in a 1 block radius so I had to walk a couple blocks further to find food


[I'd upload some pics, but I'll wait till all 3 days are done before I do another one of those compilation photo commentaries.]

Time to pass out, g'night everybody!