STGCC 2013: Nathan Hamill interview

NATHAN HAMILL INTERVIEW

STGCC 2013 – 31/8/13
For ActionFigurePics.com

I got to sit down with toy designer and illustrator Nathan Hamill at STGCC - it ended up being my only one-to-one interview and I enjoyed it; he's very cool. And of course, he comes from cool stock. Let's start this party with a bang! 

Jedd: Welcome to Singapore!

Nathan: Thank you!

Jedd: Are you having a good time so far?

Nathan: Excellent. First time here and it's stunning, it's incredible. The weather was perfect yesterday; it's great so far. 

Jedd: I had a look at your Twitter feed, really cool stuff. Beneath your handle, it says "I makes what I likes". What do you think has been the most rewarding thing of living by that maxim? 

Nathan: Yeah, "I makes what I likes" is just...first of all, I think it's funny because it's using improper English, which makes me laugh. Like "I makes what I likes", yeah...I try to keep it as simple as that. So yeah, my motto, "I makes what I likes", at the end of the day it should come down to whether or not it's something that you enjoy, not to be too convuluted about what your themes and what your concepts are. Yeah, that stuff is good and fine but I guess I'm trying to...you know, take things less seriously. 

Jedd: So, inevitable question: was Star Wars a big part of your childhood and did the early Kenner toys inspire you to pursue toy design?

Nathan: Well, that's the thing, it took...when I finally figured out that I wanted to do this, I kind of thought "why hadn't I thought of this earlier?" It was a marriage of two things I've always loved: I've always drawn as a kid and always collected toys, so why not combine the two? My Dad jokes that my first word was "Kenner". Not true, just a joke. 

Jedd: Was there a lot of "I'm feeling a little bit mad at Dad so I'm gonna take it out vicariously 

on Bespin Luke here"?

Nathan: Not that I remember, you know, but maybe a few chew marks. 

Jedd: So you've worked with Bongo Comics; do you feel more of an affinity with The Simpsons or Futurama?

Nathan: Simpsons. I mean it's been around longer, it's just...I grew up on The Simpsons. Futurama came later, I still like Futurama but The Simpsons are...can't top that.

Jedd: Who's your favourite Simpsons character to draw? 

Nathan: Oh, to draw...I would be the Life in Hell character, the one-eared rabbit Bongo. Other than that, probably Homer. 

Jedd: There's the Matt Groening signature hidden in Homer's hair...is that like something that all the artists are briefed on before they work on the Simpsons comics? Like "you have to keep the Matt Groening signature" in there...

Nathan: Oh, actually I'm a colorist so I don't draw them, I draw them for fun but...I knew that before working there, because I was just so obsessed with the Simpsons like...I started working for Bongo; I was the go-to guy for questions. They go, "we need uh, JFK" and I go "Season 4, Duffless" And they would go "okay!" and they would go get the model sheets, so...I'm like the Rain Man of Simpsons.

Jedd: Nice, "Rain Man of Simpsons." If you could do a project involving a comics supehero/villain, one of those Marvel or DC characters, who would you like to put your spin on?

Nathan: Uh...Lobo. My favourite.

Jedd: Nice. Have you seen what they've to him in the New 52?

Nathan: No.

Jedd: They made him skinny, sensitive Lobo.

Nathan: Emo Lobo? 

Jedd: Yeah, with the little beautiful facial hair...

Nathan: Emo? Well that's...no, I like "Lobo's Back", that's my favourite. 

Jedd: I was talking to the Army of Snipers the other day and J*RYU had some very interesting things to say about hte label "desinger toys". So what do you think about the line between a toy and a piece of art, and what do you view your creations as? 

Nathan: Um...that's a good question. We were talking about that last night and whether like "designer toy" maybe makes it seem...too stuffy, maybe something you'd find at like an architecture show...you yeah, I don't...that's a tough one. I almost...that one I might leave up in the air because I love to say...talking about art is like dancing about architecture. There's a certain point where you kinda just leave it... leave it up to other peoples' interpretation. Yeah I guess I'll refer you back to "I makes what I likes" and just keep it...that's an ongoing question, that's a question that I'll have an answer to maybe next year, if I'm invited back.

Jedd: Sure, I look forward to it! Did you do customization when you were starting out; did you take existing toys and modify them? 

Nathan: Yeah...I mean it was actually...I sorta did it in an odd way which is I started customizing Boris, the first toy that I did. So we released the toy and had like 50 artists customize it. I think it was about 50, so um yeah, I customize from time to time.

Jedd: What's your view on the big commercial toy scene, the Mattels and the Hasbros? 

Nathan: I think there's...I collect lots of different types of toys, I think there can be a little bit of a...snobbery involved in toy collecting, where people will look down on you if you buy this or that or the other...and it's like "if the quality is there". For example there was a...Toma did a Godzilla toy in...it was in Toys 'R Us and it was mass produced but it was very well-made. It was a really high-quality toy, and just because it was in Toys 'R Us and it was sold for $18 vs. if the exact same toy was sold for $60, people would snap it off the shelves and they wouldn't look down on it...it all has to do with quality. So...as Kozac said, "make multiple". If you can make more and the quality's there, I feel like that's good.

Jedd: J*RYU said that he preferred the term "commoditized art pieces" to "designer toys", and he was talking about how the guy who did Dunny? I think his son was saying "Dad, my friends would like to have one of your monsters" and he was like "these are art pieces, these are $150 each" and when he was manufacturing it, people could have a hold of one for $10. 

Nathan: Is that Tristan Eaton and the Dunny? 

Jedd: I think it was Ryniak.

Nathan: They were limited edition ones? 

Jedd: I think it was a partnership they did with like Urban Outfitters...that the toys would be available at those stores.

Nathan: At KidRobot through Chris Ryniak? Not even stuffy and no...listen. J*RYU...when he was on Toy Break, he was so insightful, he knew a lot of stuff. I like to play around with it, I say like at the end of the day, they're just words. But it's good to have a dialogue, so I just...I'll say "that J*RYU's a snob!" Just kidding. 

Jedd: (Laughs) This is going to be the headline. 

Nathan: (Laughs) Fight! Fight! 

Jedd: The headline on the tabloid that I write for (laughs). I think you've been asked this a lot, but what was your experience like hanging around on the sets of the Star Wars films? In Episode I you had your cameo and before that...

Nathan: Well before that...well, I was so young that it was just a vague memory...like I kind of remember tall trees and little bears...you know...

Jedd: (Laughs) That should have been the tagline for Episode VI. "Tall trees and little bears".

Nathan: So for those I was...I mean I was probably two, two and half when they were shooting the third one (Return of the Jedi), you know, so...I don't...I wasn't making memories yet. And for Episode I, yeah, that was very cool to go over there and see the sets...it's just...there's a certain smell you get when you're on a physical set, it's a lot of fun. But the first one I just have photos, I don't have first-hand knowledge of that, so...

Jedd: Can I ask how you feel about Hasbro's Black Series? Now they've finally done Star Wars figures in six inch scale and everyone is going nuts and is like "ahh, why didn't you do this 20 years ago?!" 

Nathan: The Boba Fett is like...not only one of the best...it's coming out in Series 2. Boba Fett is where the focus is; Han Solo is an okay sculpt...it's great, I have that and the Artoo one and they're fantastic. It's gotten me collecting them again, so...I'd stopped for a while. 

Jedd: Is there a particular piece of your collection that holds a certain sentimental value for you, something that was hard to find or hard to get...

Nathan: Oh, that's a good...let me think about that...yeah, it's not a toy, there's an Empire Strikes Back tote bag, it's like a mini bowling bag thing that was something I got to...something George Lucas gave me when I was (little)...I carried all my figures in it.

Jedd: Like a carrying case...so cool. Do you have any insight, any views on Number 7? 

Nathan: I can tell you but as the saying goes, I'll have to kill you (laughs). I…yeah, I don't know much, and what I know I can't say. 

Jedd: Are you excited for it? 

Nathan: Yeah...yeah! I'll be there, I'll be there first in line, so yeah. 

Jedd: Thank you very much, I think I'm about done and it was great talking to you! 

Nathan:  Yeah, thank you! That was good, that was good. 

Here's the interview over on Red Dot Diva.

STGCC 2013: Vampy Bit Me (Linda Le) interview

STGCC 2013: VAMPY BIT ME INTERVIEW

By Jedd Jong

Morrigan from Darkstalkers

I had the chance to sit down and speak to cosplayer Vampy Bit Me (Linda Le) at STGCC. She's an experienced cosplayer who has put together some incredible costumes, done some great photoshoots and earned herself a legion of fans on the internet. I'm a big fan of her Lady Nightwing cosplay myself (you'll see it a little later). Read to hear how she got her nickname, what she thinks of reimagined anime, which fashion designer she looks up to, that whole "cosplayers getting harassed" issue and how long it takes to put a costume together from concept to convention. 

Q: Is your name in any way inspired by the viral video?

Vampy: What viral video?

Q: The “Charlie Bit Me” video.

X-Force Psylocke

Vampy: No! No (laughs)…I got Vampy in middle school. I pretty much don’t sleep at night, if you guys follow me on Twitter, I never sleep at night. I’m usually up and I sleep during the day. It’s very weird, but it’s been like that since I was in middle school, so it was a nickname of mine. I don’t like it, but it stuck with me.

Q: Do you feel you’ve embraced it?

Vampy: I have to embrace it now, because it’s my name now, so…I still don’t like it, but it’s Vampy.

Q: What is the logistics like when you’re preparing for a shoot, looking for photographers and so on?

Vampy: Um, actually I only work with my friends. So it’s like, I work with four people, and it’s been like that for four years; just friends.

Q: Where do you get ideas for the poses?

Vampy: Oh, I research. So pretty much if I have my comic book, I have it out and I copy exact poses. Everything (comes back to the) reference. I don’t really change it, I have it exactly to the comic book’s guide, because I’m a fan, a fan of their work, and I want to translate it that way.

Q: I understand that you started modelling a while back, so is modelling or cosplay more attractive to you?

Vampy: Um, the funny thing is, I didn’t like modelling. My friend got me into it because I style women. I work with a lot of models who are…tall. (Laughs) I’m short. So I would style them and my friend said “why don’t you take some pictures?” And I was like “okay…” and that’s how it started. So which do I like more? I like both, I can’t really answer. It’s like me with K-Pop and metal music, I like both.

Lady Punisher. "Fran Castle", perhaps.

Q: What criteria do you look at when choosing a character you would like to cosplay as?

Vampy: I like strong characters. A lot of my characters are only strong women. If it’s kind of a weaker woman, I won’t cosplay it. That’s it, pretty simple. Powerful, they kind of have to be like a dude, that’s why I do a lot of guy characters. They just look better sometimes. So I said “hey, if Punisher looks cool, I’m going to make it into a girl character, because it looks cool!” It’s gotta be strong, like Claymore or something like that. Yeah.

Q: What’s the biggest sacrifice that you’ve made for the sake of cosplay?

Vampy: Everything. (Laughs) I kind of don’t have a life, really. If life meaning going out with my friends. My weekends…I don’t even know what a weekend is anymore, it’s been six years since I knew what a weekend was. Everyone’s like “yeah, Saturday!” and I’m all like “what? Working.” Sacrifices, I mean I love doing what I do, but actually going out with my friends…so I invite them over and “convert” them into making costumes, so that’s how I have a life now.

Q: At this point, you’ve been to a lot of conventions. Are there any “horror stories” or anything interesting that has happened?

Vampy: Every time someone says “horror stories”, it makes me think of a massacre or something, like someone’s going to get killed! No, not that bad! People are really nice, generally. Asia is just different. People are very like, they’re big fans, so they’re kinda like…there’s crowds. And that scares me because I’m usually by myself, so when there’s more crowds, I’m like, I clamour up. That’s the only thing.

Q: Which Marvel or DC artists/writers do you respect most?

Vampy: Oh, Jim Lee. It started out with Jim Lee; I talk about Jim Lee all the time because for me, I think he understood each character and he still does with DC, but he totally understands that character and how to depict women. Sexy, but strong, you know? And I love that; and I love his art style.

Jun the Swan from Gatchaman - and me! 

Q: What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced till now in creating your own costumes?

Vampy: To be honest, every costume is a challenge, because you don’t know how to make it, you know? You don’t really have anyone to go off of, because if you’re doing a God of War character, no one really does it, so you don’t really have reference. So you have to make it up in your head, which makes you go a little crazy, but every character is another way to teach yourself a new skill. Yeah.

Q: Has it ever happened that while making a costume, you felt like you wanted to give up, because you felt you weren’t able to get the results you wanted?

Vampy: Yeah, I go through that a lot. But then after a while, you just stop thinking and just doing, you know? You get depressed sometimes when you can’t finish something but you know what, overall, it’s just supposed to be fun. So you let it slide and you just bring another costume that you want to get ready and sew.

Q: Are there any fashion or costume designers working in film or fashion that you look up to, whose work inspires you?

Vampy: Alexander McQueen, I love that. (Laughs) I’m like crazy over it. I love high fashion, I think that in a lot of my photos you can see the high fashion influence, because I like the cinematic, you know the quality.

Reika from Gantz

Q: Is there a costume or character that you like so much that you keep wearing it?

Vampy: It’s kinda obvious (motions to Psylocke costume she’s wearing). (Laughs), oh yeah. I like Gantz a lot, even though the ending sucked. I like Gantz, it’s just I like black things and things that cover up a lot of stuff. I’m happy that it’s not hot here, right now, inside. So, I get to wear it. And Morrgian (from Darkstalkers), but I wore that too many times.

Q: What’s the number one irk you have while preparing for a cosplay event?

Vampy: Packing. You have to remember every little thing! So, that’s it.

Q: There have been lots of superhero movies in cinemas lately, what do you think of the designs or redesigns in making a comic book costume work onscreen?

Rei Ayanami, Evangelion

Vampy: Okay, well, do you want something specific? Like in G.I. JOE, when they did Snake Eyes and they added lips, that’s not cool. (Laughs) why did they do that? I wasn’t very happy about that. Um, thing is some look very cool, but some look too slick. For example Gatchaman, the new movie, I’m not too big a fan of it, because it looks like, um, Tron. Like “why did you make it like that?” I heard the reviews; I haven’t watched it yet but I heard bad reviews so, not very happy about that. When it’s too futuristic, you’re not really paying homage to the original, so that’s my gripe.

Q: You’re now very well-known in the cosplay scene; are there any cosplayers you really look up to?

Vampy: My influences aren’t cosplayers though, so it’s kinda hard (to answer the question). I like everybody’s cosplay though, it sounds really silly but I do. I like Kamui, Kamui Cosplay. She does a lot of armour. So next thing I want to do is start doing more armour. I like Warhammer, so hopefully I can start doing more Warhammer. I like Kamen Rider too, I wanna do some helmets.

Q: Is there any advice you can give newer cosplayers?

Vampy: Um, make sure you do it because you really love it. Sometimes you go into it thinking you’re going to be popular out of nowhere; that’s not true. Um, it’s definitely…you’ll see the ones that last the longest are the ones that love it. Because the ones that go away are the ones that are doing it for the wrong reasons, so yeah.

Q: Characters from older anime and comic book series, the designs are obviously quite different than those that came up in the past ten years. So, I was wondering what you think about when an older series is redone to suit modern tastes, and what are your thoughts on Gatchaman Crowds?

Vampy: Oh, don’t get me started! I’m not a fan. What is that? I watched the first episode and it doesn’t do anything! Phoenix is not in there, it’s just too cute…Gatchaman’s all about butt-kicking. I can say that, right? Yeah, butt-kicking. And there’s none of that! As an old-school fan, it made me a little said. And Ranma too. Ranma didn’t have red hair, so I was like “no!”

Q: If you weren’t a cosplayer, what would you see yourself as?

Vampy: I’ll continue being a stylist. I’ll probably style other women and men, doing nice things to them!

Lovestruck!

Q: I love that .gif I saw of you giving a Deadpool cosplayer a peck on the head, and he then pretends to faint. What are your favourite moments of interaction with other cosplayers at conventions and such?

Vampy: Oh man, every convention that I’ve been to, I’ve always had a good time collecting cosplay cards, especially here, I guess it’s popular and I just love every convention I get to meet new cosplayers, because they inspire me. Especially going to Asia, everybody’s so expressive in the posing, so it’s inspired me to work on my posing.

Q: Where did you start with making costumes?

Vampy: Ever since I was little, my parents told me that “you can’t have everything,” so I was like “fine, then I’ll make it.” My Mum taught me how to sew when I was four years old, and then my Dad taught me how to make things, props and things like that, when I was a little older. I started very young, pretty much all my life. It takes a long time, but I enjoy learning. (Even now) I don’t know how to do everything so I pretty much practice, do as much as I can, if I can’t do it then I go online and teach myself.

Lady Kratos; God of War

Q: Could you briefly explain the entire process from start to finish, from when you pick a character to cosplay straight through completion?

Vampy: Oh my goodness…okay, well, so what I do is I usually go online to look at turnarounds. So I do at least a couple of weeks’ worth of research. And then I go pick the fabrics, that takes about two weeks. Sometimes for Psylocke, it took me six months to get that fabric, six months to get that latex. So I had to wait six months. So I grew out my hair for four years and I dyed it purple. I was crazy! So it varies, but depending on how much I love the character. I pretty much do research for a couple of weeks, and then fabrics, if I don’t know how to make something, I go online, so that takes a couple of weeks…so maybe two months prep before. Each character is two months before, doing research.

Q: You’ve been to many conventions; what impressions do you have of STGCC?

Vampy: Oh man, I love it. I’m like literally…I’m super…I didn’t know how hot it could be sometimes, but it’s not that bad! People are so sweet here. Even if I’m not invited, I want to come back because everyone’s super cool, so I’m very happy, yes. I would totally come back, just to hang out!

Q: You’ve been here since Thursday, have you looked around Singapore, tried the food?

Vampy: Yes, I did. What’s that chicken and rice dish? Chicken rice? (Laughs) Yeah, I went there and it was some plaza with a lot of other things. I don’t know what it’s called. What is it called though?

Q: A hawker centre?

Vampy: Yeah, I went to a hawker centre, and that was cool. I think soon I’m going to go to the toy stores. After the convention, I’m going to go look at all the toys. Yes. I went to Flabslab the other night. Heard of him? He’s a toy guy here, I went to go over there, but I wanna see the Gundam, I wanna see the kits.

Q: What is cosplay to you, and how has it changed your life?

Lady Nightwing

Oh man, um, cosplay to me sometimes I don’t even know what’s going on with the internet, I just like to share art. So it’s definitely an art, because when you look at a picture, it’s not just a girl wearing an outfit. It’s her acting like the character. So to me it’s art. For example, if I see a video game I love to play, I express it through cosplay. So I want to give a gift to one of the creators, so I would probably cosplay his outfit really well, and tell him I love his game. So to me it’s art, art for art.

Q: I hope it’s okay to ask if you have anything to say about the whole “cosplayers getting harassed” thing.

Batgirl

Vampy: Um, well obviously I don’t like it (laughs), it’s not a good thing. I just think that sometimes, as a culture, we don’t like to speak up, we stay home a lot, we’re otaku (geeks), we don’t really have good interaction with people, so when people who aren’t really nerds or otaku or something like that and they do those things, it kind of feels like you don’t know what to say. Obviously I’m against it, but I just think that women and men – men get harassed too – they should speak up. If anything happens to them, they should tell (the person harassing them) “no.” It’s never happened to me because I say “no.” So yeah, speak up!

Q: You’re from the States and you’ve been to places such as Japan and the UK, are there any differences in the art that you’ve noticed being in these different places?

Vampy: Yes. American art style, if you notice, it’s not that clean. It’s very sketchy, right? Like Jim Lee for example, he’ll sketch the lines. But in Asia, oh my god, it looks like watercolour, you know? It’s unreal. It’s like if you have a dream, it kind of looks like that in Asia, you know? It’s just a cleaner art style. I appreciate both but when I go here, it’s crazy. For example Artgerm right, Stanley? I don’t even know how he does most of his art so, it’s amazing. I love both.

Q: Can you tell us about your future plans?

Vampy: My future plans? Next year, I’m trying to focus on more mecha. I think I shouldn’t do that now. Because before, I wasn’t very confident in my skills, but now I think I’m getting better. So now I want to do like Kamen Rider, I want to do Zaku (the Gundam), I want to do armour. I love Warhammer, I want to do Warhammer 40 K…I just want to do all the crazy stuff. Sexy is great, whatever, it’s just…me, like inside, that makes me go crazy, like the mecha. And my future plans, I’m coming out with a toy soon.

Q: If you were to cosplay Kamen Rider, which one would it be?

Vampy: Oh, Super-1. He was only around for one year, but he’s my favourite, I love his design, he’s cool.

Q: What’s the hardest cosplay you’ve ever made?

Vampy: Believe it or not, it was Morrigan from Darkstalkers. It’s very hard. I mean I know it shows a lot, don’t let that fool you because the head wings? Hard to do. The wings on your back? Hard to do. Picking out the colours was really hard, everything about that costume was hard. It took me like seven months to do, I didn’t sleep very much.

Q: With Warhammer, what would you like to cosplay as?

Vampy: I want to do Sisters of Battle, that’s my dream cosplay.

Vampy as is.

Q: What’s Vampy like outside cosplay?

Vampy: Just the same thing, just not this (motions to costume). I’m pretty simple. I don’t really…the thing is, I’m not too much of a fan of when girls say “I’m like a dude”, I’m totally a girl! It’s just that I like to do things that are cool, for example, build Gundams, it doesn’t make me a man. I just like it, right? I think that I’m the same, people tell me that I’m the same person. Just without this and the eyelashes and the contacts.

Q: What hobbies do you do in your free time?

Vampy: I used to play saxophone a lot, guitar, I love metal music so I go (to) concerts. When I come back, I’m gonna see Iron Maiden. I heard that you guys had…Metallica? I love Metallica. I like to eat a lot. If I didn’t do cosplay, my passion…my brother’s a chef, my little brother. I would totally be making food all the time, and building Gundams. I’m pretty boring (laughs).

Q: What’s the most out-there, “I wouldn’t have thought of that” material or item that you used in the formation of a costume?

Vampy: Uh well, like…I use everything. I use foil. I use tinfoil, and then I put clay over it, so instead of using all clay, you use that as the inside, foundation. Tinfoil is great for anything, tinfoil and then clay over it, epoxy.

Q: How do you make something durable, how do you make something last?

Vampy: I like to use Magic Sculpt, you guys know Magic Sculpt? Epoxy, I love that because it does not break. I used epoxy on this (the antenna for the Swan Jun helmet). I dropped it a few times and nothing happened.

Q: How many cosplays have you done?

Vampy: Too many. I can answer this: I make two or three a month. So out of what, 15 years? That’s a lot, if you do the math.

Psylocke

Q: How long do you think you’ll continue to be cosplaying?

Vampy: To be honest with you, since cosplay’s changing a lot, I see a lot of things happening in society that’s really sad. There’s a lot of hate in the cosplay community sometimes, it makes me really sad, it makes me not want to do it, but I continue to do it because I love it. But I wanted to quit many times, it feels weird because even though you’re wearing your Gundam shirt, if I was wearing my Gundam cosplay, same thing! We’re both fans, but we express it differently, right? In this community, I feel like sometimes there’s a lot of anger. Unneeded anger, so as long as no one tries to kill me, I’ll continue cosplay.

Q: You have quite a big following, do you have a message to your fans?

Vampy: Oh yes, of course! I think the message for me is that when you cosplay, it doesn’t matter if you’re putting $5 in cosplay or a couple of thousand, just have fun, because honestly, I appreciate all of it. Even if you’ve never tried cosplay, please try it, because it’s very addictive, you know? And it’s a good thing, because I see “box Gundam” guys – they just put (the) Gundam (logo) on a box – it’s cool! I like it! Whatever, so I just say “don’t be afraid to cosplay”, because I was afraid before.

STGCC 2013: David Mack Interview

Together with several other journalists, I got to speak to comic book artist/writer David Mack, best known for his creator-owned original title Kabuki and for his run on Daredevil. He is famous for his unique collage-style painted artwork and has worked with names synonymous with modern-day Marvel comics, such as Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada.

You're pretty well known as both a writer and an artist, so how did you start in comics? 

Well, I started doing my book Kabuki when I was in college, and I ended up turning it in for my senior thesis literature while I was in college, and I had done artwork my whole life, I'd also written things, but when I was doing Kabuki, I only intended to write it start with. I was looking for different artists to do it and something which you might think is funny now, was in 1993, Brian Bendis and I met and we became friends, and started working together a lot. At the time, we both had little creator-owned projects at Caliber comics. They just published The Crow like in the early 90s, and we were doing like smaller books there with them. But as soon as Brian and I met in Chicago at a convention, and he was making a living as a penciller and was looking for an inker, and his story is that as soon as he showed me his pencils, I...I don't think I really did this, I think that this is (just) his memory - he says I immediately inked on his pencilling and told him the right way to do it and that he says it changed his inking style, but actually I just told him what would be better for his crime book. So he immediately liked...he got me a job that day at the convention as his inker for a project he was getting paid for, so we were working as a penciller-inker team for some other things we were working on, and he was going to be the artist for Kabuki. And so I have all these 1993 Brian Michael Bendis Kabuki drawings and pages. I own 'em all, they're in my house. Gonna frame 'em.

And there were  a couple other artists that I met that I felt were more talented than I was, as an artist who wanted to do Kabuki and had little Kabuki art from them. But eventually, for some reason, I felt there was somewhat of a disconnect between the way I wanted to tell the story visually with the writing and all the art that was coming together. So then one night, it was just late at night, and I thought "why don't I just do like a small...I still plan on having artists draw it, but why not just a small 8-page Kabuki story that I draw myself to see what it's like?" And in doing it, I ended up really liking it, really liked telling the story visually. So I kept making these little chapters and eventually just made a book of it, and did it that way.

And then I did Kabuki all through college, it was being published through college, and while I was in college, and then I met Joe Quesada in 1995 at a convention and I gave him my first Kabuki volume. And he called me like the next week and said he really liked my writing, and that he wanted to work with me as a writer someday. He mentioned a few things that never worked out, when he was at his own publishing company Event comics, he was doing Ash at the time. And then one day, he eventually took Kabuki from Caliber to Image Comics, and did a new series at Image where I was writing and drawing Kabuki, and when that started I got a call out of the blue from Joe Quesada and he said "nobody knows about this yet, but I'm gonna be taking over some books from Marvel Comics and we're gonna call it 'Marvel Knights' and we're gonna...Kevin Smith is going to be writing Daredevil..." and then he asked me if I would write Daredevil with him as an artist, after Kevin Smith. So really Kabuki got me the invite to be a writer at Daredevil for Marvel, so my first work for Marvel was as a writer, but it was based on the Kabuki work. And so eventually  I was able to do some art on it too.

The funny story is that while I was then working, writing Daredevil, Joe would ask...we did all the covers together, me, Joe and Jimmy Palmiotti, and he had this idea that...he was so busy, he was becoming editor in chief while we were on the project, so he was getting increasingly busy. He would ask me to do layouts sometimes, and I would send him layouts for all the covers and he would do a drawing based on my layout, and then Jimmy Palmiotti would ink it, and he would FedEx-it to me and I would paint directly on it, try not to mess it up because it was the original art they wanted me to paint on. So it was fun to have like the first design of the cover, like the layout, and then the final word on it with the painting.

And I was sending them back in FedEx boxes so my friend Brian Bendis had these crime comics called Torso, he wrote and drew it himself. So I took all his Torso comics and crammed them in the FedEx package and sent them to Joe, so when he opened the cover he'd be like "what are all these books in here?" and (I'd say) "my friend Bendis, he writes this crime comic and draws it, you should check out his work!" And he'd say "I really don't like his art, but I think he's a really good writer, you guys want to do something together?" And so that's how...and then Brian started writing his Daredevil story right after my Daredevil story, and I did the artwork for him. So that was actually his first, his first Marvel project is that next Daredevil story, even though I think Ultimate Spider-Man might've been published first, but that Daredevil story is what got him the offer to write the Ultimate Spider-Man. That was the cool thing, I met Brian Bendis in '93 and for the last 20 years, we're sort of learning together, this is pre-email and internet for all of us. We had these old fax machines, and I would draw all my pages and send Brian like my new Kabuki page and he'd send me his new Goldfish page and we would like give each other tips and ask questions and...so they were guys who were really helpful to me, like learning from that and we would all learn together and work together and help each other as much as possible.

Could you talk about your Asian influences, because you started out with Kabuki and it's obviously a very Japanese-influenced art, some of your recent exhibtions look like they were really, uh, Asian-centric, so can you talk about that? 

Yeah, with Kabuki, I started...I was really young when I started doing it. I was a big fan of autobiographical comics, like Ivan Brunetti's Schizo and Peepshow, American Splendour by Harvey Pekar, R. Crumb...I really loved reading these autobiographical comics, where these guys would just talk about these mundane aspects of their day and their life, and Ivan Brunetti was really adventurous because he would, in his published book, he would draw himself and he would draw his co-workers and he would draw himself fantasizing about the women he worked with and he would draw himself fantasizing about murdering the bosses that he worked with, and then it would come out in his comic! He was so honest and so from the heart, and then next issue in the start, it would show how he got fired because the boss saw his comic book, like all the women saw all his fantasies about them in it...he'd have all these problems and I was fascinated with that. I wanted to do a comic that was like personal to me, but I was so young when I started working on Kabuki, I barely turned 20 years old, I was in college and I didn't feel "un-self-conscious" enough to do an autobiographical book, and I didn't even feel fully-formed as a human enough to do it. And so I felt like, um, and I didn't want to make like the main character a...I felt like if I made the main character some adult male or something it would turn into like an idealized version of myself or something, I thought it would be a trap. So I thought, "I'm gonna have the opportunity like a laboratory to tell personal stories, but I'll tell it through metaphors and make all the surface details really different from myself, so I'll make the main character a different gender, and I'll put it in a different part of the world, with a different culture, and I'll use different metaphors and archetypes, and instead of seeing me when people read it, hopefully they won't see me, they'll see themselves and connect with the characters."

While I was in college I had a...I met a friend in my painting and drawing class, his name was Takashi Yatori from Japan, and I had...so we worked together a lot and we were just friends, so he introduced me to his, you know, international student union at the school and I became involved with his family so when it came time for me to take a foregin language, which was a general studies requirement, I'd already taken Spanish in high school so I thought "I'll take Japanese because I have all these friends to help me." So I did that and became more and more fascinated with it and I would take Japanese history and world religions and philosophy and mythology and so there were a lot of these things that I was learning at the time, it gave me an opportunity to sort of use that as a structure and archetypes for this Kabuki book that I was doing and still, I felt like I still had enough opportunity to bring my own take to it, and I kind of made...I never put a time period on it, so it's like ambiguously in the future, um, so it kind of gave me a license. Like any good science fiction, if you kind of give a license to "turn up the volume” on something, to speak about something that's happening now, a current socio-political context, it can be exaggerated to drive home the point a little bit more.

Do you still speak Japanese? 

(In Japanese) <Just a little bit>

How did you feel about getting a shoutout in the Daredevil movie? It was the line "Miller, Mack, Bendis..." and what would you like to see in a new Daredevil movie, your dream version of one?

Well, that was the best part of the film (All laugh). That was my favourite part of the film, definitely! And it was said by that actor Mark Margolis, I'm a big fan of that actor so that was extra special. He's the guy who...he's in Breaking Bad and he was in Scarface, he was in Pi...he's this amazing actor and it was amazing that he said "Miller Mack and Bendis" you know, in the movie. Also, that movie has really good extra features. If you have like the extra features on it, there's this interesting documentary about all the different people, the writers on Daredevil, various creators through the ages on it. As far as a brand new Daredevil film, there's a lot of opportunity. There's so much incredible content to pull from, the source material. You can imagine...you could just do a Born Again story and that would be a great story for it...or maybe do a Daredevil End of Days story as a movie. That would be fun!

Do you have any thoughts on BatAffleck? 

Seems like a very nice man. (All laugh) Also I'll say this about Affleck: he started, we became more familiar with him after he won the Oscar (with Matt Damon) for writing, for Good Will Hunting. So clearly he had some filmmaking talent and he got a lot of roles as an actor, some good, some not as good, but then he very much remade his Hollywood career as a director and became really an interesting contemporary film director. So it is interesting that he made...like after establishing himself so much as a wonderful director, had made this choice to do that, so I'm guessing he must've done it for a good reason. Maybe he has, you know, maybe he can reinvent himself and that character in a different way? But I mean I would've been more interested in hearing about like the "new Ben Affleck-directed movie" or something, probably, but I like to give everybody the benefit of the doubt and I'm curious how everything will unfold.

Since you’ve always been into both drawing and writing, do you have a preference and how does one prepare? Do you have a process when you write or draw? 

I like ‘em both. One of the things that I love about doing comics is that’s it’s a medium that, for me, I don’t have to choose one way of doing things. Everything I wanted to do in comics – I can paint, I can sculpt, I can do photography, there’s design as a part of it, the composition of it, the sequential narrative aspect of it, I enjoy everything about that and I can pour it into the writing side or the drawing side of the comics and I just love the nature of the books themselves. And I really see comics as kind of this interesting last pirate medium right now, where you can sort of go under the radar of contemporary culture and still be incredibly…you can comment on things and you can have like an effect on things. You’re talking about things in an indirect way, through a comic as a metaphor.

As far as my creative approach, when I’m writing I write as many…I sort of have like two modes of it. When you’re first writing, you sort of have the creative mode and the editing mode. When you’re creating things, it uses a different part of your brain than when you’re editing, and some people try to edit while they’re writing, and they end up second-guessing themselves a lot. It’s tempting to edit everything out of existence before you get it down on the page, so you have to give yourself permission to not be the editor at the beginning, and write down everything you could possibly think of, knowing that later, you can come back and take half of it out. You’re probably going to take most of it out; most of it’s not going to be the best. But if you give yourself permission to be experimental, and whimsical and anything that comes into your mind you just write it down and don’t edit yourself, then you come back to it with a different hat and you say “what is this story really about? What belongs here, what doesn’t belong here? What order should it be in to be told most powerfully? Maybe these are really good ideas but they’re not this story; that’s some other project” and you put it over here for the future.

I kind of do it that way, and I guess artistically it’s sort of a similar solution. It’s all problem-solving and I think as an artist, I just try to use the visuals as another way of storytelling and I try and ask myself all the questions visually as if I was writing. If I’m the writer, I know what the story is, but how is it best told? Is it best told through one person’s perspective, from a third person perspective, everyone else talking about the main character? Is it no dialogue, no one gives their actual thoughts but you see it by actions what’s happening…there’s so many different…what order should it be, should it flash back? And I ask the same sort of story questions with the art, how to communicate it. Like what would be the right colours for it, the right medium, and most of the time these are things I make notes of when I’m writing the story, several possible visual solutions when I’m writing the script of it. But sometimes, there are things that happen in the process. That’s actually the coolest part, when you’re doing all your homework and then something occurs to you that you could never have thought ahead of time, but you’ve done so much hard work that all of a sudden, the story is meeting you halfway and revealing itself to you, what it wants to be. At it’s like “okay, I kind of thought you wanted to be this but it turns out you want to be this, so we’ll kinda try it out.”

Do you have any creative quirks while you’re working, like some music in the background or do you eat something? 

Yeah. Well, I probably have a lot of quirks. Say when I’m doing an issue of Kabuki, and I’m doing everything – I’m writing it, I’m doing layouts, I’m drawing it, I’m painting it, I’m lettering it, I’m doing the letters column, I’m doing all these things – I found that you always want to be at your optimum performance, you never want to be like…people talk about “oh, I stayed up all night because of the deadline” but usually I don’t feel like when I’m working for days at a time without sleep, I’m working the best that I could. So you really want to try to engineer your rhythm so that you’re getting the best out of yourself for the project. What I’ve noticed is for each stage of those parts of the book, I operate best by using a different cycle and rhythm for each one. So, I don’t smoke or take any drugs or anything, but I feel that your body has so much natural chemicals in it that you can manipulate those chemicals by three things: what you eat, what your sleep schedule is and what your exercise schedule is, completely manipulates all the chemicals you need, so I adopted different eating, sleeping and exercise schedules for when I’m writing vs. when I’m drawing vs. when I’m painting vs. when I’m lettering.

The quirkiest one is the last stage of it. In general, for contrast, I sort of do a lot of like this: I wake up, I go right to work, then I just work till it’s time to eat, and then when it’s time to eat, you eat, and like you answer all your emails and stuff and then go for a walk or do some exercise, then once you’re done with that, you just go to the next stage; I kind of use when you have to eat to kind and break up stuff. And like when I’m eating, that’s when I take care of emails and the business aspect and when you come back, you’re refreshed, you’re inspired and you go back to work.

On the more extreme side, usually this happens in like the lettering process or the last stage where I have all the sort of raw footage of the book all painted and I have it all set up around myself and I’m looking at it, thinking “I can see how everything fits together.” It’s probably almost like editing film; you have all the raw footage and everything and now, how do you finesse it and fine-tune it to get the most out of everything, and that’s like when I kind of start adding panels or removing panels, changing the order of scenes or changing the order of pages, rewriting to accommodate it, and then really like pairing the script and the lettering with the art. Usually in that stage, I end up cutting out like half of the dialogue in the scripts when I’m doing just to edit it. I started this really interesting sleep schedule, when you wake up you feel refreshed and good, so I thought “it would be nice if you could feel this way more than once a day”, right?

The simple way to do that is to wake up more than once. So I thought…I did some research on it and everybody…you want to get your REM (rapid eye movement) cycle, which is usually like 2.5 – 3 hours of sleep. So most people sleep like two or three REM cycles all at once, so like 2.5 – 3 hours, three of those all at once. But observing my cats, they kind of just do it one at a time: when they’re hungry they eat, when they’re tired they sleep and they do crazy cat business the rest of the time, you know? So I thought, I started doing this where I just sleep one REM cycle at a time, you just sleep 2.5 – 3 hours and then I immediately get to work and I can work fantastic without getting tired for like 10-12 hours. But then the trick is, after 10-12 hours, the minute you feel not the least bit on your A-game, the trick is to immediately go to sleep before you get tired and you’re not up 16-18 hour days, you’re up 10-12, so you only need one REM cycle to refresh you, and then only 2.5 – 3 hours after that. I usually do it like two weeks at a time before I need to get like a whole regular-style sleeping regimen again.

We’re all geeks in this room, there are the stereotypes that we’re socially awkward and things like that but you on the other hand, you started embracing yourself as a comic book writer and artist since you were a really young kid. How have you embraced yourself in that role and what advice would you give to budding artists who are trying to embrace that side of themselves?

Um, I never really think in terms of labels and stuff, so I’ve never really labelled myself so much myself that way. I probably was very awkward when I was younger, but making comics was very helpful. I learned a lot of how to interact with other humans in real life because of my experience making comics. I think when I was younger I was a very different person and I didn’t know what the proper way…I didn’t know how to read social cues or body language or facial expressions and I didn’t understand why people were laughing sometimes and a lot of these other things. But then when I started drawing comics, I realised that you have to put a lot of thought into what body language someone should have, what facial expression, what they’re saying when they’re reacting to something – and I think from that, I started to learn how do it in real life by thinking about it in characters.

Who would you like to collaborate with in the future? 

I’ve been so fortunate to work with such amazing creators: Brian Bendis, Joe Quesada, Paul Pope on Electric Ant, so many great…I did these prints with Neil Gaiman…I’d love to do a story with Neil Gaiman, that would be fun, and Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, he wrote an introduction for my recent Kabuki volume. It’ll be fun to do a collaboration with him.

What was the inspiration behind the creation of Echo? 

I was writing the Daredevil story; Joe Quesada was going to draw it so I asked him “do you want me to write anything in particular for you?” And he said “write whatever you want, but the one thing I ask you to do is create a brand new character story in this story.” He said because so many of Daredevil’s foes were borrowed from Spider-Man and he felt like, besides Bullseye and Kingpin who was a Spider-Man villain, Elektra, the main ones – there weren’t a lot of new and fresh and interesting Daredevil characters, so he asked me to write a new character. With Echo I thought, with all of Daredevil’s…he has a lot of different love interests and each of them he kind of relates to in a different way but each of them has a lot of blind spots about what kind of person he is. He relates to Black Widow and they’re both superheroes but because he’s blind, he sees the world so differently than everybody else does and he’s piecing it together in a different way, I thought it would be interesting if he met somebody else who was also set aside from most of society by how they see the world, but for it to be different than how that was for him. So, I think I thought he would find that interesting. He doesn’t see anything but he pieces all of his information together from other senses, mostly audible, and she doesn’t hear things and has to rely almost exclusively visually. So it’s an interesting, like possibly a complementary thing, but also an interesting opportunity for them to always kind of miss each other sometimes too. Maybe it’s kind of a commentary on relationships or something.

STGCC 2013 Day 2: Mega Picture Post

Day Deux! The DC cosplayers were out in force, much to my sheer delight!

We kick off today with the Joker not quite done with dealing out violence to Jason Todd. 

Nendoroid Iron Man figures! 

ALL HAIL HUGO WEAVING! 

Behold, the power of actual holographic projection.

Interview in progress with comic book artist/writer David Mack, known for his Kabuki books and his work on Daredevil. 

Gotta love the velveteen suit (and the umbrella)

With Nathan Hamill again, this time with his creation "Boris". 

Vampy and Aza on stage. 

Injustice: Fantastic costume craftsmanship among us! 

Oh hai Alex(andra) DeLarge. 

Is that a blood-splattered codpiece or are you hap...let's leave it at that. 

Wielder of the Witchblade! 

Master Chief and John 117.5/

Just about my favourite shot of the day! Get it, shot? 

Kie as Red Robin unmasked! 

"Argh Jason, why can't you play by the rules?" 

Clare accessing databases. Take that project PRISM! 

That cat and the raven. 

One Harley short of the Sirens. 

They obliged my request to re-enact the best Batman movie ever made! 

It's a pity her voice has been...taken. By Liam Neeson, no less. 

Mad Wuv. 

Sarah (Rapunzel from yesterday) as Speedy! 

Mentor and mentee. 

""Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one!" 

The Doctors are in. And lookin' stylish at it! 

Arperture Science's latest experiment involved gender-flipping Chell. Worked out okay if you ask me. 

"A rose by any other Bane..."

"Son, I am disappoint." 

That Abu just completes it. 

Raven in her zen zone. 

"You have lost." 

You are found! 

Raven vs. Slade

The ArrowFam and I! 

He's nobody's chew toy! 

Rhodey and Rhodey Jr. 

In a league of Michonne. 

"Ride me like one of your Italian cars." 

Fully cowled Tim in action! 

Two-Face: Poison Ivy... 

Poison Ivy: It's been a long time Harvey. You're still looking half-way decent. 

Two-Face: Half of me wants to strangle you. 

Poison Ivy: And what does the other half want?

Two-Face: To hit you with a truck!

Poison Ivy: (to the others) We used to date.

Joker/Penguin/Croc: Ohhhh.

Go Bork Yourself! 

A FREEZE ISZ COMING! 

Really cool costume. Man, those light-up goggles.