Devil's Wake Part I: The Beginning

I mentioned in my last post that one of the primary reasons I began this blog is because I'm working on a new comic again, so this post is just to give a little background info on it. Some of you may be reading this because you've seen the comic, Devil's Wake, as it is currently running on the Zuda comics website. For those of you who have not seen it, Zuda is the new webcomics imprint of DC Comics, and they have a very unique system to search for new talent: Every month they select ten entries from the submissions that they receive, and those ten comics are posted on the Zuda website for people to vote on. Other than the fact that they are all eight-page comics with a web-friendly "landscape" layout, the comics themselves differ wildly in style and genre. At the end of the month, one comic is chosen by the number of votes to be the winner and receives the grand prize of a sixty-page web publishing contract to continue the comic on Zuda.

I stumbled upon the Zuda site completely by accident while surfing. I can't even recall exactly how, perhaps through a banner ad or some link on a blog or forum, but I was hooked immediately by the diversity of the comics on the site and the unusual nature of the monthly contest. Somehow feeling strangely motivated for the first time in a very long while, I decided to pick up my pen and work on an entry for Zuda. I had a few stories brewing in my head, but the one that seemed the easiest to introduce within eight pages was the story that became Devil's Wake. It was basically a strange mixture of all the things that I love and enjoy: post-apocalytic stories such as Mad Max and Terminator, zombie movies from the Romero and Raimi classics to the neo-zombie resurgence of 28 Days Later, as well as the iconic Westerns of Sergio Leone and Samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. As I worked on the story I also mixed in a liberal amount of manga style action and offbeat humor, probably influenced by works like Blade of the Immortal, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Cowboy Bebop. I went through a number of rewrites for the first eight pages, and choose to focus on only the main character and establishing the setting in those pages. I still feel that it was the best choice considering the overall arc of the story, but on hindsight perhaps it didn't necessarily work well within the format of the contest.

Once I had decided on the story and layouts, the next major decision was the style of art. Most of my art that I've done previously were traditional media: Brush and ink, watercolors, etc. I even used a lot of zip-a-tones bought from Japan in the first run of Athena comics, endlessly cutting and pasting those sticky little dotted patterns onto bristol boards. However I did eventually succumb to the ease of computers and by the end of Athena, all the tones and post-production work were done on the computer. It was not until working on the film A Scanner Darkly, however, that I truly became comfortable with drawing entirely on the computer. Considering that the art will be delivered in a completely digital way via the web, I decided that it would be fitting to try and create my art in a completely digital way as well. I discovered and researched the realm of digital painting, which I think offers the individual artist with an unprecedented level of efficiency and speed when it comes to creating full-color art and can still feel warm and personal when done with skill. Armed with my Wacom tablet and Photoshop, I went to work.

Two months and much trial-and-error later, I finished the eight-page submission right on Halloween eve, the deadline that I had set for myself. To make a long story short and to wrap this rambling post up, my comic appeared in the December 2008 Zuda contest, and thanks to my awesome supporters, I won by the skin of my teeth against some very fine comics. Of course, this is only the beginning, so to be continued...