Monday, October 22, 2007

Book 1 Pgs 10-13

Sorry about the delay with getting these up! Blogger.com was having some problems taking uploads! We are going to reletter all of book one, but I really want to get book one out to you! So I am going to keep posting pics even as I go back and reletter the other stuff! So as of now I continue to bring you Book one verision 0.7




Monday, October 15, 2007

Book 1 Pgs 7 - 9

Moving right along here! Now you get to see the preview pages in context!



Sunday, October 14, 2007

Book 1 pgs 4 - 6

more pages!



Book 1 pgs 1-3

We are so excited to putting our life's work on display! so enjoy!



Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Seattle's Aura

The cover is a done deal, that seals the deal for all of issue one. Now it’s ready to be posted and then on to ya’ll to read. What a great feeling of accomplishment as the books are starting to come together. With book one ready to go and books two and three not far behind, we are unbelievably close to reaching a goal we set for ourselves in what seems another lifetime-washing down chicken wings with Mac and Jacks in Seattle.

Man I remember when I first moved to Seattle. My cool as hell Uncle Rob dove me to Seattle from SeaTac airport and then on to downtown. I remember coming over the hill from his house in Greenwood, and seeing the needle and the skyline set amongst these dark gotchicesque clouds and then there was this moon creeping amongst the clouds in the sky, glowing like some magical eye watching me, yet welcoming me into its domain. This memory is one I think I will always remember, and I tried to capture this feeling in the cover along with the bird that haunted Kevin’s childhood.

Well I hope the cover grabs you and pulls you in as Seattle did to me when I first looked upon her.

Thanx for your thoughts,
Jason

Issue 1- Cover

Well now that concept cover is a finished cover. I cannot express how happy I am with it. This cover perfectly expresses what I try to put into words throughout our story. Oddly enough there is a bit of history to the “bird” that Drew is drawing. When I was about 13 or so I tried my hand at making comics. Needless to say I felt comfortable making the stories but had the artistic skills of a wounded mule deer. Of course The Emerald City has nothing to do with the comics that I embarrassingly drew, but that is not to say that some of the characters I made so long ago have not been reinvented by Jason and me. But back to the point; that bird was apart of a comic I drew and I showed Jason, who in turn made fun of me for 10 years. But I think both of us know how important the dreams we had when we were kids are and even through the hazing we decided to mask my lack of artistic talent by having a kindergarten kid draw it on the cover. Jason almost was able to nail my style of art, but I still think his looks better!

Last month we showed this cover off in rough, unfinished form. With our covers we want to have Drew conveying a theme of the comic through his drawings. Also, we want to feature Seattle on all of our covers. We think this is very important for the identity of our series. We hope you enjoy it, and again please give us your thoughts. They mean so much to us!

-Kevin M. Jones


Thursday, October 4, 2007

A Murder in Review

Wow, first of all let me say thanks for everybody who took their time to click through our work and to my friends who have been offering loads of support. One thing we really want to have is feedback. Let us know what you think! We are trying some different things with wording and of course Jason’s great art and my writing. How is it? What do you like? What do you hate? What scene grabs you? And so on… Feedback is so important to the creative process; it allows us to hear what our “readers” want; but, enough of this begging for comments stuff (for now)!

These scenes were so fun to make for me as a writer. First of all it presented my first challenge of writing in our comic and that was establishing character tones with our police characters. I really hope that you could get a decent feel of what kind of people the police are from their interactions with each other. I think Jason nailed the overall theme of these scenes in his; like he explained in his post Richard and Ai are talented young detectives embarking on a very unusual case. Both of them are looking for some logic that fits within the rules of the world as they know it; the only problem is they can’t find it. One thing I love about these characters is that they are going to be thrust into some very strange situations and will have to deal with it on a very normal level. How often is that you do your job and you come across the “impossible”? That is what they are going through on this first case and it hardly gets any better from there on out.

Another thing I really loved about these scenes was the use of the camera for the flashback of the Furhmann murder. The detectives watching the murder unfold from the different angles on the camera with no sound and their comments on what was happening really sat well with me when the idea of the scene came to me. As Jason said we have book 1 – 3 done, and they are full of great scenes where we put lots of thought in how to form them. But I will always have a special place in my heart for the camera scene in book 1. One of the reasons for this is because of the great working relationship that Jason and I have. I remember going over the book and Jason being so excited because he got the chance to really cut loose and go all out with action in these scenes. When we layout books and we have a huge action sequence I usually just step back and let Jason do what he does. Every now and I say something like “it would be cool if he smashed his head into a pillar.” And he takes my one panel suggestion and turns it into something fantastic. It is amazing how well we click on some of the details and the overall concepts we want to get out in our work.

The great thing about showing these scenes is that when I look at them, I know that this is just the smallest slice of our story. We have so many great characters and what I believe unique concepts. I am really excited to get this book out there. I really hope you enjoyed looking at the preview. We hope that we can touch more people with our life’s work soon. Thank you for reading and again drop us your thoughts!

-Kevin M. Jones

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

The Art of Murder

The comic has really started to make its presence known through the blog. I have received some great emails. First, I would like to say thanks to all the well wishers. What we, Kevin and I, are hoping to achieve is to get some comments on the book- perhaps getting a good dialogue and or debate going… We are pretty hell bent in getting the book out for people to enjoy, and of course starting out; it is a little hard determining which paths lead to that goal. We have made a huge step in getting some pages up and worded on the blog. Though a huge step, it’s pretty minute when compared to a galaxy of decisions that await us. A lot of time is spent in getting the book prepared, we now are looking to how. Now that we have three books completed and almost worded, the excitement meets its arch enemy uncertainty… where is the next step taking us? There are many options and we have done a pretty good job piloting through the debris and garbage to safely arrive at destinations that have helped us on our journey.

Now to my insanity report: These scenes with the coppers and the murder were a lot of fun to draw….especially the murder. It’s cool how Kevin set it up with the cops and their introduction by looking back on an entirely different scene (cool murder scene) to display their character traits and set a pattern for future books. Within the city an unruly mass of chaos is staring to unravel, and these cops are at the forefront of it all….it will be fun to see how they will transform with it.
So in drawing this scene in particular I attempted to convey this same idea…Now, besides McMillan, these are cops stuck in their duties. A homicide detective is far from easy, but in compared to what’s lurking in the shadows of the Emerald City well…So drawing these characters in this scene they carry an air of confidence, as they should- they are young, talented detectives. In the scenes themselves I tried to capture a sense of the gloomy environment coupled with the appalling murder of the officer. This shock is reverberated on the faces of the detectives watching the tapes and I wanted this to really be seen, and noticed in the art without having to exaggerate it with ridiculous facial expressions.
Just in these six pages this murder serves as a catalyst in really getting things rolling with the detectives. McMillan knows it as well. He is the only one really not faded by the murder; perhaps he knows what other horrors lay in wait for our developing detectives.
I think as far as the introduction of these characters goes, we did a pretty good job…not trying to toot my own horn or anything like that. We know it is just a preview, and it might be hard to get the feel of the story from just seeing these pages. Maybe the art looks funky in some scenes or the wording maybe seems jumbled or too much…..Let us know what ya think because we do appreciate all the comments and emails we have received and your opinion really matters because we can sit down and look at what we got from a different angle. Thanx again!

Jason