This deviation has been labeled as containing themes not suitable for all deviants.
Log in to view

Deviation Actions

WinkGuy1's avatar

Being Hopelessly Heroic... Page 51

By
Published:
293 Views

Description

Hey there,

I would like to share my story with you if you have the time...

Um...

Where to begin?

 

It's been quite an adventure...


Last year, I was contacted by Nathan Bowler of the Superandom webcomic (superandom.com) who was starting a new webcomic with Damien Fleury. Basically, he wanted to talk about me working on this new webcomic called Hopelessly Heroic(hopelesslyheroic.com)... Long story short, it wasn't meant for me back then but I was intrigued by the premise and kept in touch. The first artist Nathan and Damien hired was Ronn Sutton. When Ronn left, Nathan contacted me again but Damien had already decided on hiring fellow Algonquin College alumni Darren Bird before we could meet. Two issues later or so, Darren became a proud papa and had little time to spare to work on Hopelessly Heroic. During all this time, Nathan had asked me if I would like to do a guest page for HH. He gave me the outline, did a rough storyboard for it and I came up with this: winkguy1.deviantart.com/art/Ho…

 

Enter Guy...

 

When Darren left HH, guess what happened next? Yep, Nathan and I finally sat down face to face and started our collaboration on Hopelessly Heroic. I know Damien was doing something somewhere about it but, I never met the guy and often joked that Nathan probably made him up, haha

 

Now, my task was to pick up where Darren had left off but... wait, what's this... I also had to come around full circle into Ronn's intro.. Huh? That's right. The story starts out in a meeting for people with super powers and the main character, Jon Cock, starts telling his story about how he got his powers... Somewhere along that story, Darren picks up where Ronn left off but the story had to go back to that meeting which comprised of the first two drawn pages of the first issue. Now, I think Ronn and Darren are talented artists in their own right and I thought Darren had done a good job picking up where Ronn had left off and kept the artwork pretty similar... But somewhere down the line, I think he started developing his own style and his Jon Cock started looking a bit different than his earlier(and Ronn's) Jon Cock... Nathan asked me to try and and keep the characters looking exactly like they did when Ronn and Darren were drawing them. Since the artwork seemed to change, I tried to do a mish-mash of how it was in the beginning and how it was right before I got on but try to keep it more faithful to the initial pages... and then add a dash of my own in there.

 

Now, I studied animation and dabbled in storyboards while doing that and co-created(with KindToonz) a comic by the name of Cross N' Nails that has yet to see the light of day but, I've uploaded a few sketches here and there in my gallery regarding Cross & Nails... I've never worked as much on a comic as I have this year... So, this allowed me to experiment with how to make a comic page... and I have... After every three pages or so, I changed my work method. I started it all by redrawing every single character I had to draw to get more at ease in drawing these characters over and over.

 

While most characters had already been drawn by Ronn and/or Darren before my turn, I had to design a few characters. The characters I've designed were Alexis and Super Gonzalez. I designed Super Gonzalez based on Nathan's description which was basically that he's a Super Mario rip-off but more realistic-looking, with a goatee instead of a moustache, less fat and short. and the initials SG on his cap. I decided to add a thin tie and a nicer shirt that would make him look a big more like a slick macho type since I wasn't sure if he was supposed to be Italian or another nationality... Being a Super Mario rip-off, one might assume that that would make him Italian for sure but... Gonzalez... well, as far as I know, that's more Mexican or Puerto Rican or somewhere in mid to South America... So, I just thought... Hey, Latino men often have the stereotype of being macho men... The same for Italian men... So, make him a cross between a slick salesman/"ladies' man" and Super Mario... I almost added a ponytail at one point but decided that would have been overkill. I really like the original sketch I did but when I was doing the actual drawings for the strip, I think I started slightly diverging from the original design. I think I may have been subconsciously mixing the character with someone I know.

 

Not much was said about Alexis except that she's Jon's ex, she's a stripper and sometimes prostitute(whatever that means...).

 

Okay, now, where was I? I started work in the middle of the 4th issue after Darren left and finished that issue. Nothing was said about me doing any more work and I'm fine with that. It's been fun but I'd like to work on something else now. Will I ever do more work on Hopelessly Heroic? Hmmm. As I've just said(written, but you know), I really want a break from it and would rather work on something else now... But, you never know, maybe sometime in the future, maybe Nathan will come calling again and maybe, just maybe... who knows.

 

So, what was my work exactly? Well, Nathan and Damien(or so I was told, ha!) wrote the story. Nathan would send me the script he wrote and a crude storyboard to go along with it and I made everything pretty. I often decided to revise "camera" angles, where the characters would be standing(trying to stay faithful and keep track of continuity). I would then send the work to Nathan and he would give his final approval. When everyone was satisfied, I would colour my artwork, Nathan would add speech bubbles, credits and sound effects over my artwork. Previous pages were coloured by Nathan himself but I, sadly, wasn't a big fan of his colouring so asked to colour myself. I was asked to alter only one scene because Nathan and Damien had a different idea for those two panels than the original gag intended. I also didn't like one sketch I had done so changed the angle for one panel but Nathan asked me to change it back to the same angle he had in the original sketch. At first, I was hesitant since I had a few more pages to work on but I'm glad he did. Maybe I will post the original version eventually for comparison.

 

So, maybe some of you are asking... If Nathan uploaded my pages on Hopelesslyheroic.com, why upload them here instead of just giving the link in a journal blog? Well, I'm uploading the artwork without Nathan's speech bubbles, etc. so you get a clearer view of the artwork I did. I will transcribe the dialogue with sound effects for each page below this description. Looking back at some pages, I was also not completely satisfied with some tiny details and some of the colouring so decided to alter them a little... While some pages may be identical or nearly identical to what I sent to Nathan, some have been altered or I decided to remove the colour, use the linework only, merge colour with black and white, etc. I would like to call these the 1.2 versions.


All my pages were finally put up so I continue on to...

The tenth page I worked on for Hopelessly Heroic! It's the 51st page from the start of the series but the series consists of 4 issues at the moment. This page is the 17th page from the 4th issue(although, it's the 18th on the site since a guest page was put up after the 11th page). But Nathan usually labelled them 42 to 44, 45 to 47, 48 to 50 and 51 to 54... You get the idea... I could have used 8 to 10, 11 to 13, 14 to 16 and 17 to 20 but Nathan mostly used the numbers from the beginning and I like 42(If you know HGTTG, you'll understand).

Jon starts getting more and more messed up here. I didn't think much of the drinking since it was handled pretty much lightly but here, he actually snaps someone's neck... Pretty disturbing. I think this is probably the most disturbing page I've worked on. Will he really become a super-hero or plunge into darkness? Only Nathan knows, I suppose.

Here is Nathan's script for this page.

 ...

You know what? I changed my mind, I won't transcribe Nathan's script and sound effects... I'll let the visuals speak for themselves. If you want to check out the pages with those things, check out Hopelesslyheroic.com
But I just want to point out one tiny tidbit... Nathan seems to like the contraction "wanna" and uses it now and then. I don't think I've ever seen him use "want to" in his speech bubbles... but he also spells the contraction with only one "n" even though I tried to point out that I'm fairly certain it's meant to be spelled with two n's. I've never seen anyone else who spells it that way. It bugs me a little but I assume he's set in his ways and he doesn't think I know what I'm talking about.

 
Jon's messed-up adventure continues on page 52...

Enjoy,


~Guy H.L.

 

For further information and credit where credit is due, visit hopelesslyheroic.com

P.S. The content and language of this series may be offensive to some viewers... Proceed with caution.

Image size
765x1215px 730.93 KB
Mature
© 2015 - 2024 WinkGuy1
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In