Breaking the silence

Boy – have we been a couple of lame-o bloggers this last few weeks!

You don’t care if we’re nuts-deep in ‘real’ work and ‘real’ life – comics should ALWAYS come first and we know that as well as anyone.

I know we said ‘a page a week’ but… deadlines? I’ll show you deadlines, sonny-Jim!

Ok… so we might have been a little bit busy updating our CVs and planning world-domination. You gonna hold that against us?

Whatevs. We’re a couple of busy bastards.

Here’s an actual panel from the actual comic with some actual dialogue. And it’s still only Tuesday, which makes us a DAY EARLY by my reckoning.

Quick Mack Attack

Comin’ atcha like an art-ninja, flinging out his scribbles on an unsuspecting mob…

Yeh – we’re all snowed-under and work-deadliney again. Don’t worry, though – we’re still firing all-guns on the comic.

First up this week: Jian got a haircut…

Jian & topknot

Next up: light roughs of pages 6 & 7. Very much a work-in progress, these ones, but Mack has sent me this pic twice, so I guess he’s fairly eager for me to post it.

page 6&7 roughs

See you in a week, if I tear myself away from Twitter long enough to order a Chinese, clear some junk off the PVR and write some all-new crap

Here come the layouts…

Mack’s playing with my mind. I just know he’s done more than just these two pages of layouts for the first issue. I’m sure we got all the way to page 10 when we met up at Xmas.

(BTW – great place to work on a comic and not look like a crazy person in Newcastle, the Intermezzo Coffee Bar at the Tyneside Cinema. It was full of media types, all raving about their latest project, but in a totally unassuming way, that you’d never find in Soho.)

Layouts pp.1&2

Mack’s a big fan of the process of making comics. Like anything in life, we’re all so used to seeing the finished product, we so rarely give much thought to the process. Have you ever watched a building being erected? I once lived in Manchester next to where they were building a multi-story car-park – perhaps the world’s least interesting piece of architecture, but watching it going up was strangely fascinating.

In the same vein, we’ve decided to show the process of building the comic from the ground-up. Sure, we’re not getting into the story-telling part just yet, but both me and Mack are the kind of guys who could spend hours in an art gallery, scrutinizing an artist’s preliminary sketches and largely ignoring the finished piece.

That’s not that weird, is it?

Is it..?

The second piece he’s sent me today is a little character study for The Corsican, who you won’t meet right until the end of Issue 1, so we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here, jumping from one end of the story to the other.

The Corsican

And the third piece he sent me today…

…well, that’s for our next project. Yeah, yeah – we haven’t even finished this one and we’re already talking about the next one. Hell, we’re talking about the next five projects. You didn’t think this was a one-shot deal, did you? No chance of that.

We’re thinking about posting some of our other work on a sister-site to this. URBN will stay our main focus for the time being but, whenever we’re working on a project, we always have a rush of other ideas – especially at this stage, where the initial story is written and I’ve got some time on my hands to work on other things while Mack perfects the character designs and before we launch headlong into the four full issues of SWRD’94.

From the scketchbook: SHIV

Shiv

Well, that’s the last of the major characters locked-down. The work is coming thick-and-fast from Mack’s mighty pen – we’re up and running and raring to roll out issue one.

(just as soon as I’ve got this alliteration out of my system)

I know we’ve teased the launch out a bit further than even we expected, but we’ve got day-jobs, you know!

Right now, Mack’s doing his usual pencil-snapping and throwing toys out of the cot routine over this sketch, but he always does that when he locks a character. That’s the trouble with being a couple of perfectionists. He’ll get his chance to mock me when I’m tweaking dialogue right up to the last minute of a deadline, panicking over a misplaced comma, or somesuch.

So, here’s Shiv in all her finery. I wonder where she’s hiding her knife?

Coverage

We’re back!

After a much-needed break, it’s all hands on deck, nose to the grindstone and other anachronisms standing-by as we lurch headlong into the new year with the first roughs of the covers.

That’s Jian, Shiv, Jo and The Corsican gracing the fronts of Iss. 1-4.

There’s one character noticeably absent from these covers, and that’s the City of Urbn itself. Mack assures me that she’ll be there in the final versions.

And for more of Shiv, here’s some early costume notes.

Like one of those actors who has to find the right shoes before they can find the character, Mack often works from the outside-in. “Clothes make the man” and all that jazz.

Mack said “Neon Gothic.” I fired back, “Victorian Punk.” Let’s see where that leads us…

First look: Kassel

Nick-nack Mack Attack!

Just the one piece this week, as our resident art-monkey is heads-down over the first pages of Urbn. So here’s a preview of someone he’s working on for Page 3:

Kassel - barman, boxer, sage. Landlord of the Köwhanga Bar, you’d be wise to make him your first port-of-call when you’re fresh out of the joint.

Kassel - concept art

Jo

Full Name: Jo Li Ginet
Age: 29
Origin: City of Antica
Profession: Bounty Hunter
Weapon: Quarterstaff

Born into an ancient, noble house. Schooled in the arts and martial arts. Raised in grandeur and robbed of her inheritance. Her whole life was about the money, until she came to Urbn and found faith.

Called here by a voice on the wind, she finds herself adrift in a sea of strangely familiar faces. Ever restless, she never stops moving for fear of dying.

Since a child, she has had a preternatural ability to find lost things. Now she makes a living hunting that which would rather stay lost. Freelance to the highest bidder, loyal to no one, she scours the city looking for signs of the return of the Great Maker.

Jian

Full name: unknown
Age: unknown
Origin: Unknown
Weapon: sword

Twelve years aboard a prison ship have barely left a mark on his skin, but have left a great many scars on his mind. He returns to the City of Urbn to find that it has hardly changed, but that he is unrecognisable.

He’s certainly not the man he was twelve years ago.

He’s been away for so long that his previous life is only half-remembered – like an incomplete thought – a sentence cut-off mid flow. He feels as if his whole life was lived aboard that flying hulk of a prison ship. All that he’s left with are a few old memories, old haunts and old habits.

He was once a man of great standing and wealth and now he has nothing. He was once the greatest swordsman of his generation, but he hasn’t touched a weapon since he was snatched from the city streets and thrown in gaol.

That’s all about to change.

Aboard the prison ship, the Doctors called him “Sword 94”, but here on the streets of Urbn, he is Jian – and he has unfinished business.