Snaps‘s inspiration was a box of old photos, shot during the 1940s, that Kraatz found at a flea market. “I studied the unknown people in the pictures,” she explains in her introduction, “often with a magnifying glass, trying to decipher their relationships with one another.” The result of this acute analysis takes place in Victoria, British Columbia, but save for a handful of references you would be hard pressed to notice. More importantly, it follows a cast of over two dozen during the Second World War, book-ended by enlistee Gordon’s departure from home to serve overseas and his impending arrival home. Each character gets only a couple of pages to tell his or her story until the point of view switches to someone else – some stories are related, while others stand completely on their own.

The breadth and variety of the people we meet in Snaps is shocking, often telling stories in a scant two pages with surprising emotion and power. And that’s often how we remember things, isn’t it? The pivotal moments and the echos of those moments we still feel to this day. Gordon makes this obvious in the first vignette, as he spends his last day on home soil with his girlfriend Lena: “I can’t remember certain details. The pattern of the drapes escapes me.” We next hear from Lena her memories on the day she sees Gordon off at the train platform, and the images she remembers most vividly.

It continues in this fashion, and in some cases we see how different characters remember the same day. Kraatz’s art tells us at least as much about these people as the words. Characters wear their expressions on their faces, perhaps because that’s exactly how we remember ourselves when looking back – though you might be occasionally terrified by their piercing gazes. The fashion and backdrops of the 1940s are charming but unobtrusive, unless they want to be. A few plots, including one that takes place on a navy ship, give a haunting picture of what it’s like to live with your loved ones on the other side of an ocean during wartime. Kraatz’s dives into the surreal, like Albin’s stroll into his future, are as enchanting as they are absurd.

My main complaint is that the snapshots we get of these characters can become as cloudy as actual memories. The handful of storylines that continue throughout the book are shown intermittently, through several characters’ viewpoints. It might take several reads to get a handle on everything that takes place in Snaps - and while the act of poring through the pages like Kraatz did with the original photographs are rewarding, at first it can be disorienting.

In spite of the large ensemble cast and its dalliance with the nonsensical, Snaps contains stories that will hit many readers at home with their everyday joys and horrors.

Dr. McNinja has been around the interwebs for several years now, but all you have to know when picking up this volume is that the main character is both a doctor and a ninja. If you can wrap your head around this concept, Hastings does rather well taking it from there.

Night Powers contains three full-length features – “Monster Mart,” “Death Volley,” and “Doc Gets Rad” – that were originally posted on DrMcNinja.com from 2008 to 2009. These stories marked the comic’s foray into full-colour. Carly Monardo and Anthony Clark add a bright and vibrant palette to the already colourful world penned and pencilled by Hastings.

Dr. McNinja is a shining example of modern, offbeat internet humour. “Random” is probably the way to describe its stories and characters, although that doesn’t give enough credit to Hastings. The one-liners are hilarious and the timing is exquisite, even with the online format’s requirements for roughly one punch-line per page (one per post, of course). The only constants throughout the volume are the machinations of King Radical, a totally-not-Burger-King who rides a sweet motorcycle, and cameos by dinosaurs.

Most exciting for longtime McNinja readers is the preview story called “Beyond Winter Wonderdome” by Tick team Benito Cereno and Les McClaine. TCAF visitors will appreciate the Doctor’s foray into Canada and an Alpha Flight-ish comedy troupe, including a young woman who apparently is the manifestation of those Canada Heritage Moment videos. Couple that with Canuck cartooner Kate Beaton’s introduction comic, and you’ve got a volume bookended by some awesome northerners.

Night Powers stars a lethal doctor not seen since the likes of Autobot Ratchet. It’s in full colour. It has a motorcycle with a rainbow on the outside and the soul of a unicorn on the inside. If that doesn’t make your decision on whether to pick it up, I’m not sure what else I can tell you.

Michael DeForge at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival

Michael DeForge is a busy dude. At the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend, DeForge will debut two comic books, an art book, a porn-anthology that he co-edited, and he’s featured as an artist in a third anthology. Not only is DeForge prolific, he has also emerged as one of Canada’s most celebrated young comic book artists. He’s also happens to be a pretty wicked guy. He kindly agreed to chat with us this week about his new comics, TCAF, immature Hotmail addresses, cable television and Toronto’s best ethnic food. Here is our conversation:

Dork Shelf: Having read your work for a while, I’ve always gotten the sense that you’re enamoured by the idea of flipping “Disney character” cuteness on its head. Whether it’s pretentious puppy undergrads, addict deer creatures, a boy finding respite from bullying in his maggot-horse, or a dog family struggling to cope with an ugly divorce – it’s a pretty consistent theme. Am I onto something here?

Michael DeForge: Yeah, I usually like drawing cute things, but I like the tension of changing one or two elements of the characters design to make it hideous. Or figuring out why something that is, on its face, kind of horrifying or weird looking, but can actually look cute. I like that tension there.

DS: Open Country – your new serial is being printed on Tuesday.

MD: Actually, Open Country isn’t going to be Koyama Press, that’s just me self-publishing it. Each issue is going to be printed with a risograph (a machine me and some friends bought). So once I finish all of the issues – and there will probably be for four or five of them – then I’ll see what I can do to collect it, but until then it’s going to be self-published.

DS: Now Open Country has got actual human characters, and a linear narrative throughout. This is somewhat of a departure from what we’ve come to expect from the Lose series… Can your fans expect more of the same going forward? Are you trying to get away from that more fragmented style?

MD: I’m never consciously trying to… Put it this way, I think my interests tend to change from story to story, and the focus of this one is a bit different. Because it’s a longer story I have more space to go on more tangents. With a comic like Lose #2, it’s a really short story – there’s only so much I can do and only so much of each character that I can explore – so I kind of just wanted to do it it as, like, “the events of one day.”

But with Open Country I can go on tangents, so some issues are going to be more about the logistics of – the whole story centres on this concept of these psychic projections in a silly way – and I think, in some issues I can focus more on that. And then other issues can be more about the conversations between characters, and some can be more action driven. So having it spread out over a few issues gives me more flexibility with that kind of thing.

Lose 3 - Michael DeForge

DS: The “Artist in his home” back panel of Lose #3 – am I correct about it being an Archie reference?

MD: It’s not an Archie reference, but I guess the way it’s kind of drawn – my face and that – looks a bit like that Archie construction… Nah, that’s just me.

DS: I’ve always been curious about your personal “king trash” branding – where did that originate?

MD: I never thought of it as branding, and part of me kind of regrets not registering michaeldeforge.com as a domain. I got the website in grade 10 or 11 or something, and at the time I just thought oh it’s a “cool thing” and all these artists have “cool names”… But since then, I mean some other guy has michaeldeforge.com and I’m like – I don’t even know what “king trash” means! I guess I like trashy things or something?

DS: So it’s the website equivalent of everyone’s first Hotmail account…

MD: Yeah, it’s sort of like that. I guess it’s good that it’s not something embarrassing… it’s not like a Beastie Boys reference or something.

DS: So before I go ahead and ask you a bunch of questions about your art specifically – What is your least favourite thing to be interviewed about?

MD: The one I never really – I mean, I’m not like mad whenever someone asks it – but I can never answer it, is when people ask “Why do you draw drips on everything?” And again, I’m not like annoyed when someone asks me that – I just never have a good answer for it. I hope that’s not one of your questions I would feel bad if it was.

DS: It’s not. *Crosses question off the page and chuckles nervously* So Dog 2070 is sort of a more mature version of Dogs in College. Do you find it difficult to write dark, personal material, or do you intend there to be an underlying optimism in your work?

MD: I think, there’s an optimism in Lose #2, but I don’t think that is really there in Lose #3. But I don’t find it difficult. I sometimes find it difficult too – I mean, I consciously try and lighten things up a bit more, and go against my instincts to make everything too personal. I don’t want any of my comics to read like I’m just “going through stuff.” So I make a real effort when I’m writing them to have the personal material, but mostly I want them to read as a funny comic, or an interesting comic or a character study. I don’t want them read like it’s clearly me trying to grapple with “issues” or some shit.

Manananggal by Michael DeForge

DS: So in contrast with Dog 2070‘s rather verbose dialogue – Um, and you might have to help me with the pronunciation of this… *totally butchers the pronunciation of Manananggal so it sounds like mananangna*

MD: Oh, it’s Mananananggal.

DS: Oh, there’s an L at the end…?

MD: Yeah that’s an L – it’s the name of a mythological Filipino monster – and the actual comic, and the way I depict the monster has little to do with its [traditional depiction], it’s just with the space concept of a witch that can separate its torso from her lower-half. And if you salt the lower half while the torso’s out flying around, then it can’t re-attach and that’s like how it dies.  So the actual comic is that, and the effect of the separation.

DS: And the familial separation is also sort of a recurring theme there… What I found curious about it was how it directly followed Dog 2070, which, was so full of dialogue – and in Manananggal you have blank word-balloons to convey a sense silence or wordlessness… Have you ever used this technique before and where did you get this idea?

MD: I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually done the blank word balloons before, I’ve always really liked the way Dan Clowes does word balloons, and I think I steal a lot of his techniques. Like I’ll do overlapping word balloons or have one dialogue balloon cut off by a panel border maybe, to indicate a character actually being cut off, or some sort of distraction in the conversation. So I think that’s partially it too – I think the way he uses word balloons – and not that he was the first, necessarily – but the way he uses word balloons in particular influences the way I use them.

DS: What’s up for you at TCAF, where will you be, what are you showing off and what panels will you be participating in?

MD: I’ll be at the Koyama Press table – my publisher – and I’ll be launching Lose #3 which will make its debut from Koyama Press… Open Country #1 which I’m self-publishing. Then I also co-edited an anthology called Root Rot with Anne Koyama, that’s an art book. And I co-edited a porn anthology with my friend Ryan Sands called Thickness #1 – and that’ll come out too. And I’ll also be in an anthology called Gang Bang Bong edited by Janette Lepalme and Inés Estrada – and yep, those are all out for TCAF. And for panels there is going to be a Root Rot signing, sort of, and a few artists will be drawing and that’s going to be in the morning on Saturday. Then at 3 PM I’ll be at an Adventure Time panel and that’ll be with me, Bob Flynn, Steve Wolfhard, Andy Ristiano and Pendelton Ward the creator of the show who I think has been confirmed to actually be there too. Oh and Phil Rydna.. So yeah a bunch of people who’ve worked on the show will be there.

Michael DeForge holding Lose 3

DS: You’ve been a regular presence at TCAF for a few years, can we get some of your thoughts on the evolution of the festival and how it has come along?

MD: I’ve only been there as an exhibitor for two years – but I think the first one I attended was when it was first held, or the first time I went was the one hosted at Old Vic… It has – obviously – grown a good deal since then.

So far it’s been the best comics festival that I’ve attended – the fact that its curated, is really great. And I guess I’m a bit biased because I’m from the town, but it’s run a lot more smoothly than other festivals I’ve been to (the exception would be the Brooklyn festival in December, I think that’s probably the only one I’ve seen so far that’s comparable) – and I haven’t been to Stump Town which is hear is wonderful… But yeah – it’s run really smoothly, there’s nothing hectic about it, and the whole time you have the impression that you’re just hanging out with a bunch of your friends – who I guess, just happen to come from all over the world. But for a festival as big as it is – it always tends to seem very casual and stress-free, which, I’m sure is not the case for the organizers themselves.

DS: I’m well aware of your fondness for serialized cable television, and you’ve got a hidden Wire reference, and a rather clear AMC reference in Lose #3 – What’re your thoughts on Game of Thrones so far? And is there anything you’re looking forward too, that’s coming up over the next year and a bit in cable television?

MD: Oh man, yeah I’m digging Game of Thrones – the third episode the show really came together… I think it’s sort of like how Deadwood took about six episodes (and I thought the first six were really good), but it took a little bit for Deadwood to fully realize – and for you to really realize – what the scope was and what the focus could be. Game of Thrones – these first three are great – I haven’t read the books, and I don’t know – maybe I’ll start hating it by the end of the season, but so far I’m fully on board.

As far as other TV goes, I’m stoked for Louie to come back on – really like Louie, and I’m curious about Luck when that comes out because yeah, Deadwood is an all time favourite series, so I trust that writer despite him being responsible for John from Cincinnati.

DS: Lose 3 is filled with a bunch of ethnic food references – in fact, an ethnic food argument dominates an entire page– give me your five best ethnic food recommendations in Toronto.

MD: Oh man…

DS: Take time to think about it man

MD: Well Chinese Traditional Bun, that’s pretty close to me and it’s where I go, very often, on Dundas…

DS: I want five man, need four more.

MD: Oh, I don’t know… I feel like my feet are being put to the fire

DS: We ask tough questions here man…

MD: Well Sushi Couture is solid. Dosa Mahal on Bloor Street… Caribbean Queen – also in the Bloor village… Is that 3?

DS: I think we’ve got four…

MD: We’ve got four huh… ? I feel like I need a really good one.

DS: You’ve got to cap it off right, Mike.

MD: I need something no one has thought of.

DS: Not sure that matters, just give us some good food!

MD: Okay, I’ll go with the fried chicken at Ajuker – the Korean Fried chicken… It’s awesome.

DS: Good calls man. Alright that’s all we need! Thanks so much!

MD: Thank you!

Snow

Heavily embedded in the culture and locations of Toronto’s Queen Street West, Rivers’ protagonist Dana acts, reads and feels like a real person you could bump into on your way to the bar. This fun blending of fiction and recognizable locales lends Snow a very real-life quality.

References to the Bathurst fire and the upscaling of this once edgy-indie neighborhood, make the reader feel as though they are just off-panel from the characters. This transforms the storyline – which is essentially a random string of banal events and everyday experiences – into a plot with meaning and impact. This is your city. These are your friends. It’s your life.

Benjamin River’s art is sparse and yet highly effective. As someone who is trying to learn the craft/art of producing black and white comics (which have their own unique visual tricks and techniques), I found myself studying the pages, learning a great deal from his illustrations. Simple, strong line work, which plays so well in the B&W medium, make Snow a strong visual read.

It is exciting to see a graphic novel so tied into Toronto (and to one of its great downtown communities) debuting this weekend at the Toronto Comics Art Festival. An amazing celebration of the more cultural, independent and ‘person-to-person’ aspects of the comic industry, TCAF is running all weekend at the Toronto Reference Library! Join me in heading down there, and be sure to drop by Benjamin’s table and take a look at the new Snow: Complete Edition graphic novel.

There aren’t questions, sometimes there are answers, at times explanations, but mostly there are just moments. Appropriate snippets of conversation tied together through open themes like family, substances, highs and lows. It can feel like there are a lot of gaps, but another way to look at it, is as a grouping of journal entries rather than a streaming development.

What really pins The Next Day is Porcellino’s art. Simple but really well thought out, Porcellino’s magnificently striking interpretations of even seemingly insignificant quotations really push The Next Day forward as a creative endeavour over a sociological document. John is simple, and it may strike some as a bit close to the cartoonish side, but if it were to brand a more serious look it would seem more ridiculous. Instead the style comes off as gentle, easy, but poignant.

If there is one thing that the online component does better than the book does it is the storm theme. What the interactive form gives you is the sound, of their voices and a truly disturbing growing rumble of clouds in the distance, while illustrated in the book it’s a little too easy to dismiss.

The Next Day isn’t asking for your judgement. While you may be able to relate to many of the feelings and snippets of these four people, the spaces in between and the mix-tape of tragedies doesn’t let you forget that, no, this isn’t something for you to sync with. Depression and suicide are complicated, if this book was thicker than a residence floor’s reading list it still wouldn’t paint the whole picture. Instead The Next Day is frames, fragments and letters, a diary of carefully selected visions that draw together how human and easily triggered the darkest times can be.

Creators Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col with George Zotti at The Silver Snail

In this dark tale, the Bard’s most famous heroes embark upon a journey to discover a long-lost soul. Hamlet, Juliet, Othello, Falstaff, and Romeo search for a reclusive wizard who may have the ability to assist them in their battle against the evil forces led by the villains Richard III, Lady Macbeth and Iago. That reclusive wizard? William Shakespeare.

Any English majors reading that synopsis feel their heads exploding yet?
Those who survive this initial assailment on First Folio canon will want to check out Kill Shakespeare, the planned 12-issue comic book series from IDW Publishing co-created by Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. I sat down (okay, leaned against some short book shelves) with them last weekend at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. They were attending as part of Transmission X’s entourage (Kill Shakespeare artist Andy Belanger is one of TX’s founders).

Jonathan: Can you give us a synopsis of what the comic is about?
Conor McCreery: Kill Shakespeare is an action-adventure series in which we pit all of Shakespeare’s greatest heroes against his most menacing villains. And they’re all on their way to either kill or save a reclusive wizard by the name of William Shakespeare. It’s being published by IDW, and it’s a 12-issue series.

Jonathan: Where did the idea for this story come up?
Conor: The origins are: We came up with it about six years ago. We were just brainstorming ideas for video games, and Kill Bill had just come out. We thought, hey there should be a Kill Bill video game, but instead of tracking down David Carradine, we should be tracking down Bill…Shake…speare? And we thought, ‘Oh my god, this is fantastic.’
Anthony Del Col: At first we thought of it as a massive multiplayer online role playing game, but then as we started to develop it, we just discovered how great the medium of comic books is. Conner had worked at the Silver Snail for a while, and we felt that Kill Shakespeare would be best as a comic series.

Kill Shakespeare #1

Jonathan: Where do you see this going, besides a comic book?
Conor: The first thing we really want to do is make a really good comic book. It’s perfect for Shakespeare because comics are a visual medium, and of course you’re not supposed to read his plays, you’re supposed to see them performed. So one of the neat things is that you get the sense of almost watching a performance. As we’ve gone on, we’ve had some people come to us. So someone’s said to us they want to do a role-playing game, so we’re just in the final stages of launching that product. We’ve been approached by Hollywood about whether we would want to do a film version of this.

We always wanted to do something in the online world, just because it’s a really great way to build a community. I mean, I’m a big comics geek, Anthony’s a huge Shakespeare geek, so it kind of gives us a way take two worlds that we love, and merge them. But it also lets people who are fans of Shakespeare and of comics to get together. Because it’s funny – Shakespeare and comics are still two sort of geeky pastimes. You might say that you’re a Batman fan, but you might not say that you’re a Hamlet fan. There’s something different about that. People talk about how they play video games, but a lot of comic fans are still a little nervous to get on the subway and, on a Wednesday, are they going to pull out and read their comics on the subway ride home? Some comic fans won’t because there’s still that bit of a stigma. We’d love it if we can help break down that stigma.

Jonathan: This is not a typical approach to Shakespeare, or merely an adaptation of an existing play. These characters are coming together in very unusual ways. How do you work with characters from such established roles and different backgrounds?
Conor: The big thing is that we’re not “doing Shakespeare.” We have a new story. Now we’re using Shakespeare characters, and we think we’re being respectful and honourable to what The Bard did with these characters, but we made a decision early on that it would be our own story, and also say something about us. So in a weird way, it’s not intimidating, because we aren’t pressured to use Hamlet the way the Bard did. We want to use him in a way that’s exciting for us, and both being Shakespeare fans, I think the average Shakespeare fan will say “Yeah, that makes total sense.” But yeah, we’ve had scholars come say to us “I don’t know about this. There’s something wrong about this.” What can you do?
Anthony: We want this to appeal to everybody. If you know Shakespeare, that’s great. If you know nothing about him, that’s even better. It’s the kind of thing where if you haven’t read Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet or any of these plays, you still know who these characters are. So we’ve consciously made the decision not to get too caught up in the actual stories, and to let them breathe as characters on their own. Yet you have to be somewhat faithful to these characters as they were originally conceived.

Jonathan: How do you figure out where that line is? How familiar are you guys with Shakespeare, and did you do any research specifically for this project?
Anthony: We’ve both been Shakespeare fans. We’re not English graduates or anything like that; we both went to business school. But Conor was a theatre minor, I was a film minor, and so we were just interested in that sort of thing. I’ve loved Shakespeare since high school; I go every year to the Stratford festival. Conner was moved by a production of The Tempest when he went to Stratford back in…Grade nine?
Conor: I think it was Grade seven, actually.
Anthony: Yeah, we had a really great teacher in high school. I’m from northern Ontario, and our teacher would organize a trip every year. We kind of brushed up on our Shakespeare, to paraphrase a song, but we also made a conscious decision not to read them word-for-word or line-by-line, because we didn’t want to get too caught up in that scene. Again, we wanted to make it fresh and accessible to everybody.
Conor: It was very challenging because I had to read them, every other word.
Anthony: Then it’s not iambic pentameter!

Jonathan: Yes, why did you choose not to work with iambic?
Conor: We didn’t want to write in iambic for a couple of reasons. One, because Shakespeare’s done it better than we ever will. The language is beautiful. But it’s not contemporary, and that’s kind of a problem. The vocabulary is not quite what we use nowadays. And even in Shakespeare’s time it was a little different – it was theatre speech, not common speech.

The other thing is that we wanted to create a new level of accessibility—either for someone who’s never been into Shakespeare, or for someone who’s going to return to it. We don’t want someone to not read Hamlet and read our comic instead. We want them to read them both. If dropping iambic is what gives someone the incentive to dip their first toe into Shakespeare, and then they might say “Okay, I can take on Othello now, because I kind of have a sense of what that guy’s about,” that would be awesome.

The best compliment that we’ve had so far is from a guy who said that it made him want to read other things. It made him want to read Shakespeare; it made him want to read other comics; it just made him want to be creative. If we can get that response out of a bunch of people, that would be a dream.

Jonathan: Tell us about your connection to Transmission X.
Anthony: Transmission X is a webcomic collective, from artists mostly in Toronto. Our connection is to Andy Belanger, he does one called Raising Hell. The great thing about TX is that these are some of the best artists in Toronto. It’s putting Andy into the North American comic book scene, much like how Cameron Stewart has been in the last little while. You know, people talk about Toronto being one of the hotbeds of comic book talent, and TX is really at the forefront of that.

Jonathan: What’s your favourite Shakespeare play?
Anthony: My favourite is Othello. In a lot of his plays, Shakespeare works with the fantasy element, but in Othello he just bypasses that entirely and it’s just about pure human emotion—jealousy, revenge, all the great ones. That really speaks to me.
Conor: For me it’s probably still The Tempest. I love the notion of these creatures on the island. What I really like is the notion of Prospero, who is this god who ultimately chooses to let the people make their own decisions. It was so interesting to see this powerful character decide to just let things go and see how things work out. It kind of informed a lot of my decisions about how people with power should act.

Scott Campbell is the art director at Double Fine Productions, a video game development studio founded by Tim Schafer of Lucasarts adventure game fame. Campbell’s cartoony and light-hearted art style form the canvas of Double Fine’s critically acclaimed games Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. I spoke with Campbell at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, after he spoke on a panel that discussed the convergence of video games and comic books. He has a webcomic of his own on Double Fine’s website, called Double Fine Action Comics.

Jonathan: Tell me about the games you worked on at Double Fine.

Scott Campbell: Psychonauts was the first game we did and I was art director on that, which meant that I helped establish the visual style of the game. I did a lot of designs for it, including the characters, and sort of kept the vision intact. Same thing with Brutal Legend, except by that time we had a bigger production team, so we had a pre-production phase as well.

Jonathan: You mentioned that with a project like Brutal Legend, you went through several stages of concepts, refining and editing. How long was the process?

Scott: Tim Schafer, the head guy at Double Fine, is a total perfectionist. I am a perfectionist too, so we always just want to iterate, iterate, iterate until it’s perfect. With that project it took about five years to make, and it’s pretty ongoing, as far as redesigning things to get them to work.

I would design something, and then I would bring it to Tim, and there are certain reactions you want to get out of him. So if you show him a drawing or a concept for something, and you’re pretty excited about it, but you’re not entirely sure, and Tim’s like “ah, that’s pretty cool,” then you know. You could stop there, but you have to keep on going until he’s like “Ah, heh heh!” laughing out loud and having a good time about it.

That’s what makes that environment so great; creatively everyone wants to make everyone else psyched, and to laugh at each other’s ideas – well, a good laugh – just really to inspire each other, and that environment creates some really interesting stuff. I think we all appreciate how Tim works to create that environment. In crunch time it gets crazy, but it’s still good to have someone making sure that everything is still top quality.

Psychonauts from Double Fine Productions

Jonathan: Any one artistic aspect you can point to in Brutal Legend or Psychonauts that is yours?

Scott: I started at Double Fine because Tim wanted me to establish their style, based kind of on my cartoony style, for Psychonauts. So I guess that entire game has my signature on it. I designed all the characters, and designed and hand-placed all of the figments in the game. There were these collectibles, sort of like hand-drawn memories in the game, and that was the one thing I did beside the concepts.

Brutal Legend was a different style, so it called for a different look. We wanted it to be powerful, to make it feel like it could be on the cover of a heavy metal album, so that a metal fan would like any image from the game. So we wanted to do that, but also give it some of that Double Fine style as well.

Jonathan: Brutal Legend featured characters based on real people, like Jack Black and Ozzy Osbourne. Were there any constraints on how far you were allowed to take their representations?

Scott: Dude, yeah. Those characters were the hardest ones for me to design. We didn’t have any constraints with them specifically; they didn’t tell us, ‘you have to make us look a certain way’ or anything. But just trying to work on the likeness of such recognizable people and have it work with the stylized look of the game, was really difficult. I was doing a lot of noodling to make sure it works. It’s very hard.

Jonathan: So you didn’t have any constraints from the celebrities or their agents/promoters at all?

Scott: No. Our guidelines came from Tim, because these were all his idols. So he had images in his mind that he grew up with and that he loved about him. You know, like having Ozzy with a bat body and a straitjacket. They’re like gods in a fantasy world. The game is basically Tim’s fantasy world. And we were all trying to realize his world, to bring it to life in different ways.

Brutal Legend art by Scott Campbell

Jonathan: Brutal Legend wasn’t as big a commercial success as some may have hoped. Did you get a sense that it didn’t reach its potential, or reach as many people as it could have?

Scott: That’s an area I don’t know much about. I think a lot of us just move on to the next thing. Because after working for five years on a project I rarely want to think about it. (laughs) You know? So it’s hard for me to gauge everyone’s reactions. But it seems good, far as I can tell.

Jonathan: Can you say what you’re working on now?

Scott: With Double Fine? Top secret! But it’s a very exciting place right now. My own stuff is working out. I’m just finishing a kid’s book about zombies. I’m going to be done about in June. It’s with Simon & Schuster. And various art shows and things.

Jonathan: You have a very distinctive art style. Can you tell me where that came from, and how you started drawing?

Scott: After art school, there were a few years where I was working with some others who were trying really hard to keep each other excited with art. All my artist friends had a reason to do it, like “Oh, I have to create art or I will die!” or “I have to paint or I’m going to lose my mind!” and I just didn’t feel like that.

I wanted to figure out what I was trying to say with my art, and that was the one thing I never learned in art school. What am I trying to say? What was my reason for creating? I felt like I always wanted to get that same kind of excitement that you got when you woke up as a kid in the morning; you were so excited to get back to drawing that battle, or that weird thing you were drawing the other day. It was less about drawing and more like you were on an adventure. That’s what I wanted to get, that same childlike excitement.

Once I started using the watercolours, because I was struggling to find a medium too, they were very non-committal for me. It’s not like with washes, or oil, or acrylic; those are very decadent and you can layer and whatever, but you’re very committed to these colours. Watercolours are very subtle and very pleasant. I could put a little bit of colour and then keep adding it, but you can go very slowly with each stroke. You don’t have to really commit to it, and I think it gives a certain kind of light-heartedness to it. It feels more in tune with the themes that I have – which are supposed to be light-hearted, and make you feel really good. I feel like my role is to make things that make others feel gleeful.

Jonathan: Double Fine Action Comics is a little more under the radar, and it has pretty much nothing to do with the major projects the studio is working on. How do you figure out what to do with these comics that have the studio’s name on it?

Scott: Well Tim’s always wanted an environment like that. So many things can happen, not just games. And we have the site act as a hub for everything. We have it for everyone at the studio to get their own ideas out there. It’s very encouraging to have everyone coming up for ideas for games, and for stories. That’s what he wants Double Fine to be: an exciting place where lots of things are happening. There are comics, and some mini-games as well on the site, some of which are based on the comics.

Also, it’s about putting things out there while in the middle of a five-year project just so people can see – oh, they’re still alive in there! They’re still creating things! Having everyone there working on “extra-curricular” things helps the main projects.

Great Showdowns by Scott Campbell

Jonathan: Do you feel added pressure from publishers, especially closer to release dates when you have to put all that aside and get the game ready in time for that date?

Scott: Oh, there are definitely times when we just don’t output as many comics. Most webcomics are very, very regular, which makes them very effective. You expect to get them every single day, or every week or whatever. And it does slip sometimes at Double Fine, when it gets really busy, which is a bummer. There were a few artists who did them for a while but then stopped, because once it starts feeling like a second part of your job, and then it’s not fun. It’s supposed to be a way to just release some pent-up stuff. Not necessarily releasing frustration, just so that you’re not all working on one thing.

Jonathan: Have you been playing any video game or reading any comics lately?

Scott: I haven’t had much time to play many games recently, which totally bums me out. But for webcomics, I like Kate Beaton’s Hark a Vagrant, and Ryan Pequin’s Three Word Phrase. Kate’s work is amazing. And they have a bent that I really like because they’re historical, the dialogue’s amazing, and the jokes are just so funny. And Ryan’s are just so simple, that every time it’s just a sort of mini-joke, but it’s always just so good. And there’s also Graham Annable’s Dunk at Telltale Games – which is another thing. They [Telltale] have the same thing with games as well as comics on their site.

Jonathan: What’s on your dork shelf?

Scott: I’m kind of addicted to buying books. I have this awesome book about knights that I found. I also got a Brutal Legend action figure on my shelf, it’s of Eddie [Riggs, Jack Black/the game’s main character] jumping down with his axe. It very much sticks out with the rest of the stuff. Oh, and my puppets are next to Eddie, which is an interesting combination. Oh, and an Elisabeth Ito plush cat-dude.

Think Hot Docs is the only festival happening in Toronto this week? The exhibition portion of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival kicked off today, and if you’re looking for a great way to spend this rainy weekend, TCAF is the place to be.

Don’t expect to see any comics from the big two at TCAF though. The fest is not a comic convention in the classic sense, the focus is on independent artists, creators and small publishers of comic books and graphic novels. In addition to the hundreds of guests and exhibitors showcasing their work, TCAF also includes panels and group discussions about the independent comic scene. Guests include Paul Pope (Batman: Year 100, 100%), Jim Woodring (Frank, Jim), Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese), Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant), Brandon Bird, the fine folks from Transmission X and many, many more.

Comic books not your thing? Not to worry, the Hand Eye Society has you covered. Hand Eye epresenting Toronto’s indie video game development community. This is a  great chance to check out the latest projects from local developers GetSetGames, Spooky Squid Games, SpyeArt, Untold Entertainment Inc. and many more. You’ll also have an opportunity to try the legendary TORONTRON: a classic arcade machine that has been retrofitted to play indie games by local developers. Local game journalist Matthew Kumar will be moderating a panel called The Spirit of Indie: Where Comics Meet Video Games, exploring the convergence of the two mediums.

Scott Campbell, art director and concept artist for Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend) will also be in attendance.

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival takes place May 8th-9th 2010 at the Toronto Reference Library. Admission is free!

For more info check out the official TCAF site or just head down to the Ref.

Comic Book Confidential is a great documentary and I highly recommend it to anyone with a love of comic books.  Hell, even if you don’t like comic books the film provides a very entertaining history of the medium.

Comic Book Confidential, with an introduction by director Ron Mann, is on Saturday, May 2nd, at 11:59 PM at Innis College Town Hall. That’s 2 Sussex Ave., one block south of Bloor and St. George.

via CINSSU – Free Friday Films and TorontoComics.com.