Here are four different portrayals of Rogue Agent Zed.
First up, Scott Arnold, my collaborator on Lightning Girl Loves Rocket Boy and Spiders and Stardust: A David Bowie Tribute Anthology:
Next, Marco D. Carrillo takes a shot at illustrating Zed.
Marco and I worked together on Battle Team Omega and Astro Crusader:
Then we have Zed's original artist, Jeremiah Goldson.
Jeremiah and I have worked on a handful of projects together including Rogue Agent Zed and Monica Furious: SuperDestroyer:
Jeremiah Goldson and I have been working on Rogue Agent Zed for the last five years. That's a lot time, dedication, and commitment. As we head down the home stretch, let's take a look as we put the proverbial icing on the cake. This is one of the finishing touches to the project -- and maybe one of the most important ones -- the cover.
Jeremiah starts out with the light pencil sketch, beginning the inking process on the primary focus of the piece, Rogue Agent Zed standing in the foreground:
The process continues as the two lead characters get inked and the piece starts to come together.
Having finished up the special ops agents, the background starts getting Jeremiah's trademark level of detail.
And here's the piece with the pencils and inks done. We're talking about one seriously awesome illustration!
My first choice of colorists, Paul Little, mentioned he had a small window on his schedule to work on some new pieces. I immediately jumped at the opportunity to secure his talents.
I asked for some minor adjustments (lighten up the levels, change the hair color, mute the intensity on a couple of the costume elements) and we slapped some text and logos on. Voila!
I have to say, watching this cover come together was a real thrill. I love the finished product, and I think that it's a fitting cover for a project that's been five years in the making. Looking at this, I can't help but think: it's been worth the wait!
A lot of folks have indicated their great anticipation for the release of Rogue Agent Zed. I’m in the same boat! All of Jeremiah's preview art is breathtaking. I just want to reassure everyone that he continues to work hard on the book, and we are closing in on the finish line. I've seen some of his later pages and they look great. I would love to share all of them with you -- but they contain some blatant plot spoilers, and I can't figure out a way to post them without ruining parts of the ending! Hmmm. Here, let me show you a couple of works that don’t seem to compromise the integrity of the story. These are some more recent panels from Jeremiah, showing some unfinished pencils and offering a little insight on his work process.
We have been working on this book for four years now, and believe me when I tell you -- the project has truly been a labor of love for the both of us. Hope you enjoyed the quick snapshot, and let’s hope it will help sustain us all until the final product hits the stands soon!
A few posts back, I offered a tantalizingly brief preview of Jeremiah Goldson's interior art for Rogue Agent Zed. If your reactions were similar to mine, I suspect you were blown away by what you saw -- but also a little bit frustrated that there were only two panels to look at. Well, after a recent burst of discussions by the members of the creative team, I'm here to try and correct that imbalance.
And so, without further delay, please enjoy a selection of sequential artwork from the original Hypersmash project, Rogue Agent Zed. (And let me strongly encourage you to click on the images to enlarge them.)
I know I've said it over and over again, but Jeremiah's attention to backgrounds and details is really stunning. I love the grit and the texture in the panels above.
There's also a very deft display of cinematic lighting. The use of high contrast shadows creates a wonderful sense of mood and drama.
Jeremiah is not restricted to drawing slow, contemplative scenes of people standing around. He can also crank up the volume when the story calls for some action! (For example, a futuristic military unit unleashing their full complement of hi-tech weapons.)
Whether it's smoke drifting lazily from a cigarette, a fire blazing unchecked in the background, or raindrops splattering a car window, everything Jeremiah draws looks convincing and pretty damn cool.
The script basically asked for a random crowd scene without much direction on my part, and Jeremiah took the premise and ran with it. He really upped the ante, as every character depicted in the panels above has a distinctive look and is positively brimming with personality.
Looking at a comic drawn by Jeremiah Goldson is a rich visual experience that rewards attentive reading. As the writer and publisher of Rogue Agent Zed, I have to say that everything I've seen looks great so far and I can't wait to see what he's going to come up with next.
As I’ve probably mentioned before, Jeremiah Goldson draws with a very time-intensive style and his attention to creating detailed, moody backgrounds is one of the more impressive aspects to his artistic arsenal. While I’ve posted some sequential pages to Lightning Girl Loves Rocket Boy and Battle Team Omega, I wanted to share a more minimalist glimpse of the interior art on Jeremiah’s project, Rogue Agent Zed. Instead of giving you a couple of pages, I want to show you two panels of the work. That’s right. Two panels. How’s that for a tease?
So, without further ado, here is a look at some interior art for the Hypersmash title, Rogue Agent Zed.
Pretty cool. Jeremiah is one talented cat.
Trust me, there’s more to come.
And I feel pretty confident that it’s all going to be equally fabulous.
In our previous posts, Jeremiah was kind enough to lend us artwork from his earlier projects to give us all a taste for the scope and magnitude of his talent. But this post will be the first one to highlight multiple sketches that he's created for a Hypersmash-specific title (in this case, Rogue Agent Zed.) Let's go ahead and take a look at the character designs he's worked up so far.
These first two images are of our protagonist, Rogue Agent Zed. I really like these portraits. He appears confident, capable, and imposing. All in all, he cuts quite an impressive figure. I would say that he looks like this, oh, about half the time. The other half, he is drunk, or maybe completely incoherent due to some massive drug intake. (Please note: despite his well-documented ability to save the world from utter destruction on a regular basis, Rogue Agent Zed is not a good role-model for your children. End note.)
The lovely gal that Jeremiah has sketched to the far right is Agent Wyatt, who is the co-lead in the story. She is sane, reasonable, and very professional. For these reasons, and many more, we should all pity her for being assigned to work with Zed. Poor, poor Wyatt.
When Zed isn't wearing a jacket, we notice that he is a scrawny little thing distinctly lacking in the muscles and physique department. Which is okay. He doesn't succeed on the basis of his physical attributes. Instead, he relies on his intellectual gifts and his uncanny insights.
And the occasional violent use of very big guns. (A reminder: once again, not a role-model. Thank you.)
Every story needs a bad guy, and Jeremiah was kind enough to provide a sketch of one of our antagonists. I don't want to say too much about him, in the interests of preserving some of the story's suspense so I guess I'll withhold all vital information (specifically his name and occupation) while strongly encouraging you to pick up a copy of the first issue to see how he ties in to the story! (Man, I can be such a shill sometimes...)
Hope everyone enjoyed that brief glimpse into the world of Rogue Agent Zed. Jeremiah told me that he can't wait to dive into the project, and he's already made arrangements with his work schedule so that he can devote more time to the project. So hopefully it won't be too long before we start seeing pages for the book. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to see how great those will turn out (prediction: very great...)
"The script reminds me of the X-Files, written by a mid-80's William Gibson, commissioned by Marvel Comics." --Jeremiah Goldson, giving a pretty fitting description of our collaborative project, Rogue Agent Zed.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for stopping by. Just wanted to take a couple of seconds to do some housekeeping. Let's hit some bullet points:
1) First off, I think I've successfully activated the Comments function for the blog. I know a couple of you folks let me know that you tried to leave comments unsuccessfully. Yeah. That's my bad. I am a blogging neophyte, and I'm "trying to build the plane while it's in the air," as I like to say. I apologize for any frustration you may have run into, and I'll do my best keep an eye on the matter. (As always, please do try to remember that I may not be all that clever, but I really do mean well...)
2) I want to thank my pal (and comic blogging uber-stud) Kevin Church for featuring Hypersmash Comics in one of his recent online posts. It's a nice shot in the arm, and it's always good to have a guy like Kevin in your corner. Make sure to visit BeacoupKevin.com on a frequent basis to get his refreshing take on the world of comic books. And Battlestar Galactica. And the Pet Shop Boys.
3) Jeremiah's cool quote that led off this post is taken from something he wrote recently. He had a couple of interesting insights on our project and -- in an exciting development -- he snuck in the first ever design sketch of Rogue Agent Zed. As he's urinating. Which, uh, I like to think off as a metaphorical representation of the story's irreverent spirit. Or something.
Anyway, here's our first look at our hero:
Yup. That's our Zed.
4) Also, Scott Arnold sent along a sketch for a character from the comic he's not assigned to draw. Because, I would argue, he's easily confused. So let's all humor Scott and check out his nifty drawing of Velocity Hawk, the fastest member of Battle Team Omega, which is scheduled to be published in 2008 (written by Roel Torres, drawn by Jason Hoagland And Not Scott Arnold.): You know, it's pretty easy to forgive Scott for his (numerous) faults because he draws such pretty, pretty pictures. Dammit. Man, that's a rockin' sketch. I seriously get to work with some tremendous talent.
5) Jason is also keeping busy, and we've gotten together frequently over the last couple of weeks. We watched the Celtics play on opening night, and as we were keeping track of the game, I showed him some reference designs he requested (including an architectural sketch of our fictional high school, and my concept for a small-town flea market.) In return, he showed me a lot of his recent artwork, but -- because he bought a laptop and he isn't sure that his scanner is compatible with the new computer... I don't have any recent scans of Jason's work. You just have to trust me when I say that I've seen firsthand evidence that he's working hard and making progress. And I'll see what I can do about getting our hands on a functional scanner to capture his stuff.
6) Some of you might have missed the recent series of interviews I did with the three current artists of Hypersmash Studios -- Scott, Jason, and Jeremiah. I decided to embed those discussions at different points of the blog, in order to break up the predominantly visual posts with some text-heavy ones. The drawback was, if you read through the blog at one point, you might not have had a chance to come across them. So, to amend that, you can click right here to read some infomative responses from Scott, Jason, and Jeremiah. Personally, I enjoyed learning more about each of them and it was also very cool to have someone else's voice represented on this blog for a change!
7) I would just like to mention that I don't plan on being prolific in terms of updating this blog. I would rather wait for moments of genuine progress that I can share with everyone (as opposed to posting just to make noise and turning myself into a general nuisance. Like usual.) Expect updates when I get my hands on some new artistic content -- design sketches, character pin-ups, thumbnail layouts, or finished pages. Oh, and I will also post once we get some solid information on how to order copies of the actual comic books. Definitely. See, those will be exciting moments that will hopefully help generate some positive momentum for the projects -- and that is really the only purpose of this site. I suspect that if you good folks check out the blog maybe once a month or so, that should work out just fine. Cool? Cool.
7) And finally, if I ever write anything as groovy as these final 10 minutes from the classic movie "RNRNM", I will dominate the known universe for extended stretches at a time. Check out the YouTube clip and see what I mean. (Warning: just when you think it can't possibly get more awesome -- it gets more awesome! Enjoy! And yes, you can thank me later.) --RT
