Entry 199: Blast From The Past- Part 14

Hi Hi Hi, my friend.

It's me, Dustin Weaver, back with another of my blog entries where I reach into the past to bring you some of my old works.

Many of these works have never been seen by anyone. They have mostly been works that were not published and were never meant for publishing. But now we've finally reached a point in the chronicling of my career where that changes.

I'm going back to 2003. This was back in my internship at Wildstorm. At this point I had done some pin-ups that had been published, but not a whole comic book. I had drawn 3 issues of Assassin's Guild, but they hadn't been published yet. But during my internship at Wildstorm I pencilled (over layouts by Ale Garza) my first comic to be published-- GEN 13 Volume 2 #11.

This "Blast From The Past" entry covers one aspect of my Wildstorm internship, the work I did as an assistant to Ale Garza.







Once again, I do suggest, to get more context for this blog entry, go back and look at some of my other "Blast From the Past" entries. Just go to the bottom of this entry and click on the tag.

At some point in my 10 week internship in the Wildstorm studio artist Ale Garza asked me if I wanted to draw an issue of Gen 13. You know, a real comic that would be published and judged by the world and that, at that time, was being written by CHRIS CLAREMONT! I would be working over Ale's layouts, so I wouldn't be completely on my own, but still. This seemed like kind of a big deal. Was he sure about this? I wondered if he knew what he was doing but I said yes.

I still wonder, because my understanding of this is that he did this without the editors on the book knowing. And when they fond out, they were not happy about it. They certainly wouldn't have approved of this. I was a nobody intern! I had no business doing Gen.13. Ale, in a cool relaxed Ale way, reassured me I'd be fine.

The layouts were way looser than I had anticipated. They were really just initial gesture drawings. I really did have to work a lot of it out myself. I decided to try to capture what Ale was doing on the series. I wanted to study his forms and try to make it look like his work. It seemed like the right thing to do, you know, to create a smooth experience for the readers.

Ultimately, I regretted trying to work in Ale's style. When the book was done, though I had drawn all the pictures in it, I really didn't see much of myself in the work. Adding to that was that a lot of the inks had to be rushed. (Not the pages inked by Sandra Hope. She did a great job.)

I continued to work with Ale after that issue. Not a lot, just on some backgrounds on a few books. The first of those was Gen 13 vol.2 #13.

The whole look of the comic was kind of an experiment inspired by Jamie Hewlett's Gorillaz stuff. I had a good time on it.

The next thing I did backgrounds on with him was a short 4 page Street Fighter back-up story.

The backgrounds I did were completely digitally painted over, but who ever did it did a really nice job. The captured every detail, and made it look like an animation background plate.
 

At this point, my internship was over. I would meet Ale at the studio to get pages then take them to my Grandparent's basement to draw the backgrounds.

After that I did about 9 pages of backgrounds for Starjammers #1 for Ale. That's right, he had switched sides and was now working for Marvel.
  So this is some of the first work I ever did that got out there to be seen by people, but there was a project I did with Ale that hasn't been seen by anyone ever.

During my internship Ale asked me if I would draw an 8 page comic written by Allen Warner that would be used to pitch an all new series called "Bluebirds". He and Allen had developed it, but if it got picked up, I would be the series artist.

The idea was to do a humorous version of the show COPS but in space. This was just before the show Reno 911 was a thing. Now it would just be Reno 911 in space. I liked the script, and I got pretty excited about the idea of creating the look and feel of this universe. I did a lot of sketches and concept work along with the 8 page story. I turned it all over to Ale-- and that was that. Apparently they pitched it to someone, I don't know who, and it was shot down.

Like that, it was all stuffed into my box of old work and forgotten forever.

Until now!

Just for this blog entry I dug it up and adjusted the contrast so that the pencils look nice and dark and I added screentones to give it a finished look. I even dug out the script and put the words to it, so that you could read it.

Here it is. (edit: here's the first page of it)

I like this work. It's always made me sad that it has just been sitting in a box, never having been seen. I'm happy that I get to show it to you now. (edit: it's now been published in PAKLIS #0)

Throughout my internship Ale was a super nice guy and was always supportive and encouraging. I appreciated him throwing all of this work my way.

You can visit Ale's Instagram page to see what he's working on at http://instagram.com/alegarza77 

In my next BFTP entry I'll continue talking about my internship. There is a lot to show you from that internship. I drew a lot of stuff.

Blogged and Blogged