TOUR DE FRANCE COMMERCIAL WORK

Here's a fun project that I worked on. Not a published comic book, but an animated episode with voice over. I'll give you the link at the end of this post.

I was contacted to do some work for versus.com on Cycling and the world famous even, Tour De France. During that time, they were looking for someone who would supply the art. So I referred a friend, Richard Lee, to take on the project. I was involved for maybe a couple of days assembling a team (penciller, inker, colorist), then I decided to leave the project and just let Richard do the pencils and inks. Mainly because we only had about a week to complete the project. I figure it'll be quicker if Richard inked himself and I just wash my hands clean from the project. The very next day, the company contacted me back and said they wanted me to be on the project because "I get it". Something about the way I inked that gave it a specific look that wanted for the project. So I told them that if they wanted me on board, there's a certain deadline that each of use needs to meet to make that one week deadline. One of the things I do well is scheduling myself with work so I'm always ahead of schedule with deadlines. In this case, I outlined a schedule for the penciller, myself, and the colorist. Penciller gets 4-5 days, I get max 2 days, and colorist gets 4-5 days. I know my own work habits but not the penciller or colorist. So I rather they have more time than myself. I can always burn the midnight oil which is something I'm used to doing. Which I did.

Now onto the inks. They did say they wanted my ink style. I didn't know what that was. Because when I ink, I can ink in any style. It's what the pencils call for that makes me decide how the inks will go. So when I received the pencils to be converted to Blue Line inks, I inked it like the way you see in the first round of inks above. When I submitted those images, it wasn't what hey were looking for. They wanted the inks to be more darker, more edgier. So I did a second round of inks (see the second set of images above) at a complete different direction which was then approved. So from then on, I inked everything in that style. It's always a plus to be able to ink in any style so you're not just stuck with one. Lots of images were done. Image of people riding a bike, flopped images, backgrounds, individual elements which will be used to create the animation and so forth.

The nice part about this is it'll be used for the versus.com website as a animated graphic novel. Also, clippings of it will be used for a bunch of 30 second commercials which will run on Television during the Tour De France to create excitement. On top of that, the whole episode will air on TV during he event. So you'll see this on TV if you're watching the Tour De France live.

The Animated Graphic Novel is called ADVENTURES OF THE EPIC CYCLE and I worked on episode 3, "EYE OF THE VETERAN". You can watch it here. You may need to click on Episode 3 to view it if, it's not already there.