*Once again, click to enlarge.
Character Creation:This is the part that I enjoy most, and I realized that the cast was going to be huge, you can't have a town without people, merchants, musicians and of course a criminal element and even more importantly BARS. I spend alot of time in the pubs in Toronto for meetings about paintings, TShirt designs, cooling down after painting in my studio, and especially seeing bands, I wanted AHT to have a strong music scene and a pub life. I also realized that as I created these characters that AHT would be a more interesting place if just about everyone in the town at one point in their lives had served in the military, it's hard to start trouble when everyone is "a hard man". So the first move was to just fill in the background, as I hadn't decided who our main character would be, it made sense to build a strong supporting cast.
As I was drawing in the sketchbook that I dedicated to AHT I realized, I hated drawing in this dang sketchbook, I didn't like the paper, the pens I was using etc. so after doing about twelve pages I realized we had to switch to boards. The best part about working on these small boards was they dictated the size of what I could do, one board per character. I began doing one or two a day at the pub after working at my job or after painting, I needed to switch my mind off of painting and drawing characters became the way to relax.
This may sound strange to you that after a day of creating you relax by creating something else (instead of watching TV or Facebooking or the gym) but it worked for me. It also gave me something to post to get people to visit daily and have a look at who's been added to the roster and what their all about as I started to write the first rough "arc" of AHT, which I've done almost to my satisfaction, and hope to get up here by the end of March, at least the first four pages....
to be cont'd.
A.Shay Hahn