Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dynamite, entertainment, green hornet, Jonathon Lau, kevin smith, red sonja

Artist Spotlight – Dynamite's Jonathan Lau

Published Thu, 22 May 2014 20:00:32 -0500

Jonathan Lau has been all over the place at Dynamite. Best known for his run on the Green Hornet with some guy named Kevin Smith… Lau brings his kinetic, highly detailed style to whatever project he gets. He can't tell us what his next project is yet, but we can still shine the spotlight on him.

BLEEDING COOL: How did you get started drawing?

JONATHAN LAU: Like most artists do, I draw a lot from early childhood and onwards. I sketch on newspapers, textbooks, notebooks, assignment papers, scratch papers and etc. I think it was a fondness of pretty pictures from children's books that made me want to create. I recall tracing over a magazine, that helped me tremendously in drawing realistic people and faces, and that's how I still advise people to do.

BC: Who were your biggest influences?

JL: Back when I was little, my parents would buy us siblings a couple of weekly Chinese children comics (some of the popular ones is Doraemon). One stood out is Old Master Q, its sort of a pantomime comics where I learned the importance of expressions and sequence. For perseverance in detail works, I learned from collecting Herge's Tintin. For anatomy, Bart Sears had been influential whether from the comics he did or the tutorials from Wizard magazines . For action, Ma Wing Shing from Hong Kong has been my constancy. And lastly, I learned from the Kuberts the importance of composition.

BC: What is your process for doing a page? How long does it take you?

JL: Here's my (very strict) routine: I do all the thumbnails in one sitting. My layouts are nothing comprehensible, they're just scribbles on many scratch papers since I do this for myself only. Next step is doing the tight blue pencil layouts on the actual boards, for all 22 pages. Then pencil work begins by going back at page 1. I usually get to finish a page or 2 in a day. After all penciling work is finished, they're all scanned into the computer for the cleaning process. No partial work in any step of the process, everything in stages.

Distractions like: asked to submit pages partially or house errands really slow everything down. Working in batches save time. Whereas going through all the stages mentioned above for one page at a time is really time consuming.

On a side note, every morning I write down my task for the day on a journal, I can't stress this habit enough that its really effective. And I listen to audiobooks while working, they're great companions.

BC: Where might folks have seen your work previously?

JL: Credits include Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Man, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, Captain Action, but I'm known for the Green Hornet guy (Kevin Smith version) but how I wish I could redo those pages now that I've grown. Most recent work is the finale issue of Miss Fury and a one shot – Red Sonja and Cub, how I wish to do more Sonja.

BC: What are you working on now?

JL: Nothing concrete yet but I'm told to prepare to do old-school paneling and sequential for the next project. No fancy layouts. Hmmm…

BC: What is your dream project?

JL: Like most artists, a chance to work for the big 2. So far most of my works are on single character comics, no team books, and that's just alright with me. But I do want where the action is, not figuratively speaking, but rather where characters can do super punches and where stories include plenty of destruction.

You can see some of Jonathan Lau's work here on Red Sonja and Cub.