Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, kickstarter

"Zepplins, Man. I'm Going To Do A Zepplin Movie Someday. It's Going To Be Cool!"

Published Sun, 16 Mar 2014 13:00:32 -0500

Ray Chou writes for Bleeding Cool:

Skies of Fire Issue One: Page 6, Panel 5

Vince never shut up about it in school. "Zeppelins, man. I'm going to do a zeppelin movie someday. It's going to be cool." "Alright, Vince."

"I'm serious, man. There's going to be airplanes and cannons, and these awesome battles. I have this one shot in mind where the camera tilts down from the blue sky and all you see are these airships and airplanes blowing each other up to smithereens… it's going to be epic."

"Sure Vince."

"I'm serious."

One of Vince's early notebooks.

Three years later he sent me the first draft. It was pretty rough around the edges, but the framework was there: an epic, 180 page opus about, well… zeppelins.

Skies of Fire, Issue One: Page 1.

Skies of Fire didn't start life out as collaboration but grew into one over time. Vince came to me asking for feedback; we were writing buddies and frequently exchanged notes on each other's projects. Reading Skies for the first time really spurred my imagination. It seemed that the more we talked about the project the more suggestions I had, most of which Vince liked. Eventually, it got to a point where I just decided to ask.

"Hey Vince."

"…What's up?"

"… you mind if I try rewriting this scene?"

"Sure, man."

I started by making some small changes in the first scene. Nothing drastic – mostly dialogue and some direction. He looked it over, liked what I did, and quickly sent another draft back to me with his own changes, incorporating some – but not all – of mine. I sent him back another draft doing the same with his subsequent changes and we were off.

Vince's Drafts Folder with his many drafts.

What had been the work of a single writer now became a full-blown partnership. We went back and forth, tag-teaming the script, rewriting over one another's words for months until finally we had something we were both satisfied with. Skies of Fire draft two (or forty-two, if you counted everything in between) clocked in at a much leaner 117 pages. Chief among the improvements was a clearer theme binding the epic story: revenge.

"Cool dude. What do we do now?"

"I don't know. Make it into a comic book?"

The cover for Skies of Fire Issue One.

And so began the second life of Skies of Fire. Originally we were only going to commission a few pages to pitch around to publishers and considered crowdfunding a backup if no one showed interest. After doing more research however, we came to the conclusion that bringing the book directly to Kickstarter was the better option. That way we could start building an audience while not necessarily occluding a publishing deal in the future. Seemed like a win-win to us, so off we went looking for some artists!

Vince and I first asked around our friends, relatives and acquaintances but that didn't go anywhere. We had a lot of friends who were great at video or film production, but neither of us seemed to know someone who could draw in the style we wanted.

We decided try our luck posting ads on popular art forums, which proved to be a good call. We got a ton of responses and eventually narrowed down our choices to a top five. From there we gave the same proposal to each artist: we'll give you twenty bucks and the first ten pages of the script, and you give us what you deem is twenty bucks worth of art showing the direction you would go in.

The first ever sketch Pablo sent us.

When the sketches started coming in, Pablo Peppino immediately stood out. He was not only the most enthusiastic artist about the project, but his initial sketches showed that he "got it," immediately matching the aesthetic we had in our heads. We gave him the good news, drew up a contract and found ourselves suddenly in business. We were making a comic book!

Pablo's Rough Pencils for page 2.

When it came to finding a colorist, we decided to use the same method we used for the sequentials. This time we gave them a little more direction, asking for rich earth tones with pops of primary color like Tin-Tin or Porco Rosso. We ended up picking Bryan Valenza, a talented up-and comer from Indonesia.

Page 2 with Bryan's not-yet-finalized colors.

Believe it or not, finding the right letterer actually ended up being the toughest of the artist searches. At first we didn't give enough respect to the position and had some setbacks finding the right fit.

Luckily, we eventually found Nic J Shaw, whose thoughtful approach to lettering we greatly appreciated and needed.

It's been a long journey getting to the launch of our Kickstarter. We've had a great start so far, fundraising about 50% of our total in first three days. Still, we know that this is just the beginning of the work to come. Looking back, I don't believe Skies of Fire could have existed even just five years ago. We have creatives from five different continents working on a project backed by hundreds of individuals simply because they believe in it. That's amazing.

Vince and I are really glad to finally share this project with the rest of the world, and hope that you'll join us in making Skies of Fire a reality.

– Ray

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To find out more about Skies of Fire please visit:

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1039309513/skies-of-fire

Facebook: www.facebook.com/skiesofire

Twitter: www.twitter.com/skiesofire

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We're also offering a special reward tier for Bleeding Cool readers this weekend!

$28: BLEEDING-COOL SPECIAL: A physical copy of issue #1 and a poster of your choice for $28.

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