If you’re not familiar with DeviantArt.com, it’s a site where thousands upon thousands of aspiring and successful artists alike post their sketches, professional work, or works-in-progress, as well as personal reflections on those items. It’s actually a really great network of pencil, ink, graphic, photographic and digital artists, sharing their insights into the whole process, or offering commission work for a fee. If you’re like me and you have all kinds of [bad] ideas you just desperately want to see put on paper, this is a really useful tool in your pursuit of lower-cost talent. Most of the time, they’re peers of yours. They can just draw shit. [Note: there is also poetry and other writing available on Deviant, but to be honest, I can’t imagine anyone who logs on to read any of it.]
It was in one of my regular pursuits to find a new artist to help work on my newest draft of the Horsemen comic book. I had since abandoned the Sheana Molloy version of the comic (that’s a happy story), and re-wrote the entire origin and re-worked the whole mythos of the Horsemen universe. Of course, I’m using self-aggrandizing words like “origin” and “mythos,” and the reality is, of course, they are not exactly warranted.
In fact, for a brief moment in December I was in a delusional state and thought, due to the fact that we used to garner over 2,000 hits a day during the height of our popularity on the web, we might have earned a spot on the fake, internet dictionary Wikipedia! (By the way, apologies to “Horskateers,” first because of that moniker, and second because
www.fourjackasses.com is no longer Horsemen-related, and is currently a pornographic site.) What I did not know was that apparently, in the web comics’ community, there is only room on Wikipedia for PvP (
www.pvponline.com), Ctrl+Alt+
Del (
www.ctrlaltdel-online.com), and of course, Penny Arcade (
www.penny-arcade.com). Apparently the rest of the community find themselves removed shortly after posting, ostensibly because no other web comic is deemed "important" enough to be a part of the fake dictionary. In spite of being a brief part of the web comics’ community, I had no prior knowledge of this fact. I constructed a thing of beauty. It was chock-full of information, behind-the-scenes stories, credits to all parties involved, timelines, pictures, and of course, web sites linking you to information proving the validity of all therein. It was deleted about twenty-four hours later, citing that the page was, essentially, unnecessary. It was then that I actually did research and discovered the phenomena. Unless Horsemen becomes retardedly popular, there is no way we’re going to earn a place in the fake online dictionary that Stephen Colbert once unleashed a hoard of fans upon to alter one miniscule factoid about elephants, additionalproving its unavoidable flaw in logic, which is that people on the internet are there because they don’t have anything else to do.
Anyway, I pursued DeviantArt.com for my newest Horsemen-related endeavors. By mid-November of 2006, I had sent nearly fifteen invitations to get the job (which paid pretty well, by the way) and received one “yes.” It was enough. The guy, John, was terrific. He was rarely online (there’s a feature on Deviant that shows when they’ve logged on, and he would go without for weeks at a time), but when he was he got back to me and requested further elaboration on the new Horsemen project. I sent him the newly drafted script, and received a request for character descriptions. I provided said descriptions, including pictures of the characters and character-reference photos. He sent me a reply which said he looked forward to putting together a quick character sketch to showcase his style. Nine days later, I received a reply of two sketched pages. The first page had one image of each of the four in various positions. It also included two outlined, very sketchy page-outlines. He literally plotted out how the third and fourth page from the comic was going to look. The pages and character designs were really very good (pictured here). The second page he attached was one full design of “Tim” in a couch. It, too, was awesome. It was one of the most unique portrayals of the four, without deviating from the original feel of the four.
He asked for some pointers and critiques, which I provided (very few). Four days later, I received my next reply, this time without pictures. There was a question about whether I wanted actual pages or digital pages. Then he hit me with the first piece of bad news:
“As for when I can begin officially...that's kind of up in smoke at the moment…”
What followed was the sad tale of woe of a young man who was moving out of his parents’ house in Ireland and hoping to move in with friends. Apparently this would really hinder his ability to draw for money. Of course I replied pleasantly, expressing my excitement in seeing what was to come. I believed in the sketches I received (which were the only sketches I would ever receive), and that he was worth waiting forI did not hear back from him for twenty-six days. I sent several e-mails, asking what was up, just for some kind of establishment of contact. I finally sent this last message on the twenty-seventh day:
“One of the main reasons I chose your work was due to your style and choice in characters. I happen to be a fan of "superheroes," so your particular character drawings were not only familiar, they were interesting and dynamic. When I received your page which outlined two (or so) pages from the script, I found the same level of quality, from consistent characterization to the resurgence of dynamics in your visual style, and all from mere, tiny sketches. I must say it convinced me (along with your depiction of the four, Tim and Ben in particular) that you were the right person for the job. I've been hesitant to go with another choice, because to me, any other choice would be a second choice. I'm glad to hear your slump has improved, and you've managed to get back in the saddle, as it were. My numerous emails only exemplified my utter enthusiasm for this project, though I must admit it may have been more so than was necessary. I think, since we seem to both want to work together and get something really cool out of this that we should probably figure out some way to work out a contact schedule. For example, let's say we figure out when we're officially going to start. After we get the first "milestone" out of the way, I think some kind of consistent correspondence should be happening. If you have a question or an inconsistent thing that arises in the script, I'd want you to contact me as soon as possible, so I could help fix it. Just a regular sort of back-and-forth email system, so we both know what's going on, and what we can expect. That's really my only big issue, I think. I hope that can work for you.”
I then outlined the payment plan and concluded the message. I laid it on pretty thick, I'll admit.
Four days after I sent the e-mail, he miraculously replied. And furthermore, he included a preview of the third page! Huzzah! Then I saw it. The page was, putting it mildly, a complete disaster. He explained that he misread the script and left out panels on one page, promising to add an additional page to the total project. The only problem with that was the length of the comic was 32 pages, which is one of two typical page lengths for an ongoing comic book series. I didn’t want to have an additional page, screwing up the order. But this was insignificant, compared to the paramount issue: the art. My hopes had been dashed. My confidence, over the near-month I spent waiting to hear from him, had been severely shaken already, and this was the final seagull, perching not but a second on the construction of hopes that Horsemen was going to continue with this guy, assuredly knocking it down.
Some part of me wanted to give him half a chance. I inquired about the glaring discrepancies between the three pieces of art I now had in my possession. That very day, he replied. He said he would “give it another shot,” and also pledged to return the page to its appropriate number of panels, thus restoring the pages to 32. I agreed. Everything felt weird, and there really was no hope left.
Four days later, I received my next (and last) piece of correspondence:
“My sincerest apologies but I'm not going to be able to continue with this project--”
It continued, telling me that he enjoyed working with me and he didn’t want to send crap as a result of the “various events” in his life providing too much of a distraction.
My immediate reply was as follows:
“That is really a shame. I wish you luck in your future endeavors.”
And that was it. That was the whole story. I sent back a disappointed, two-sentence reply. Even in spite of this entire ordeal, which spanned two months, I resisted the urge to be a total dick. This was the last I ever heard from him. I occasionally checked his Deviant page, and noticed that he hadn’t been on for nearly two months after this e-mail had been sent. I’m sure he has done other things by now, but it will certainly never be with us again.
It was an interesting experience (and by interesting, I mean really ridiculous and crappy), and I definitely learned from it. In future attempts, I would make my intentions as clear as humanly possible. It certainly helped me work out the arrangement we currently have going on, which is working out better than I could have hoped. Actually, Mike's designs are totally different from John's, Bruce's, or Sheana's, but when I look at the pages I could not imagine them looking any other way.
I found Mr. Lunsford on Deviant a few months ago, the most of thanks going to Tiffany. I have to say, when it came to discovering artists after I left Virginia, Tiffany’s to blame. She came across his stuff, sent me a link, and I dropped him a message. Dude got back to me that day, and we went back and forth until, that evening, I got a sketch. The dude really knows his stuff. The first sketch I got was of the Four, pictured here.
