Where do the Infinite Wonders begin?

Thumbnail to ink to color

There hasn't been a post on this blog from me in a few weeks. It's a sad state of affairs, I know. I wanted to make one to talk about this, though. The first issue of Infinite Wonders was finally shown to the public last week. It has been gathering dust for nearly a year now. Since I did the first issue on my break in December of last year I had another semester of college work, then Timespace became my life. It's weird to think we did the book when we were 18 and just now it came out nearly 11 months later.

Infinite head turnaround

Infinite Wonders was not the first comic Tristen and I did together but it is the first we're showing to an audience of sorts. Its genesis lies in Tristen coming to me one day wanting to do an old fashioned superhero book because it was something he knew we both wanted to try. It would have a young and thin looking protagonist with more modern design sensibilities, and a seasoned superhero with the traditional cape and the trunks on the outside (I'm looking at you, Superman! You need your red trunks back on!).  It's foggy how exactly, but quickly we decided on Infinite as the name for the main character.

Infinite model turnaround

I recall months before I was playing around with this design for a spacey looking character, wearing a very organic but simplistic costume. Small boosters on his hip, mask covering the full face, big round eyes and antennae pieces on both ears. I think I was on a big Steve Rude kick (although you can never not be on a Steve Rude kick) because he bore similarities to the Moth.  I don't think I have those drawings anymore, it was one boredom-induced product found on the side of a high school math sheet.

One of the earlier Infinite designs.

I threw something similar to Tristen and he really dug it, but he wanted to see the mouth, no antennae and wanted this guy even skinnier than I was drawing him already.  The basic principles held firm and it kept refining itself as the months went on. I wanted the big eyes because they evoke the wide eyed youthfulness and inexperience, and also takes me back to my roots as a Spider-Man fan.  Color-wise, I wanted to keep him black and white since I knew the comic would likely stay black and white, you wouldn't miss much going on that way.

Mr. Wonder model sheet

Mr. Wonder's I was trying to use motifs from a lot of the big leader types. The colors of Cyclops' 90s design as well as something over the face, Superman's cape and trunks, Captain America's ears popping out was something I always enjoyed. Stuff like that. MW has a massive build, like a towering boxer.

You look like Wolverine or Batman here, why?

But one of my main goals with these designs was to go for simplicity and hopefully achieve something that feels memorable through that.  There is definitely something attractive that comes from a combination of simplistic design components.  There's that silhouette idea you hear sometimes that asks if it's something you could know with just the outline or some of those more distinctive parts of the outfits. Nolan himself I wanted to look identifiable out of costume, too.

Dat is the caption. ^

He has a strange parted flowy top hairstyle that looks like it's stuck in the 90s but also dresses pretty traditionally with the vest- again going back to my Spidey roots, Peter would wear that awesome yellow vest all the time.  The Ransacker himself was a lot of fun to draw, his design was straightforward. Supposed to be like a big schoolyard bully, wearing clothes too small. A striped shirt, short shorts, big socks, sneakers, a little bandit mask on and a beanie. Then you've got a Ransacker.

Grrr.

Working on this book and these charaacters, what it's really become for me is sort of a reactionary piece tonally compared to the majority of mainstream superhero books on the market these days. There is this fascination with making everything look super realistic and mimicking that sensation from the movies, costumes are overly detailed these days and it just lessens the fantastical escapism for me personally. If I want to see a superhero movie I'll go and see one, but I think there is something really valuable that is getting lost a lot these days with comics.

The system, man!

Big editorially driven event stories also dominate and it just keeps pushing both Tristen and I further away. It's a discussion we've had many times that directs us to the books we enjoy.  There aren't enough honest in scope mainstream books these days. They don't sell as well. My personal favorite comic at the moment is a great example of this, Superior Foes of Spider-Man (unfortunately ending soon)- which focused on villains nobody cared about before and made a humorous and character driven story out of their lives.  We wound up caring about these jerks going through these normal things along with them. I suppose what I'm relating here is that we like the comics like that which play with tropes in fun ways. They feel fresher and more earnest.

The man knows what's going on.

The way Tristen's approaching this series and the way it's mapped out, specifically its focus on character really reminds me of any Peter David book. This really smacked me in the head the other day while working on the second issue because there's this great understated wit in his words that's something I really find fun drawing.

IT'S WABBIT SEASON.

One of my main goals was to infuse my own personality into the book, and I hope you can see some of those flourishes stylistically because I'm pretty offbeat- so there's lots of quirks in there. From body language to expressions in the line work itself. Humor is the word, I wanted some slightly off-kilter humor. Cramming 10 goons in the back of a van, the licence plate, piles of security guards and goons, that one thought-process thought bubble on page 14, sound effects. I dunno, there's a lot of me in there is what I'm trying to say.

Eager front row guy!

I tried to do some experimental things with layouts, sometimes even pasting things on top of other panels and playing with the panels as part of the work itself sometimes, and with inking techniques. I used India ink, which gave some life. I've really grown to love using that stuff.

Part of an early cover rough

I really didn't like the last page. It would have bothered me to no end leaving everybody on a cliffhanger with something I didn't feel was up to par with the everything else. I ended up redrawing it months later to make it look more dramatic. Mr. Wonder himself became more streamlined as I kept tinkering with his design months after that original last page, as he just looked damn goofy before. Goodness.

Original page 21 with revised page 21

One page that was satisfying for me was page 9. It happened to be one of the most difficult to figure out because the script called for him just putting on his costume and climbing up a ladder to a rooftop. I needed to see how he gets himself over there in a more exciting way so he makes it back to his dorm taking a few silent panels to suit up. Then he jumps out the window (obscured by a tree!) into a bush to check if the coast is clear, then he dashes out and slingshots himself up onto a roof.

Page 9. 11x17 on bristol board. Pencil, pen, India ink.

The slingshot doohickey wasn't in the script (we need a name for that thing), but I thought since the guy is an engineering major he could come up with a fun gizmo like that to keep with him since he can't fly. Now he could launch himself all over the place just as quickly! I imagine it like a super duper piece of measuring tape, he keeps it inside one of those side panels on his suit.

BOOP

Another visual piece not in the script is when Nolan makes his big play against all the goons and smacks them all around-the costume inversion. I wanted there to be a visual indicator of when his power is peaking for a short while, where all of the colors on his costume would invert and there would be this bubbling all around him. Because if he could lay that kind of smackdown all the time he could have laid out all those guys as soon as he stepped in there!  I had already hinted subconsciously to myself something like this with his hand on the cover, strangely. This ended up being dubbed 'Infinite Energy' and one thing I find funny about our character is how ambiguous the powers are. He's called Infinite which implies a lot, but his powers are super mysterious and he these uncontrolled bursts where he can perform incredible feats.

Page 16. 11x17 on bristol board. Pencil, pen, India ink.

I wanted to get this post out much earlier as it's been written and ready for some time now but I couldn't scan anything until right now. It has been quite a hectic month. I am starting to feel like I am in the Twilight Zone with little sleep. I finally rummaged through 5 books of mine and this isn't even everything but that should give you the gist of it, hopefully.

If he was older.

Ah well, thanks for reading if you made it this far. It was a lot, I know. I hope you enjoyed the 1st issue. If you haven't read it yet, do it now that I've spoiled it all for you! 

The Steve Ditko split!

Finding the Time and the Space: part 1 of TBD

Like I said a little while back, I wanted to talk about my work on Timespace in better detail. Maybe it will help recounting the experience while it's fresh in my brain. Maybe some of this might be interesting to see the movie from a different side. Maybe, maybe? Well enough maybes, let's get down to the info that's juicy and nice.

In the middle of January was about when I first started doing things for the film, locked in the Dan-Cave with Daniel. After a ride in the back of a limo planted ideas in his head with ideas as stretchy as that stretch limo. He had a rough idea of where he wanted to go with things already then. Even still, it unraveled much differently than what it grew into. Daniel had a white board filled with how the rules of time travel worked and what happened in each timeline as a result of the time travel. It was thorough. You can't do time travel without setting your rules first! Get rid of as many holes as you can right away!

One of the early time machine designs that ended up being
further explored to refine the design.

I was sitting there working on time machine designs. He showed me one of those funny conspiracy shows he got this concept of the "Nazi bells" from. The legends told of Nazi's using time travel using bell-shaped things filled with mercury counter-rotating super fast to transport something to another time! Some crazy Nazi scientist escaped and something similar to that winded up crashing around Pennsylvania in the 60s. It's funky stuff but it was a totally neato basis to power our version of time travel!

Getting there.

Those things would be on the sides, attached to an enclosed and refined base to ensure the mercury would flow around in the vicinity of the time machine chamber. The base was going to have fancy fans and grates underneath to air out those Nazi bells and also maintain direction and stability when traveling. That was the idea. Yeah. One thing that was trying to be avoided early on was making the time machine look like a giant dick. That was a challenge given the fact that there was no avoiding the big bells needing to be attached.

Time Machine Model Sheet

Some motifs would stay, like the overall color scheme. The red lights on top ended up both being in front to give the whole thing more of a giant toy robot feel. The machine itself was to be pretty practical since it was made in a government laboratory. Things shouldn't end up looking too sterile, though. I wanted to inject the sense of peculiarity I like to add to most things I do. Time machine, that's absurd- and it needs to have a level of acknowledgement to that. It ended up kind of looking vaguely enough like a giant toy robot you're stepping into. Also, yeah- it's shaped like a coffin. Yes.

The TO-DO list.

There also needed to be some firmer cohesion between the shape of the base, and the connectivity of the bells to the chamber. That's where the shape started to become more like a rocketship and less of a box. The two silver coils attached the bells to the chamber now, taking that mercury flowing directly into the chamber. They also look like big robot arms. Now it was a Robot-Rocketship! Good!

BLAST OFF.

Mercury flowing directly inside, though? What? The walls were intended to be "lead-lined" but there's only so much you can suspend your disbelief when you're working with some pieces of wood in reality months later. No wonder time travel's bad for the health. There are vents on the sides, though! The interior's floor also had a mirror, which was to lend to the idea of time travel creating a mirror reality. The actual time travel was to be activated with two handlebar switches being pulled on the sides after all was ready to go.

Wowee.

Constructing the time machine came months later after all of the thoughts had gotten to these points and it was finalized. The actual prop wasn't assembled until early June, done so quite professionally by Dave Mirl. With his expertise in crafting things like this, he slightly modified the design to make more sense when building. All that was left for us to do with this big hunk of wood constructed was make it look like the design. All that was left, ha! The time machine wasn't ready to film until about the night before it finally went in front of the camera in mid-July.

Even after that first day it was reinforced further that same night to be safer in the future. It was continually worked on for that near month and a half in between, with just about all of the major cast and crew pitching in to help whenever they were around. Around the side of the Ziegler household, where the time machine was. That was real swell, though. Everybody was really great in helping get this thing in working order and their efforts should not be unnoticed. Timespace! Teamwork!

Mid spray painting, woo.

Copious amounts of spray paint was inhaled, and so many trips to the hardware store that all the employees kept wondering "how's the spaceship coming along?" every time upon entering. Work was done then on the insides to try and get away with the insulating idea in some way. We found a shiny bed sheet that fit snugly and flush to all the corners, one of the best finds for this thing. Covered everything inside that needed covering!

Done spray painting, woo.

After the whole wooden time machine was painted, the rest of the matters involved detailing to the best of our abilities with time ticking. The rest was small, except for those darn bells. We had no clue what to use for them. We started to go into panic mode after several last minute trips to hardware stores proved fruitless, it ended up being a trip to the dollar store that was our near-priceless (for once) gift from the heavens. Daniel and I both spotted some small plastic trash cans and laundry bins and we both had the same idea going on right there. High fives for synergy! The bins were stacked on top of each other and we knew we had our base for the bells right there, it was the best thing ever.

Ding dong, the bells are ringing.

Of course, now they needed to become bells. So tape fastened the pieces in place and the whole two things were done with paper mache. I did have some much appreciated help in making those from Mrs. Z, Mr. Z, and Katelyn! 80s jamming got us through, I recall. All along the way, Arizona was being bombarded by dust storm after dust storm for this whole month, as well as rains, winds, lightning, thunder, meatballs, the works. If there was ever an eventuality such as this, the whole thing needed to be completely covered in a tarp and securely fastened down.

Batten down the hatches.

Mr. Z installed the working red overhead lights - running down the side to a fancy flip switch, then things were in pretty good order! We had wanted there to be fog effects when powering up the time machine but that didn't pan out, I guess. Another thing I wanted to point out is the fact that every day this prop was needed for filming, it required to be towed in the back of two separate trucks and both heavy pieces were lifted from there into the desert and back.

The whole process of designing a prop as huge and heavy as this hunk o junk was a very adaptive one. Naturally so, I suppose. A very sweaty and slow job till the end, but there was undoubtedly fun to be had along the way despite some of us wanting to burn the machine like the protestors wanted in the film. I think given the materials we had, the intent managed to shine through in what winded up on screen where it counted.

That's it...

After this long-winding post on the time machine, where could I possibly go from here?? Well... I'll talk about the characters next, I guess.



It's gonna eat me.

You can watch Timespace here, if any of these revelations have piqued your interest.

TIMESPACE IS OUT!

What's coming out of that funky time machine? It's me with another Timespace post, but this one will change things forever!! Timespace has just been released online:

  Right here. 

It is available either to rent or to purchase. I will perform impromptu my (not-yet-patented) dance... JUST FOR YOU! But really, I will. But also, we would be very grateful if you supported this little project by a bunch of young college and high school kids that by my estimation are some of the most driven and genuinely genuine people out there. So many worked hard on this just because they wanted to and because they were also struck by the vision that director Dan had and wanted to help bring that vision of his to life. 

I don't like sounding like I'm overly gushy, and I write that because I am being overly gushy. These guys all deserve the gush, however.

"Ya wanna know how I got this scar?"

For now, take a look at this early concept piece from months and months before production started and see how things like the wardrobe of the two main characters would end up changing. One fun thing for me was taking these ideas from Daniel's script and visualizing them. It's a unique process because at that beginning stage you start out with these vague ideas and begin nurturing and getting to know these characters and the world they inhabit better. Things change and new things are given to work with. There's very much a sense of building and building very carefully so that there becomes a stabilizing sense of identity when the time comes.  Then getting to see it actually come to life, wowzers! 

I'll discuss this idea more whenever I decide to do a post on the visual identities of the characters. I think my future self might have to come back and do it for me or something. I just don't want to now.

That Timespace poster

I remember saying I wanted to save going wackier for another poster when I was doing the teaser poster, so I started thinking further about some of the thematic ideas present in the film. Took these things and tried to integrate them in a fairly abstract way. Now, the way my brain works didn't allow me to fully focus on the approach I was wanting to take until I finished working on something else.

That's just the way it's gotta be I guess. But when I did finish what I was doing, I was able to get the idea I had down pretty quickly and it's what I ended up settling on. Working through to the actual finished version, it became inclusive of several different mediums. After penciling and inking, I ended up using India ink to give a wide range of grey tones. Then came layers of watercolor on top of that, then gouache.

Timespace poster.
Pencils, inks, India ink, watercolors, gouache, 11x14 on bristol board

The idea was to have James Pratt stepping into the time machine and seeing a bunch of crazy stuff on the inside. But not just any crazy stuff, more specifically the vices or devices he uses to get his means to their ends. All the unruly things he does to achieve his goals, right in front of him leading him to his inevitable destination.

rough layout

Melting clock hands, cyanide in a syringe, cocaine, a single bullet, the hourglass necklace, blood: all being sucked into this rip in reality/space (more twisting of clock shapes for that rip) containing blackness becoming illuminated by white light. Don't want to give away what that is or how any of this stuff directly relates but it is contextualized in the film. Those objects are also referential to the three planetoids floating around. They have faint faces on them- the other three main characters in the film. They are all directly intertwined in the narrative through the choices that are made by James, so that's why they are there.

Original unused layout designs

My original ideas above came several months ago and still was presenting these ideas but in a slightly more literal way. I felt it was more fitting to go for something less straightforward given the nature of the time travel in the film and what state the main character is even in.

Hope these things give you some good thoughts to eat (oh boy yum) and ponder if you haven't seen the film yet. Sometime later this week Timespace is to be released online for rental on Vimeo. I'll definitely be posting a link here when the time comes.

I've seen how the film has come together from working closely on it with it's esteemed writer and director, my good pal Daniel Ziegler since January when it was just a rough idea little idea of a time travel movie in his head. I've seen him finally just about wrap up editing the film this past night after weeks and weeks of working his tush off and it was very surreal to see that end point in sight. Seeing those ideas that were cultivated be there in such a powerful way is totally nifty!

Polishing That Iron

Okey dokey, I thought it might be fun to share some roughs for that Iron Man story to get a look at what the process goes like for me when making a page. I just do thumbnail sketches of what I'd like to do what the page. Sometimes it may take a few times before I settle on a composition that I like, other times it comes quicker than that. For page 1, it took me a few times before I settled on the shot that gives you some good Iron booty.

page 1 layout

With this, I was also able to get the Mandarin in the shot giving the first words that the script called for along with the mysterious hourglass object that was behind him.

Page 1 inked on bristol board 11x17

For the finalized page, you can probably see where I made changes to the original thumbnail sketch but it overall remains pretty faithful to that concept. Some things added like some smokey mist and good jazz from Iron Man's entrance. I thought the title looked too tacky on the thumbnail so I played around to make it fit more organically.

pages 3-4 layout

Pages 3-4 was a totally zany double page spread. I'd say it was justified because there ended up being 20 Iron Men bursting out of an hourglass, which is pretty zany.

pages 3-4 inked on bristol board 22x17

Double page spreads are a strange thing to do, it's got to be something that's big and doesn't waste the valuable space that's available to tell the story. Keeping our Silver Centurion Iron Man in the foreground and firmly there helped to reel in all the other guys and give them their debut in a way that presents it as kind of surreal, in the sense that it's that Iron Man's story but here are all these other guys jumping in. playing around with the sound is a booming whistle that reverses itself on the other half of the spread since there are Iron Men from both the past and the future there.

page 5 layout

For page 5, you can see where I ended up having some changes in the composition to allow for a more dramatic image. In the script, the final panel here said to just leave it blank, but I don't wanna skimp on anything ever so I just naturally filled it with another 21 Iron Men. Fitting so many Iron Men in these panels was a good time... I'm serious, too.

page 5 inked on bristol board 11x17

One thing I enjoy doing with comic panels or the way I lay out a page is to reflect some of the things happening in the story, so there you guys get some funky iron panels because they're about to iron out Iron Man's kinks.

page 6 layout v1

My original layout for page 6 is above. It was serviceable enough but I didn't feel like it highlighted the situation in a striking enough, or in a less conventional way.

page 6 layout v2

I became more and more interested in using the Mandarin's symbol as a way to capture the moment in a way that catches the eye. The Iron Men were arranged more like a game board in this rough, but that was bothering me because it didn't feel right.

page 6 inked on bristol board 11x17

I ended up solving the Iron Man problem by arranging them in a circular shape more akin to the Iron Man arc reactor- overtaking the Mandarin symbol. Too many symbols eating symbols for symbolism, ahhhhhh! The bottom half of Mandarin's goofy grinning face is situated at the top of the page, with his proclamation being interrupted by some repulsor blast's charging up and taking the eyes into the big circle of Iron Men. Oh boy. Then we get to see the Mandarin's eyes in reaction to this sight, he knows he's about to get thoroughly smashed. Not in a good way, nope.

Tony

Getting to draw 80s Tony Stark with his luscious locks and that fantastic mustache was also a big delicious treat. The manly-ness of 80s Tony Stark is too much to handle. Hope you enjoyed that peek into crafting this piece o work, guys. I will be sitting here just doing the dew of drawing at my drawing board in the meantime.