Juda Fist Finally!!!

Hey guys, I just wanted to take the time to let you know I am finally working on Juda Fist: 7 Deaths of the Yobi Issue 1. Here is a sneak peak at some of he layouts and sketches so far.

Stay tuned as I talk more about my process!

The Honeycomb Hideout Episode 29: ACTUAL Shapes and Sizes!

Alright, 'Combies! After a bit of a hiatus and a lot of kitbashing, we're back to discuss yet another controversial topic: the female anatomy and how it's conveyed in the media! But to cover our bases, we actually have a woman on the show to help rein us in a bit (if that's possible). Artist Katie Hodges joins Joe, Mark and Nik in the Hideout to talk about this very controversial and yet extremely important issue in regards to art and media. So come on down and see where this particular rabbit hole leads!

Download this episode (right click and save)

And for those playing the home game, to follow along with the discussion, here are the relevant articles in the order they are discussed:
Huffington Post article
Empowerment vs Objectication comic strip
Milo Manara Spider-Woman variant cover
Catwoman #0 cover

As for the later pictographic descent into madness, here are those links...
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh

Imaginos Plus: On Sale Now!

It's been a long road, folks (and it's still going by the way) but our totally original comic book "Imaginos Plus" is now officially FOR SALE. Our wonderful Kickstarter backers have been able to download their free copy for a couple weeks now, but now everyone can get in on the fun. All you need to do is head over to DriveThruComics and purchase our inaugural issue for an easy $0.99. 

We would again like to thank all the friends, family, funders and peers that have helped us get this off the ground. But this is just the beginning! We have big plans to keep this going in bigger and better ways. As always, sharing this with your geeky friends will do a HUGE part in keeping this ball rolling! We hope you enjoy the book.

'Imaginos Plus' is LIVE!

This is it, folks. Our first totally original comic book is DONE, and our faithful Kickstarter funders can download a free digital copy right now. If you're not a Kickstarter backer, don't worry: the book will be available to buy and download within the next week.

 If you've been following along at home you know the book includes three totally original comic properties: REQUIEM, CANDY COATED & JUDA FIST: 7 DEATHS OF THE YOBI. The book also includes an introduction to RIFTS®: THE ADVENTURES OF YOUNG ERIN TARN, an imaginative story based on the character from Kevin Siembieda's Palladium Books® and the Rifts "Megaverse."

Though the book itself is now done, we have plenty of work to do now, which includes submitting the book to comic publishers and printing physical copies of the book. Soon the book will be available to buy and download in digital form, as well as the physical comic book shops. 

You will need a comic book reader in order to open and read the file on your computer, and we've included a link to Comical Cross-Platform CBR/CBZ comic reader in the update. It is a quick and free download. If you don't already have comic reading software on your computer, simply download the file for either Windows, Mac or Linux. Then open or "extract" the files on your computer. You will then be able to read the Imaginos Plus file with Comical.

Stay tuned for more updates as we work to get this book in comic shops and online comic stores.

Finishing touches

Sneak peak of the Requiem poster, before inking. #ImaginosPlus

 Almost done with the contours. Gotta put in the details tomorrow then off to the inks. Poster for J Albert Cain's REQUIEM comic.

Kickstarter Update: New Artwork, Prizes Coming Very Soon!

No professional and creative endeavor that's worth a damn ever goes off exactly according to plan. While we were thrilled to have our Imaginos Plus comic book fully funded on Kickstarter, that was just the beginning of one helluva process. Despite some bumps in the road and production changes, we are moving forward nicely.

Custom-designed Juda Fist and Imaginos Team T-Shirt prizes will be shipping out to backers as soon as the end of next week, and we have more prizes (sketchbooks, posters) in the pipeline after that. We've said it before and we can't say it enough: thank you again to everyone that has supported us, financially and otherwise, during this process. We are thrilled to be in a position to produce something real and awesome - hopefully something that we ourselves would want to experience as fans of the medium.

Here's a sneak peak of the superhero action-comedy Candy Coated, which will appear in Imaginos Plus. Hopefully you like the results we're getting as much as we do. Don't forget to click on the link at the bottom of this post: our Kickstarter Update will give even more details and sneak peaks of the colored pages!

Imaginos Plus: Kickstarter Update #20

2013 Year in Review: Goals Not Dreams

I usually don't like going backward but this past year warrants a look. We left 2012 a little dejected as we had failed our first Kickstarter attempt. But being the never say die hard chargers we are we drudged forward. In 2013 We completed the first complete draft of our movie script. Yup, 110 some pages of work that we are revising still.

We also completed a short film with our partners at Wrapped Productions and Mill Movement Conglomerates called CHANCES for Canon's Project Imagination with Ron Howard. Even though our shoot was tight, we still showed in the top 40 of submissions with hundreds of submissions behind us.

We also just recently got our supernatural sci-fi pitch DARK DAYS back into corporate hands for review, as well as completing the curriculum for the non profit.

Image Art From "Dark Days" by Mike Majestic, using Vulne Pro

Finally at the end of this year, we relaunched the Kickstarter for our comic anthology iMAGINOs Plus and the rest, shall we say, is history. 

We want to thank everybody who believes in iMAGINOs Workshop.This year we are going to work to get these iMAGINOs PLUS issues one and two out. We will be relaunching iMAGINOS TV on YouTube and we will be focusing on getting more done in the short film Arena and in Hollywood. 

People always tell us how cool it is that we can follow our dreams. I never want to sound like a dick, so I just smile and listen. What's going on inside my head, however, is this: dreams are for people who don't have the talent (or work ethic) to make what's in their head manifest. We Imaginos Workshop people we don't have dreams, WE HAVE GOALS. Goals are what people have when they make solid plans to achieve things and have the talent to back it up. 

2014 THE YEAR OF MEETING THE GOAL!!! 

Mark

Crowdsourcing Comics: A Trial By Fire

In October of last year, we cancelled our first Kickstarter campaign before its deadline was up. Our "Imaginos Plus" comic book project received generous contributions from some friends, family and supporters, but it wasn't enough to meet our financial goal. After an encouraging opening push, the donations to our comic book anthology slowed to an ever-decreasing trickle. The campaign stalled at just over $2,000, not nearly close enough to our $8,300 goal. Our first attempt at crowdsourcing our artistic ventures was time-consuming, emotional and ultimately disappointing.

It was also a learning experience; it forced us to take stock of our own work and think practically about what it meant to produce a creative, collaborative project. It forced us to explain the value of our work to other people - a surprisingly challenging and rewarding task. There wasn't a clear-cut reason why our first attempt at crowdsourcing failed. Were we explaining our project well enough? Was our financial goal too high? Did we offer the right kinds of incentives to potential backers? Did we fail to market ourselves properly? Maybe it was just timing. Most likely it was some combination of these factors. And while no one wants to fall short, we learned a lot through the process.

Fast forward to November 2013: our fledgling company Imaginos Workshop is now a registered LLC, and new artists and writers have been brought into the fold. We have a couple extra conventions under the belt, and we've made real progress on our comics. Our new Kickstarter campaign has a financial goal of $5,800 (well under our original asking price from the year before), without sacrificing any of the content. 

This time, the contributions didn't stop after the initial opening volley. People watched our Kickstarter video over 500 times and pledged an average of $46. They shared our project on Facebook, Twitter, Palladium Books and other websites. Veteran writer and columnist Bill Baker interviewed Mark Dudley on The Morton Report, and we provided our own Kickstarter updates every step of the way.

In the end, we finished at 114% of our goal. Our second try at crowdsourcing was an unequivocal success, made possible by the wonderfully generous contributions of all our backers. Perhaps it was important that we fell short on our first Kickstarter. It reminded us that some amount of failure and rejection is an inevitability in this business, and that it does not necessarily mean you're doing the wrong things. We were also reminded of the inspiring generosity of others ... an important lesson during the holidays. Our backers gave us the best Christmas gift we could have asked for. It means more work for us in the new year, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you.

Jon

Youmacon Wrap-Up 2012

Youmacon 2012 gave Imaginos Workshop another awesome opportunity to spread the word about our work and talk with fans of comics, anime, manga and storytelling. Youmacon, a relatively young anime convention in downtown Detroit, attracts an enthusiastic crowd of die-hard fans and creative cosplayers. I was impressed with the huge number of people cosplaying in Detroit for the weekend. I'm new to the world of anime and manga, so a lot of the costumes went over my head. But I could appreciate the time, money and creativity of the cosplayers, and there was some crossover: I saw characters from movies and video games as well, along with several Doctor Who's and Walter Whites. The con itself showed some serious growing pains. Registration for many was a lengthy and confusing process, and one that involved waiting in lines, wandering various floors of registration, and walking back and forth between Cobo and the Ren Cen. These are organizational problems that will hopefully get worked out as the convention grows and perfects itself. Despite these issues, the overall attitude at the convention was one of conciliatory excitement.

Star Wars maintained a presence amid the anime and manga cosplayers.

Imaginos Workshop handed out posters, flyers, business cards, stickers and our new "Dirty Weaponry" sketch book. We talked as much as we could with people, and tried to make inroads with a crowd that wasn't our normal demographic: an anime convention is not the same thing as a comic convention, but people still seemed encouraging of our work. This convention also marked our first official, public collaboration with the girls producing the webcomic Mutare Ludum. Their names are Danielle Todd and April Cox, and they've evolved from Mark's students to peers and promising young artists. They are developing a webcomic that is parts fantasy and horror; you can check out their blog here.

Probably the most encouraging part of the whole weekend for me was Imaginos Workshop's public panel How To Create Comics, led by our own Mark Dudley. He led a panel that quickly turned into a fun, interactive discussion on constructing, writing and drawing comics from start to finish. We had good attendance and the people there were enthusiastic and engaged. Nick and Joe also contributed to the panel by leading some of the discussion and answering questions. Even Danielle and April were able to add some words of wisdom. Unfortunately the panel was cut shorter due to an oversight on the part of the convention planners (not the last time that happened over the weekend) but it was still a good experience. After the panel ended, a group of artists, fans and writers hung out and talked with us about creating stories and drawing. It was fun and informative, and it gave us all some great connections and interactions with people that are all part of the wide web of creative industries in Michigan.

Mark Dudley leads the How To Create Comics panel.

We are still working on our Imaginos Plus comic book, part of which will be sent to Image Comics on completion so hopefully we can get a publisher for our work. We also have movie scripts and video projects in the works, and we want to continue pushing our online presence and interacting with what we hope will be a growing and loyal fan base.

Jon

Kickstarter Update: Proposal Delayed, Work Continues

As you probably know, we have recently been promoting our Kickstarter bid as a way to help fund our comic book Imaginos Plus. As of last week however we have decided to cancel our Kickstarter bid for now. We were not on track to meet our financial goal, and we decided to postpone the crowd-sourcing project so we could retool our proposal, as well as continue working on our project. Just because we have postponed our Kickstarter bid does not mean we've stopped working on the project itself. On the contrary, we are working harder than ever on our comic book and the artwork is coming along great. While we're disappointed that our first Kickstarter bid didn't make it, we feel confident in our work and we will definitely try again in the future. In the meantime, we keep working.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated and shared our project while we were promoting it. You people are amazing, and we're going to need your encouragement and support while we keep doing our thing. The cool thing about Kickstarter is all the money is automatically returned - so nobody lost anything except a little bit of time and effort. We are sincerely grateful for those of you that showed your belief in us and our work. Stay tuned, because we haven't slowed down and we haven't given up on crowd-sourcing our projects. Despite not making the goal, it was a great learning experience.

And just so you know, we are going to be at this year's Youmacon 2012 in Detroit! Look for our table there where we will be selling copies of The Door and showing off some of Mark's awesome artwork! The event is this Thursday-Sunday, Nov. 1-4. Find out more info at their official site. Thank you, hopefully we will see you there.

Jon

Imaginos Plus: A 3-part Comic Adventure - And You Can Help

Everyone knows that Detroit has fallen on hard times. This is nothing new. It is and has been suffering from financial crisis, joblessness, urban dilapidation and political scandal. It has become something of a warning sign for a nation feeling the pangs of unemployment and political stalemate. Detroit has also become something else in the meantime: a symbol of pride for the entire state. There’s something about its working-class, damaged goods persona that appeals to a certain crowd. People in this country can’t help but root for the underdog. Young, college-educated people are actually moving into Detroit, and the city is experiencing something of a mini-Renaissance, even amidst some of its darkest hours. A product of this professional influx is an export that will be very important if Detroit is to come back: The Arts. Detroit has some very real and ongoing problems, just as it is experiencing a resurgence in cultural pride and artistic output.

Somewhere out of this imperfect love comes Imaginos Workshop, but one of many professional and artistic endeavors owing to the history and people of Michigan and the Detroit area. There’s nothing special about us except that we love comics and movies and just about anything that tells a story. Imaginos Workshop is just the name we decided to give ourselves when we decided we wanted to write movie scripts and produce comic books. We recently became a Limited Liability Company, and our first stab at a self-produced comic book, Imaginos Plus, is in the works (as you’ve probably read on here by now). It is three storylines in one – kind of ambitious for a first project, but we just really like these properties.

The first is called Requiem, and I can use the word “epic” here without feeling too hyperbolic. Joe and Mark have been crafting this storyline for a long time, and it has evolved accordingly. What we’ve written for Imaginos Plus is just the tip of a very big iceberg: they’ve written millions of years of bloody history for the multiverse that holds the story. Despite all this grandiosity, the story lives and dies by its character development, as a group of “black-bag” agents provide our key-hole into a mysterious and dangerous world. There’s almost too much to summarize here, but let’s just say it involves brutal action, multiple dimensions, the occult and corporate corruption.

The second property is the ridiculously-titled Candy Coated, a unique and truly spontaneous action adventure that employs an interesting writing style. The basis of the comic comes from Palladium Books’ Heroes Unlimited pen-and-paper RPG franchise. In case you haven’t reached the level of monumental geek that we have, RPG stands for role-playing-game, and it involves a group of people sitting around together using characters they created to explore a world that exists as dictated by their GM, or game-master. They use their imaginations to move through the world, and usually a set of books or rules to give shape and stats to the world and what they can do in it. Dungeons & Dragons is the most famous example of this, and only partly deserves the stigma it has gathered over the years. Candy Coated is written as it happened during these gaming sessions: it is truly spontaneous and organic. We “wrote” the story insofar that we experienced it in-game and responded to the events in Mark’s story with a disturbing lack of forward thinking. The story itself is about a group of damaged superheroes who mostly attempt to do good but almost always end up damaging things in the process. They are dysfunctional, confused and selfish, and their powers mostly the result of dangerously irresponsible experimentation that they don’t understand. This was a fun comic to play through, and we hope it’s just as fun to read.

The third and final property is called Juda Fist: 7 Deaths of the Yobi, and it is a story truly many years in the making. It is the brainchild of Mark Dudley, and it is a truly cool mix of genres. It is a sci-fi dystopian action-epic, with heavy doses of hip hop culture and blaxploitation, influenced by Hong Kong cinema and inspired by the books of Octavia Butler. It is stylish, dark and violent, and always gets a great reaction from people checking out Mark’s artwork. The story centers on a group of antihero mercenaries living one day at a time in futuristic Detroit. Their journey intertwines with an ancient conflict that threatens not just their lives but the fate of the solar system.

So there’s Imaginos Plus – and here comes the pitch. We have recently put the project up on the crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter in an attempt to get the thing funded. We are going to get the book done at some point either way, but if we could get some funds from Kickstarter it would happen a whole lot sooner and we could afford to pay the awesome inkers, artists and colorists that would help us finish the project. So if you feel so inclined, we would absolutely appreciate any contribution you could make to our book. We also really appreciate you telling others about the project: friends, family and fans sharing the project are the only way we’ll reach our goal. Thanks to all of you that have supported us and worked with us. Hopefully we can reward you with some cool stories and art in the future. We’re enjoying the process.

Author's Note: As of October 2012 we were unable to reach our monetary goal for our Kickstarter project. While this is disappointing, it does not mean that we've stopped working on our projects. Work on the comic book and scripts continues just as before, and we look forward to showing you more and more and trying again with crowd-sourcing in the future. A sincere and heart-felt thank you to everyone who donated to our project - your encouragement and donations help keep us creating.

Jon

Huffpost Detroit interviews Detroit Tradecraft

Last week Detroit Tradecraft's Mike Marcus was interviewed by Huffpost Detroit. The article talks about the Motor City Comic Con (wrapping up today in the D) as well as the pros and cons of producing independent comics. He also gives a shout-out to other local artists (such as Pat Jackson and Mark Dudley of Detroit Tradecraft). Read the article here.

C2E2: Thoughts and Recollections

This past weekend I attended the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo as a writer for Imaginos Workshop. We had a table there in Artist Alley where we were promoting our upcoming comic book sampler with posters, stickers and business cards. We also were selling Issues 1 and 2 of Detroit Tradecraft’s The Door. It was a jam-packed and exhausting weekend, and a valuable experience for our upstart company. We had the benefit of sitting between some great artists. On one hand we talked to Jeff Delgado of Dream Gear Studios, who does prints, t-shirts, tattoo design and commissions. On the other side of our table was Carlos Gabriel Ruiz, with a group of artists and illustrators from the St. Louis region.

The most striking and immediate impression of a comic convention is the people attending it. People-watching is at a premium at a con, which attracts a vast number of people that come in many shapes and sizes. The easiest response (especially for a “normal,” or someone not used to the culture of the con) is mockery: the con environment is ripe for satire, or at least good-natured ribbing. You will see people dressed in costumes, capes and tights. It’s no secret that a con is a circus of nerds, geeks and freaks. Even such terms are necessarily alienating, applied to a type of person that has been classified as fringe. But the real reason one is at first drawn to mock conventioneers is not the get-ups or the bad fashion: it is the bald-faced sincerity. There is a certain high school mentality in ridiculing earnestness, and there is nothing more earnest than a bald 42 year-old proudly sporting an R2D2 shirt. But once the initial shock wears off from seeing an auditorium full of unabashedly nerdy adults reveling in comic book culture, it’s hard not to enjoy yourself.

There was a slew of celebrities and sub-celebrities there with ties to geek culture and probably something to promote as well. I got an autograph and an awesome picture with Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine. Later he did a Q&A session in which he talked about his comic book epic Orchid and how collaborating on a comic is different from playing in a band. He talked about his career in the Los Angeles music scene as well as the future of the music industry. In response to a question regarding downloading music, he said that it was hard to support giant record labels that sue kids for downloading music when the companies produce CD’s for ¢4 and sell them for $18.99. Morello: the music industry as we know it may be on its way out, “and that may not be a bad thing.” Later in the session he encouraged people to listen to a certain Nightwatchmen song but insisted: “This isn’t a plug. Go download it illegally or something.” He also answered a variety of geek-influenced questions such as what his least favorite comic book-to-movie adaptation is (Watchmen. His favorite? Iron Man). Incidentally, Morello is credited on IMDb as playing a guard in Iron Man. And when asked about the state of Rage Against the Machine Morello answered somewhat exasperatedly that there is no state of the band: “Go tell your friends so they can stop asking me. If we do anything we will tell you. We’re not hiding from you.”

Shia Labeouf made an impromptu visit to the convention promoting his book of self-styled art and observations. It exists somewhere between a memoir and a comic book, and people seemed to be buying them at a quick pace for $10 apiece. I didn’t buy his book but I did get a picture and ask him a question. It went like this:

JR: You were a voice in Nausicaä [of the Valley of the Wind].

Labeouf: Yes.

JR: Did you meet [Hayao] Miyazaki?

Labeouf: I met Miyazaki for a total of 15 minutes. I basically did the movie for him. I view him like you do [as a fan].

JR: Did you go fanboy on him?

Labeouf: I totally did. I’ve only ever really freaked out when meeting someone a couple times. Miyazaki…and Kramer, strangely enough. Them and Dustin Hoffman.

For those who don’t know, Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese director with a slew of critically claimed animated movies (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, etc.). He is an unparalleled auteur and demigod in the cinematic world.

It was a short exchange but Shia was visibly excited to talk about a cinematic idol and I appreciated his enthusiasm. He struck me as surprisingly grounded for someone that’s really gotten a heavy dose of celebrity in the past several years. When my friend Alexa introduced herself to him she shook his hand and said, “Hi, I’m alexa.” He responded, “Hi, I’m Shia.”

There’s something refreshing about a mass of people sincerely reveling in a common bond. It has the feel of a community of sorts, a hodgepodge of personalities that probably wouldn’t look twice at each other on the street. Like a concert or a sporting event, a convention is a state of mind, where you are united with complete strangers with a common and undying bond. It is also the only place where you can rub shoulders with Catwoman, Dr. Doom, Pikachu and Captain America in a matter of minutes. C2E2 was an exhausting parade of artists, onlookers and superheroes that more than once put me into a peculiar and satisfied daze. It was only the second comic convention I’ve ever attended but I hope there will be many more in the future.

Jon

The future of Imaginos Workshop

Imaginos Workshop is a name we have given to a group of friends that came together through fate, or coincidence, or whatever you choose to call it. We are very different in age, race and personal history but the one thing that ties us together is a common appreciation of the arts. We are just a small chunk of a generation (or two generations, really) that grew up on some form of comic books, movies, television and every other form of storytelling out there. Since we were quite little we gained an appreciation for storytelling no matter what form it was packaged in. For me it was having my father read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to me and my younger brother before we fell asleep at night. At that time I decided I wanted to be a movie director and make an exhaustive, line-by-line adaptation of the books and put it on the silver screen. Now I'm older and I do a lot more writing than I do directing, and some scruffy Hobbit-looking guy beat me to the task. Regardless, I have never lost my fascination with faraway worlds, and how they help to open my eyes to the world around me.

Mark Dudley, Founder and Head Artist at Imaginos Workshop

Sitting down and writing a comic book and a movie script is just the beginning. I do not know what the future holds, but I don't see myself ever losing my interest in these various storytelling mediums. What I would like to see Imaginos Workshop become is a community; a wide-spreading network of people that grew up, like us, listening to stories. If we get enough people together willing to produce those stories together there is no limit to what we can accomplish. I've grown up in the metro Detroit area and this has always been home to me. It is a city that's gotten a bad rap for a long time, and it is still hard to count the number of derelict buildings; forlorn husks of dried-out memories. But there is also an attitude of hope now that has been gone for a long time. People can feel instinctively that Detroit is coming back, and Imaginos Workshop wants to be there when it does. By then we want to be not just a group of friends, or a even a company. We want to start a Revolution. It starts with anyone who's ever picked up a paintbrush or written a short story, or feels like they could make a kick-ass movie about a giant monster attacking Manhattan. 


In the meantime, we are content to fly under the radar and work towards our goal. You can help us get there by reading our blog, or by "Liking" the stuff we post to facebook. If you see something here you like, please comment and start a dialogue. See that group of members to the right? Click on "Join this Site" and you can get updates on our activity. We need people like you to get to that place I've been telling you about. (For me, it culminates in holding a surprisingly heavy gold statue of a man in my hand). Ultimately, we want to blur the line between "fan" and "creator." If you have skill with writing, drawing, coloring or editing shoot us a line and we will get back to you. After all, we are still fans ourselves, making a go at doing what we love most.


Jon

The Process: Creating a Comic Book Page. Part One.

Here is a video outlining the process of actually putting together a comic book page. This is purely from a pencilling perspective. I hope it is informative. Look out for part 2, I will show the finished pencils, and maybe some intro inking work. .

Tools Of The Trade Part 2

Last time we talked I mentioned a tool called Celtx. Celtx is a script writing software that is free to download and use, but also allows networking features so that your and your collaborators can work together on the same script, for a nominal subscription fee.

In lieu of the subscription fee service provided by Celtx, we here at Imaginos Workshop, opt to use Dropbox, the file archieving and sharing software I spoke about in the last T.O.T.T post. Dropbox and Celtx allowed Nik, who is currently in Chicago, and myself to finish revisions on act one of a script we have most recently been working on. 

One of the coolest things about Celtx is that not only is it formatted for film,play and a number of other types of scripts, outlines and screenplays it also has a very competent COMIC BOOK script format. 

This is a boon for comic writers in that I haven't seen to many other softwares that do as good a job at tackling this format as Celtx does. It allows you to choose and place dialog, pick the type of word balloons and captions and much more.

If you want to give Celtx a try you can download it here.

There is also a cript writing book that I have got to talk about. The first is the J. Michael Straczynski's

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF SCRIPT WRITING!

This book goes in depth, not only concerning the script writing process but also gives a huge amount of insight concerning the business aspect of film, television and animation.

Next I will talk a bit more script writing books and later about digital  imaging and painting tools like Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro and Corel Painter as well as some really cool Japanese image softwares such as Paint Tool Sai and Manga Studio. 

Mark

Collaboration

Some creative minds don’t need to collaborate with anyone. There are and have been artists that work best (and only) by themselves, unhindered by competing voices or creative partners.

These are the minority.

They are the J.D. Salingers, the Jackson Pollocks, the Thomas Pynchons of art. Their imaginations are world-creating, their influence is inestimable and their media presence is zilch. Let’s not mince words: they are freaks of nature. With the benefit of hindsight it’s tempting to claim that they became artists because that was how it must be, and despite the funny way life unfolds it seems there was nothing “Syd” Barrett could have done with his life besides music, nothing on this earth for Vincent Van Gogh but the pen and brush. It’s not a coincidence that many of these people were obsessive about their work, idiosyncratic to the point of strangeness and tortured by personal demons. Edgar Degas acknowledged “the moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art,” and said further that “these dismal moods have very little compensation.” Maybe it is that art is too revealing a reflection, that by creating art one is looking too staunchly into the abyss of oneself. But this has become a slippery digression:  I want merely to point out that many of these artistic powerhouses lived out their personal lives as quietly as possible, not seeking out collaboration or praise from their peers or audience.

Let’s get something else clear: I am not one of the people I am describing. And I can say with some amount of confidence that the guys I work with aren’t, either. In fact most people don’t fall into this category, and that’s not a bad thing. If everyone was Harper Lee we would all pump out one kick-ass product and then disappear forever. Nobody would be around to design infrastructure, or educate our young people, or craft important political policy.

That last one is a bad example.

My point is that the majority of successful creative endeavors thrive on collaboration, and some exist only because someone decided they needed a fresh angle on an original idea. It is not just that collaboration is good but that sometimes it is necessary, especially when the artistic and business spheres overlap. Anyone who’s ever produced a film did so with the help and talents of a crew, anyone who’s published a graphic novel did so with the aid of writers, inkers and editors. That’s what we at Imaginos Workshop are: a collaboration of creative minds, viewing the same sculpture from many different angles. What I see in a project is not necessarily what Mark sees, but somewhere in the middle might be a stronger story than either one of us had imagined. Sometimes there are clashes, sure, but ultimately collaboration keeps you honest. Get bricks thrown at you long enough and eventually you start building better walls.

Jon