Masters of Ink: Optimum Wound talks with Rufus Dayglo

Over the next few months we’re going to be talking to an incredible line-up of comic creators, poster artists and illustrators. Here’s the second interview.

By Jason Thibault

I discovered the work of Rufus Dayglo through my friend and IDW colorist Christian Krank. Not only is Rufus an artist for 2000 AD in the UK and IDW in the US…he’s also an art dealer for many of the UK’s top comic artists. He basically lives eats and breathes comic art. Let’s learn a thing or two from him. For further info you can visit his blog or add him on myspace.

First professional work (piece / year) and maybe a quick story behind it.

Hmm..
I’ve been paid to draw since I was at school. First stuff was for advertising firms, then I went into Animation, and finally Comics.
I also did a lot of band flyers, gig posters and album covers for punk bands, usually for a few beers and fags. Glamorous, no?

Self-taught or formally educated? (or mixture of both, mentors etc…)

Self taught. I’ve drawn comic strips since I was a kiddie. I was obsessed with 2000ad (Judge Dredd), and WW2 comics. I learned from copying my heroes, Artists like Mick McMahon, Brendan McCarthy, Joe Kubert, Ramon Sola, Cam Kennedy, Victor De La Fuente, Gerry Talaoc, Herb Trimpe.
I then started doing my own fanzines, and working with friends, like the very talented Nzer Simon Morse, who should be world famous.
A big learning curve was seeing a piece of original art, a Dr Who page by Dave Gibbons in the old Forbidden Planet shop. I realized artists worked twice up to repro size, AND most importantly…I could see corrections! It was a revelation that even Comic Gods made mistakes.
I was very lucky in that I did some work for 2000ad, and Ashley Wood asked me to work with him. This not only forced me to produce a huge amount of work, but I got to see what he did with my layouts, and it was a massive learning curve. Ashley makes everything look very easy… Damn him!!

Tools of the trade: Taking a quick glance over at your pens, brushes etc…what tools have you mainly been using over the last few years?

My system I’ve settled on presently is this…
1 – Small sketch pad to do thumbnails with a 4B pencil and Biro
2 – Scan and enlarge to A3 sized (With US Paper size guidelines…)
3- Light box the rough through onto Paper, using a blunt 2B (I like loose pencils, tight pencils fuck up my inking, as I stress out about ruining a well penciled picture).
4 – Once penciled I rule in Borders, then straight into inking with a Tombo Black art pen and Zig Calligraphy Marker(You’ve got to be careful, these suckers aren’t waterproof), then I use a Uniball Eye Fine Line Rollerball Byro to add detail. Rub out the pencils, and fill in the blacks with a Pentel Brush pen.
It’s important to have an Art brush, to brush away rubber bits from the rubbed out pencils, don’t want to smear the inks.
A page takes me about 4-6 hours, and I do 2 a day.

Favorite brand of ink:

No particular favourite, I like pens. Pilot Lettering Pens, Kuretake ‘Zig- Memory System’ calligraphy Markers (They are great, highly recommended), Pentel Brush Pen, and Uniball roller Byros are superb.

Type of paper:

I use cheap spiral bound A3 pads from a local art shop (Atlantis Fine Arts, London), the paper is 135 GSM Cartridge paper, and is great. Light enough to see through on a light board, hardy enough to scalpel, and absorb my spilt coffee.

Which artists or creators do you return to for a quick boost of inspiration? Who are the masters of ink?

Mick McMahon, Guy Davis, Ashley Wood, Brendan McCarthy, Brett Ewins, Jordi Bernet, Alex Toth, Carmine Infantino, Joe “The Bestest” Kubert, Sam Glanzman,Jamie Hewlett, Cam Kennedy, Jordi Penalva, Gino D’Antonio, Victor De la Fuente, Jock, Henry Flint, Trev Hairsine, Mark Stafford, Hugo Pratt, Alberto Breccia, Mike Mignola, Jose Garcia Lopez, Henri Matisse, Robert Raushenberg, Allesandro Biffignandi, ahhhh…There’s so many…
…and too much to learn!

Once a client has handed off an illustration job to you, how do you first tackle the job? Could you give us a quick overview of your process?

I get a script from the writer, read it 3 or 4 times, drink enough coffee to paralyze an Elephant, draw thumbnails, (If possible discuss the story over the phone with the writer… Alan martin is great for that, very accessible, and points out things he wants particular attention paid to.)

Eat lotsa chocolate… more coffee… Then Pencil and ink 2 pages a day til it’s done, FTPing them up to site for the colourist as I go.

I always send pages to the writer first, to let them check, I like it to be collaborative, and I’m happiest when I have a lot of communication.

What’s currently sitting in your mp3 / CD player / turntable?

Cds.. thousands.. but this week… A lot of Flaming Lips, Polyphonic Spree, Morrissey, the Ramones (Always the Ramones), The 3ds, Pavement, Wire, J&M Chain, Early Adam and the Ants, The Hitchers, anything by Ben deilly (ex LemonHeads…Genius!), Magnetic Fields, Mudhoney, Gun Club, Avengers, lotsa noise…

What’s hanging on your walls and what is your favourite piece of art that you own (not created by you)?

I’m lucky to own a lot of original art.

My personal favourites are a Mick McMahon Judge Dredd Painting, A Guy Davis illo he drew for me, a Gary Panter drawing, and a Brent Anderson Blade Runner cover, and a Ramon Sola Hookjaw page.

But I own a LOT of Art…. I’m very lucky.

Last novel you read and last movie that you saw (that you’d recommend)

I reread a lot of Kinky Friedman books, Tim Powers ‘Anubis Gates’, Bill Bryson and a lot of history books, mainly depressing war stuff, but also Peter Ackroyd, absolute genius (Get his ‘bio’ of London)

Films… Ummm..I never get out…sob.

Current and upcoming projects.

Right now…

Tank Girl “Visions of Booga” 4 issue mini series IDW Comics

Pristeen16 – 4 issue miniseries – IDW Comics

Tank Girl “Skidmarks” 12 part series for Judge Dredd Megazine

Low Life – War without Bloodshed – 4 part series in JD Megazine.

What would you tell an aspiring artist who is working his ass off but still needs and wants to break through to the next level?

Keep working. Nothing improves you like more work. If offered listen to advice from Editors, and other creators, and take on board any suggestions.

Keep submitting work, even if rejected (Again, take on board any feedback you were given).

Publish your own work, get it out, get it seen. Seeing things in print helps you spot mistakes and improve.

But mostly…Keep Working.

Previous Masters of Ink:
Kody Chamberlain

Danijel Zezelj’s Rex hit shops this week

Well I guess we’re officially a publisher now. Rex hit stores on Wednesday and I received my pallet of books around the same time. Next week I’ll list all of the various ways that you can get a copy. For now you can still read the whole damn thing over at webcomicsnation.

No I don’t smile for the camera…ever.

DZ now on MySpace

Danijel Zezelj now has a myspace page. It’s quite a comprehensive catalog of all the books he’s done over the last 15 years. There’s still some galleries that need to be put up that contain his Marvel and DC work but it’s a pretty cool page already. Head on over and check it out sometime.

Rex Reviews starting to appear online

A couple of reviews of Rex have already surfaced online and the word is good.

We made sure to print it on the sexy paper…glossy as hell.

Lee Newman of Broken Frontier chimes in…

There is almost a lyrical quality to the script. Not so much in the words, but the way it flows… the surprising last few pages make for the kind of story that one can imagine coming from Jello Biafra or even Henry Rollins (if the later weren’t so interested in laughs)… As to the pencils, they are unmatched by anyone working in comics today. As opposed to looking like line art, this book looks like it is made of Xeroxed photographs. The gritty sheen to the pages enhances the darkness of the story, but things look real, even when we know that they are fantastical. It allows for a unique suspension of disbelief that is so cinematic, it really is like watching a film.

Then Avril Brown of Comics Waiting Room takes a shot…

REX is a story of rage and revenge. The dark, smoky art fits seamlessly with the plot, and adds to the blend of harsh realities and dark fantasies… REX swoops in, punches you in the gut and swans on out without a hint of an apology. It can be a bit cliché at times, and not all of the scenes are easy to understand, but Zezelj makes it impossible not to take something from this book. Brian Azzarello, who wrote the forward, put it best: REX is raw. Most certainly not a typical prison break story, REX is nonetheless a powerful and emotional book that leaves a lasting impression.

And finally our fellow countryman Nick Defina over at Septagon Studios gave us the Indie Spotlight this week.

Thanks to everyone for giving the book a shot. We’re just getting started. We’ve only sold 25% of the first printing and still have 2300 copies on hand. We’re in this for the long haul.

You should see the lineup of artists I have for our forthcoming “Masters of Ink” interviews. Hope to have the first one up next week.
-Jay

LAUNCHING INTO OBLIVION – Part 2 – Marketing Blitz

By Jason Thibault

New website.
Optimumwound.com is taking form. We almost killed ourselves making it work with Word Press but we’re getting there. Some sections are active with new additions being made every day. My formatting is a little wonky but I have big plans for that place. We’re getting there.

8-page Rex sampler
I had 5000 8-page samplers for Rex printed up at Lebonfon Printing (in Quebec Canada) this week. They’re shipping out as part of the Diamond dateline weekly package that goes out to their 4600 store accounts. Unfortunately they’ll be ending up in shops at the end of the month rather than the beginning. It was a gamble but I felt that I needed to have something in hard copy circulating out there amongst the vendors who do all of the purchasing. A $9.95 cover price is a bit of a risk for storeowners to take on an unproven newbie publisher.

I think we’ll launch with good numbers in May and that we’ll do even better numbers once the book is actually out and a few hundred review copies can be mailed out to magazines and media outlets. Then we’ll do a re-launch in June / July. It’s why I wanted to go books (graphic novels) as opposed to singles. I can think about the long term rather than 30-day shelf lives. Still it’s important to make a strong push come release week. Jay at Diamond did a lot for us by writing this amazing review for the Previews catalog.

Webcomic advertising
I did some heavy advertising for the Rex webcomic over the past 2 days using the Project Wonderful banner system on some like-minded sites like thezombiehunters.com, Marlith.com and postnukecomic.com. We managed to pull over a few thousand people that way. I also took a rather pricey ($40/day) ad over the entire onlinecomics.net network. And Warren Ellis’ White Chapel forum run by Avatar sent over even more traffic.

In total Rex managed to garner over 50,000 page views in the last 4 days. That is f@#king awesome.

Facebook Page
Facebook, which I have a love / hate relationship with has launched some new applications. Most of my local (Vancouver) friends migrated over there last year. You can now start a Page as opposed to a profile. FB profiles are private whereas the “pages” are public. So now Optimum Wound has a Facebook Page. It’s a tiny community (so far) and it will never replace our presence on Myspace but I felt it was important to experiment with.

Press Releases and Knowing Thy Place.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around writing press releases. I started out last year by going to this helpful article How to Write a Great Press Release. I still need A LOT of practice.

I wrote one up, made a few classic errors and emailed it off to a lot of comic news sites. Only 4 picked it up. I’m not sure how many mistakes I made. Bad formatting, sending attachments, too lengthy or reading too much like an advertisement. Don’t know.

None of the mainstream places like comicon.com/pulse, newsarama.com or comicbookresources.com posted it. I’m not sure what their policies are or if their email filters blocked it or if it was just plain unnewsworthy. I’m sure their inboxes get filled with hundreds of missives each week. I do know that newsarama.com was happy to take my advertising dollars last summer. For two months in a row.

…but some of the smaller sites came to the rescue. Some of them are growing at such a rate that they’re becoming the new dogs in town. I have to take the time to publicly thank Broken Frontier, Chuck @ Comic Related, Matt @ Comics Bulletin and Brad @ The Comic Collective for helping us get the word out there. We are extremely grateful for that. And I’ll return the favor once I get our link section running at our homepage.

So you see I’m gradually laying out a marketing blueprint for a new comic and a new company. I haven’t done everything perfectly the first time out and at the end of this 10-week cycle we’ll examine what went right and wrong. It’s always an uphill battle and you don’t sleep much but I’m having a lot of fun. Next week I’ll go over even more aspects of marketing. And try to include a few photos.
-Jay