Travis James - Inking Horror & Bringing AHA to Life

🎙️ Travis James - Inking Horror & Bringing AHA to Life

In this episode of The USDN Podcast - Where Indie Comics Come to Life, we sit down with artist and inker Travis James to explore the craft behind one of the most overlooked yet essential roles in comic creation.

From rediscovering his passion for comics later in life to developing a disciplined daily art routine, Travis shares his journey into the world of inking and how it shapes the final look and feel of a story.

We also dive into his work on CHK Comics Presents: AHA - A Horror Anthology, including his contributions to the chilling story “Pete’s Meat” and how inking plays a critical role in building tension, atmosphere, and visual storytelling in horror comics.

🧠 In this episode, we discuss:

•  The role of an inker in comic book production 
•  How line work and shadow impact storytelling 
•  Travis’ path from hobbyist to working artist 
•  The importance of repetition, feedback, and growth 
•  Behind-the-scenes insights into AHA: A Horror Anthology 

🔗 Follow Travis James:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@travisjamesinks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travis.james.inks/
All Links: https://lnk.bio/travisjamesinks

🚀 Support the AHA Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imchrisstall/chk-comics-presents-aha-a-horror-anthology?ref=profile_created&category_id=249

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Affiliate disclosure: USDN may earn a commission if you use our link or code.

🎙️ About The USDN Podcast:
Hosted by The Chairman, The USDN Podcast is a creator-focused media platform spotlighting indie comic creators, crowdfunding campaigns, and the voices shaping the future of independent storytelling.

New episodes weekly.

📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@USDN_Podcast

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What is The United States Department of Nerds Podcast?

USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.

Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.

This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.

It’s about the people creating the worlds.

Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:

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You are listening to the USDN on the

DFPN.

Thanks for watching!

what is up everybody and welcome to the

united states department of nerds where we

are for the people by the people and

of the people and today we continue our

journey into chk presents aha a horror

anthology this time we're stepping into

the shadows

with a creator who helps bring horror to

life, not just through storytelling,

but through line, texture, and tones.

From inking pages that shape the final

look of a story to contributing to a

twisted tale like Pete's Meats.

To deliver a cover that sets the tone

before you ever open the book,

we're talking about the artist behind the

ink.

The Council of Nerds is now in session.

Travis, welcome to the USDN.

Thanks, Jeff.

Happy to be here.

Let's jump into it.

And for everybody who is just now learning

about Travis,

who are you and kind of what got

you into ink and comic books?

Oh, okay.

That is a,

that's a bit of a can of worms.

Um, well, uh, I'm from Canada first off.

So terrible winters, uh,

actual beer rather than bottled water.

Um,

And really, really terrible CBC shows.

As for what got me into comics,

I mean,

I've been into comics since I was a

kid.

Some of the first titles I picked up,

my old man would get me from the

gas station,

did a spinner rack and had the X-Men

classics reprints of late-seventies,

early-eighties titles.

So that was my first comics.

When I

saw the X-Men cartoon when it first came

out and was at ninety three or whatever

it was.

I thought it was wrong because Storm had

powers and she had hair rather than a

mohawk.

Right.

So it really threw me off at first.

But that's that's when I got into comics

and it was, you know, X-Men classics,

Spider-Man,

all the Spider-Man titles at one point I

had a pull list for Alpha Flight because,

again, Canadian.

So, you know,

guardian vindicator shaman sasquatch puck

because of course canada has a superhero

named puck right only makes sense um and

somewhere i think it was probably around

junior high i just started drawing i would

always have a couple of comics with me

in my binder and i'd be just trying

to replicate john ramita jr's pencils over

and over and over and over again um

As a kid,

what I wanted to do was actually work

for Digital Chameleon,

which were those who aren't old enough to

know what Digital Chameleon is.

They were the first company to apply

digital colors to comics on a large scale.

And they were actually based here at

Winnipeg, Canada.

And they did work for Marvel and Image

and DC.

They got into inking and everything as

well.

And then they closed the doors for...

In two thousand three,

the year after I graduated high school.

So the dream of working in comics,

unless I moved to New York,

which wasn't going to happen,

pretty much completely died.

I picked up art again as like a

hobby messing around on the iPad about

five years ago and was just doing like,

you know, my D&D characters.

I was doing a sketch of that or,

you know, my old Power Ranger helmet.

sitting on the table and just trying to

draw it just for something to do on

the weekends.

And through sheer dumb luck,

I ended up meeting somebody while online

gaming, playing Destiny,

that completely changed everything for me.

Jerry Dugan.

Marvel, DC writer, Deadpool, Guardians,

Iron Man, X-Men.

So I gamed with Jerry for several years.

We still talk.

He doesn't have enough time to game

anymore.

Obviously they keep him pretty busy.

But he saw on our discord,

some of the stuff that I was doing

just for fun.

He's like,

why are you not doing this for a

career?

And it just sort of sat there and

percolated as an idea in the back of

my head.

And then eventually I was,

so it's February of twenty four.

I was just doom scrolling as we all

do.

And I saw this post by Gail Simone.

She reposted some pencils that a spawn

penciler had done for a cover.

I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to try inking this on the

iPad just for fun.

And got hooked, like very, very hooked.

Went from doing like a piece a month

to a piece a week.

And then started adding colors to some

things and did some mock covers and

just kept playing around with it more and

more and more.

And then at our local comic con here

that October, uh,

I took what I had on my iPad

and I figured, okay,

I'm going to talk to the first guest

artist nerders alley and show them what

I've got and be like,

is there anything here now?

Because I stopped reading comics after

high school because you know,

life and bills and rent and dating and

a kid and all that.

I didn't know who anybody current was.

and uh turns out the artist i walked

up to is one of the big big

cover artists for uh for marvel these days

and he tore my stuff apart like absolutely

ripped it apart not in a mean way

but just like you need to fix this

you need to fix this you need to

fix this you need to fix this you

need they just yeah things and he ripped

a page of uh bristol out of his

sketchbook grabbed a brush

jotted down a whole bunch of different

line types, and handed it to me says,

practice these lines over and over and

over and over again.

And he held a brush was last time

he held a quill.

And years ago,

you need to do that you need to

get back to that.

If you can do that,

you can do everything digitally.

And then so yeah,

and immediately went on line ordered,

probably about two hundred bucks for the

pens and ink and quills and nibs and

And I haven't looked back at this point.

I'm at the point where I'm doing about

a page a day, usually.

Probably inking and or coloring,

now that my inking is pretty close to

where I want it,

probably four to ten hours a day.

So it's become a bit of an obsession,

but it's paid off.

I found the Comic Book Yeti Discord

through Blue Sky.

probably about a year ago now at this

point where I met Chris and I met

Chris and I met Byron and all the

others one of the guys on the discord

Gerald has joked that it's not so much

the comic book yeti discord anymore it's

the Travis James into the world because of

how many pages I'm posting so yeah it

just blew up into a full blown obsession

at this point I guess

as not wrong with that.

I mean, it's working for you, right?

I mean, I think so.

I mean,

it looks like it that's for sure.

I mean,

there's nothing cooler than stopping by

your page and just checking out the pages

you're inking.

So but what specifically drew you to ink

in versus colors or anything else?

Um,

one of the things I started doing when

I really started doing the physical inks

was

I would stop and I'd be like, fuck,

that looks cool.

And I would take a photo with my

phone and just seeing the progression of

the ink,

that just deep black silky ink filling up

the page and covering up the blue line.

It's just, it's very, very rewarding,

right?

It's one of those few things where you

really can see the progress when you're

working on a page.

because it's either inked and it's

permanent and there's no getting rid of

it, or it's not.

Sure,

you can go back and do touch-ups with

your gel pens and Posca and acrylics and

whatever else,

but it's either ink or it's not.

And you can really see it fill up.

And also there is something very,

very satisfying when you've got large

sections of black to fill,

just filling that in with a brush.

I'm pretty sure that's just...

It's the tactile, the brush itself,

and just watching it fill is just

addictive.

Pretty therapeutic, I'm sure.

Oh, very.

What's up, Kev?

Glad you stopped by tonight, man.

But... So...

did you start traditionally or digitally

or I know you just mentioned briefly,

but how did you actually get started with

inking?

So in high school, I was doing pencils,

uh,

myself and trying to replicate all the

different artists.

And then when I learned more about how

comics were made, you know,

back then through whatever book I was able

to get at the local library.

Um, then I started picking up, um,

I think they were just the Sharpie like

fine liners that I found back then.

And I was trying to do it with

that.

I'd read that a lot of it was

done with brush.

And so I was trying to ink some

of my stuff that I was doing back

then with really,

really crappy brushes and black acrylic

ink,

which is definitely not the way to go.

So I'd done it then initially when I

got back into art five or six years

ago,

It was all on the iPad because I'm

like, well,

I'm not drawing enough to justify spending

hundreds of dollars on supplies.

And I've already got an iPad and an

Apple pencil.

I'm just going to mess around with it

on there.

And it was it was really that that

conversation at our local comic con,

I guess,

a year and a half ago now that

made me just dive headfirst into the into

the physical inking.

No, that's really cool, dude.

I'm always happy when people come back to

something later in life and realize, oh,

the passion is still there,

and I'm actually quite good at it still.

It's satisfying to hear people you know

come back around to fulfilling a dream,

or a dream that they didn't know they

had.

Or one that they thought was dead.

Exactly.

I mean...

I'm one of those where when I picked

up podcasting,

I didn't really know how much I was

going to enjoy it or love it.

I went through several variations of this

before I got to where I'm at today.

Now it's like nothing's better than

talking to indie creators.

That's just how it is now.

My best friends now are creators and

writers and

It's always cool when I see their projects

get fulfilled on Kickstarter or just in

general.

So for me,

it's just satisfying to play a small piece

in the big circle of life of what

a comic book is.

Yeah.

I think the wildest thing for me is

I'm old, so I've got Facebook.

Right.

I am still rocking on Facebook, too.

Right.

But, you know, on Facebook,

it's got that people you may know,

like the suggested friends list.

Oh, yeah.

and the way it's built up gradually over

the last year and then like the names

that I see popping up on there,

because like, Hey,

you've got a dozen friends in common.

And it's like,

I've seen Chris Claremont even pop up on

there or, or Larry Hama on there.

I mean,

I've got freaking Ace Contenado on my

friends list and Neto Diaz,

who's doing all the X-Men stuff right now.

And I'm getting to see all this stuff

that they're posting.

And it's just like,

oh, man, imposter syndrome is real.

But it's still really, really cool.

Like,

the first time I saw Claremont pop up

on there, and I'm like,

I grew up reading his stuff.

I mean, he is the X-Men writer.

I mean,

all the current X-Men writers have had the

same, you know,

reaction themselves when they first meet

him.

And it's just... The cool thing, too,

that I've discovered, though,

is when you start talking to other comic

book creators, they're just...

They're also comic book nerds.

At the indie level, at the pro level,

it doesn't matter.

They're just comic book nerds.

They love comic books.

They love the characters.

They love the heroes.

And they will go down the deepest nerd

rabbit hole talking about characters and

storylines and timelines and multiverses

and what-ifs.

And it's just fun.

It really is.

And I remember when I was still doing

new comic book day.

And so I was like,

I would just post the stuff that I'm

reading and kind of tag the artists and

the writers and stuff like that.

And it was wild because like everybody be

like, hey, cool, you know,

thanks for reading.

And it took when Rat City came out

and Erica Schultz was the writer.

She's still the writer on Rat City.

But she's like, hey,

I appreciate the shout out,

but what about the guy who did the

inks?

What about the guy who did the colors?

What about the person who did this?

And I was just like,

I never thought about them.

And she's like,

if you're going to do this,

do it the right way and give everybody

the love who worked on that book.

So it kind of opened up my perspective

of the grander scheme of a comic book.

Because most people,

they only care about who did the cover,

Who wrote it?

Who did the art?

That's the big three, right?

But no,

that kind of opened my eyes wider.

And then she was just at the local

Comic-Con.

And of course,

I had to get something signed by her.

So I picked up one of her older

indie books that she did.

And I was just like,

you're the reason why when I was doing

this that I started doing it this way

versus the way I was doing it.

And she's like, ah,

I faintly remember that.

I was like, eh, thanks.

That's awesome.

But no,

it was one of those really cool full

circle moments for me because I'm like, A,

she was the first female to write Spawn.

And she was just really cool and humble

and very down to earth and would take

the time to talk to everybody who stopped

by and seen her.

So I just wish I would have brought

Rat City with me because she's out.

So if you're going to see Erica Schultz

at a sign-in and you want something

specifically signed by her,

bring it with you.

Fair enough.

Actually,

probably the coolest thing I've got signed

is not actually even a comic.

You'll get a kick out of this.

So as I knock everything off the shelf,

last year, I guess November,

our local Comic-Con was going on.

And it's the first time I put together

an actual physical portfolio and went to

show it to the artists to get feedback.

And it was like Mike McComb, Ed Brisson,

Scott Henderson, great names.

McComb was floored because I found one of

his pages that got him hired for DC

in the first place way back.

He's like,

I can't believe somebody actually inked

this.

This looks better than my pencils.

He's like, the pencils are terrible,

but you did a great job inking it.

um but that day i took something with

me because i knew it was gonna be

a stressful morning showing off yeah the

portfolio so i'm like you know what i'm

gonna go and get one of the guest

signatures specifically and um curse my

adhd brain um it does the voice for

xavier on x-men and he played red skull

in the like natasha's death scene when

they were getting this yeah i i could

see his face i just can't remember his

name yes so i took this my wife

got this for me last year for my

birthday because why not and so exactly to

sign it and my goal my plan is

anytime i'm at a con i'm bringing it

with me and anybody that's ever worked on

x-men i'm gonna get to sign it so

he signed it right in the middle of

the forehead

That's dope.

With the, to me,

my X-Men quote on it.

And then all the guys that were there

that had worked on X-Men at some point

or another, I got signatures on it.

And I'm just going to fill the whole

thing up.

Yeah, no, that's really cool.

So for,

I don't know if we answered this question

yet,

but for people who may not understand or

just don't know,

what does an anchor actually do in comics?

Yeah.

Um, a lot more than people realize, um,

which is kind of disappointing now because

we see,

we don't see as many anchors working in

the industry because some, uh,

publishers have gotten away from it.

Some artists prefer to do the inking

themselves and, you know,

thus obviously get paid more,

but you do lose a fair bit that

way because inking is a thing in and

of itself.

And originally came out because of

necessity, because in the old days, um,

pencils wouldn't scan up properly or

however they did the the the copying of

it to be able to put into you

know the comics to be able to add

the color and everything too so yeah they

had an artist go over it with um

with a uh waterproof light fast archival

india ink usually with a quill or a

brush

in order to darken up the original pencil

marks and then add depth and shape and

tone to everything with those deep,

deep blacks.

And then it would go off to the

colorist.

They would do their thing.

Then it would go to the letterer,

et cetera.

The biggest thing with inking,

if I were to see somebody doing their

own inks or, like,

somebody that's new to making comics and

has questions about, like,

this is inked.

No, it's not.

And it's not being a jerk and it's

not a matter of style.

Like some people will say, Oh,

that's just, that's just my inking style.

There's certain fundamentals to it.

The biggest one being line weights, right?

All too often I'll see pages somebody's

worked on and it's inked and it's just

a thin black line around the whole thing

or a thick black line around the whole

thing.

And that's it.

And there's no variance to the line.

I was lucky enough to meet a professional

anchor that's been at it for, you know,

twelve years professionally and twenty

total.

Anchor out of BC, Jay Sobey.

And he saw something I was working on,

added me,

and then started providing like regular,

like constant feedback, like daily.

Like every time I'm posting a piece,

he's giving feedback.

And the thing that he drilled into me

was the line weights, uh,

thinner outside line where whatever the

object is,

is farther away from the camera,

thicker as it gets closer.

Right.

So, you know, you're doing like a,

you know, deep foreshortening,

somebody punching towards the camera all

around, like the knuckles and the fist,

it's going to be thicker lines and it's

going to, you know,

as it goes back where part of the

body, you know, branches out, gets,

gets bigger, it'll thicken out again.

And it's,

the way he would say it's peaks and

valleys, peaks and valleys,

thick to thin and back again.

And that's really like the big,

big thing is knowing where that needs to

happen to create that.

Cause we're taking a,

it's like Gary Martin says in his book

on inking and Klaus Janssen said the exact

same thing.

We're taking three D objects and trying to

make them appear solid three dimensional

objects,

but we're using a flat two dimensional

piece of paper to do it.

And that thickening and thinning of the

line is what sort of tricks the eye

into giving the page that feel of, hey,

this is an actual physical object out in

the world somewhere.

So what's your process like when you

receive penciled pages?

You just received the raw art.

What's your first steps into then inking

those pages?

Uh,

I'll take a look at it and I'll

usually have like a notepad or something,

or, um, if I'm working on it digitally,

I'll just create a thing in,

in one note.

Um, just cause I've got, you know, the,

the drawing tablet in front of me.

So it's easy to look at it side

by side and take the notes.

And then it doesn't matter if I'm on

the PC or if I've got my laptop

and I'm working off of that somewhere.

Um, what are they going for?

I'll read the script.

What is it?

I'll read the script if I've got one.

Sometimes I don't because of the practice

pages.

I don't always obviously have access to

the script.

What is the tone that they're going for?

If it's something that I've seen by that

artist before, by that penciler before,

I'll go and look at older things that

they've done just to see how was this

approached?

What were they happy with this?

And then I'll usually...

It depends on the page.

Sometimes...

My neurodivergent brain gets the better of

me and I just start inking whatever looks

cool first.

And then I'm just bouncing around the

different things on the page.

A lot of times I'll start with the

bigger detail first and I'll do like the

characters themselves.

I'll usually start with like a thin

outline.

Doesn't matter if I'm using brush or I'm

using quill.

I'll start with a thin outline all the

way around the character that I'm working

on.

Don't worry about the line weights on it

at all.

I want a thin black line to give

it the base shape and contain everything.

And then I'll start working in outlining

the areas that are just going to be

black.

I won't fill it in completely because I

still want to see sometimes there's

certain pencil marks underneath that I

want to pay attention to, like feathering,

hatching, cross-hatching, stippling,

whatever it might be,

or eraser marks because there are a lot

of artists out there that use erasers

thin erasers or the corner to give shape

and highlights and everything.

I'll start going through and I'll do all

the thin line details after I've got the

areas of black roughed out.

Then I'll usually start working in the

various bits of feathering.

For those that don't know,

feathering is where you're seeing multiple

consecutive parallel lines of thick to

thin.

Where you're seeing solid black

transition to thinner and it's helping

show the shape and the curve.

It's helping show the transition from

darker lit areas to lighter lit areas.

So you'll see like, you know,

on actually I've got a great page here

that you can probably see.

I just need to actually grab it off

of Discord because I was sharing with some

of the guys earlier.

on our work in progress thread.

So I was just doing this one to

practice.

Actually,

this works out because I can show you

transition piece by piece.

So I started working just for the heck

of it the other day on Jim Lee's

Spider-Man and Superman crossover.

Because I can't remember ever seeing Jim

Lee draw Spider-Man.

And I just thought it was cool.

And also just the sheer level of detail

that that man is able to fit onto

a page of pencils is mind-boggling.

Exactly.

So I started inking it.

I usually have a page or two that

I'm working on while I'm just sitting on

the couch watching TV with my wife.

But I'm not necessarily in the studio.

I've just got a lap board and I'm

just messing around.

So it's my

No matter what project I've got that I'm

working on,

it's my relaxing sort of me time when

it comes to the inking.

So go on.

I forgot.

I downloaded them on the desktop.

I needed to download them on the laptop.

Where can I?

Oh, image files.

Here we go.

to not save them where they were supposed

to save them.

Because of course, technology fails me.

This is why I work with a pen

and ink instead of everything digital,

guys.

Because otherwise,

my brain will short-circuit faster than

Johnny Clive in a rainstorm.

Again, showing my age with that one.

I know.

That's a classic.

I think everybody's seen that one.

And if they haven't,

then they need to go back and reevaluate

stuff.

And then watch it.

Here we go.

Yeah, there we go.

So this is Jim Lee's work.

Obviously,

he has Scott Williams do his inks because

Scott Williams is insane.

Like, insanely, insanely good.

That's just goals, man.

The amount of times I've just poured over

Scott Williams' pages to try and figure

out how he did something or got a

certain type of effect and tried to

replicate it.

I mean,

there's a reason Jim Lee's been using him

for, what, close to twenty years?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, maybe more, actually.

That might go back to his work on

Spawn, actually.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah, probably.

So, I mean,

this was all done with a brush.

It's not done yet.

You'll notice I haven't really touched the

line weights around the body at all,

but I've got the outline there.

I've got

some of the blacks filled and that

feathering those thin lines.

Like if you look at, uh, uh, soups,

uh, shoulders and biceps, right.

It's those thin lines that show that

transition.

They're thicker to thinner.

It's harder to see because it's so small

because the detail is so tight on these

pages,

but it's thicker to thinner and it just

gives that, that shape and that,

that transition to it.

And it just makes it seem like a,

like a physical three D object.

And it's,

when you're asking like why inking over

everything else, it's, it's this,

it's these transitions going from,

you know,

just a page of nothing but pencils to

filling everything up.

It's just incredibly,

incredibly satisfying to just watch that

fill up.

Dude, that's so cool though.

I'm glad to see that book is doing

very well.

I'm not personally a big fan of either

character.

I like Spider-Man,

but I prefer the alternate versions of

him.

Like Hobby and Miles?

Yeah.

I get it.

Maybe I read so much of it as

a younger guy.

It's probably the reason why I'm not a

bigger fan of it as I am or

as I was when I was younger.

And Superman the same way.

Like to me,

the death of Superman to me was the

death of Superman.

Even though he didn't stay dead,

which why would he?

He's still a billion dollar franchise of

himself.

But yeah, to me, the death of Superman,

he died.

Yeah.

can we just be thankful that the death

of Superman was also the start of the

death of the super mullet?

This is true story.

Very true.

Yes.

But,

but so how much of your own style

do you kind of interject into these pieces

versus staying true to what the penciler

intended?

Do you ever go back to the penciler

and say, Hey,

Were you trying this here,

but if I do this here,

it would give it more depth or more

tone or anything like that?

Yeah.

I mean,

it depends on the artist that you're

working with.

Obviously, certain artists,

you just want to stick as close to

it as possible because it's a masterpiece

and you don't want to.

Oh, a hundred percent.

Yeah.

Right.

Like this,

like this piece that I just shared,

like it's generally like Jim Lee has a

recognizable style.

If you're inking Jim Lee,

it's got to look like Jim Lee's style.

Um,

But other artists, there's room to play.

Like, I loved working on,

or still working on Inheritance with

Brennan Elbeski,

who's the penciler on that project.

He,

it was really fun to work with him

on it.

And it's kind of the same thing that

was working with Chris, K, Chris, on Aha,

is because their styles of pencils are so

different from everything that I practice

on, typically.

that I get to play around more and

do a little bit with it, uh,

and just explore a little bit what I,

what I do with it.

Um, you know, Brendan has a more,

you know, animated cartoon, very vibrant,

you know,

his style of work would not be a

miss on like a Saturday morning cartoon.

Yeah.

Whereas Chris, uh,

his style.

And I've told him this, too,

before when we were doing like a little

side project just for fun a while back.

Like.

I can see you doing like a weekly

Saturday morning comic strip in this

style.

Yeah.

Right.

It just it's it's what my my brain

sees when I see his style of doing

things.

So taking what I know of inking and

all the practice that I've done and

getting to apply to those styles and be

like,

how do I keep it to this style?

Work in what makes it proper

but still play with it a little bit.

And it's actually pretty cool.

And sometimes you're really lucky and you

just get great feedback.

A little while back,

Scott Eaton started following me over on

Instagram because he saw it was a Thanos

piece that I did up.

Because originally I was going to get the

Thanos piece signed by Jim Starlin because

he was supposed to be here as a

guest at the same con that I got

the Magneto helmet signed at.

But he was sick that weekend and didn't

end up making it.

But Eaton saw me working on it.

We started talking and he actually hooked

me up with an entire issue of pencils

of X-Men Legends number twelve from twenty

twenty two that he did with Chris

Claremont.

And so I've been working my way through

inking the entire issue and I'll be

working my way through coloring the entire

issue once it's done.

But the best part is I've been getting

direct feedback from Scott on every page.

That's really cool.

He's provided like a couple of things that

he wanted me to like fix.

Um,

mainly Kitty's hair on a couple of the

pages.

He just wanted it more natural and flowy,

but everything else is like,

you have a really nice natural brushy

style to it.

You're just tight enough to the pencils.

Uh, and tight means like line for line.

When, when, when, when,

when artists are talking about how tight

you are to the pencils, it's,

it's line for line.

Um,

if they want you to be more loose,

you're allowed to play.

Right.

And he's from,

from the way he's said it to me

is he likes how I'm like,

just sort of like on that borderline of

not too tight,

not too loose and just expression.

Particularly, he said it was the,

in the faces of the characters that he

liked where I was being a little bit

more free with it,

giving them a little bit more,

more expression.

So yeah, it really depends on the artist.

I know in the old days,

what they would do,

is they take a really experienced penciler

and give them a less experienced anchor

and tell them to stay tighter to the

pencils to get them used to how it's

supposed to look.

Likewise, a newer penciler,

they would pair with an experienced

anchor.

And so you get that hybridization of the

styles between the anchor and the penciler

that would really change things up.

Like in the old days,

if you came across an issue, you're like,

oh,

Klaus Janssen thinking this is going to be

great.

and it you know depending on who it

was that he was working with right like

i'm working my way through reading

everything daredevil from beginning to end

like i'm about a hundred and fifty some

issues in so i'm like maybe what ten

or fifteen issues from like where frank

miller first started doing deadpool or

daredevil and it's like seeing you know

because i saw seen in some of the

previous issues you know gene colon with

claus jansen doing the inks and then you

see

Frank Miller with Klaus Jansen doing the

inks and it's,

you get the similarities that are brought

in and you can tell like the way

Jansen does his light and his shadows and

his transitions.

But the way Miller does daredevil versus

the way she Poland did daredevil very,

very different.

Yeah.

Right.

And just, you know, getting that,

seeing the guest anchor come in on an

issue, even for a couple of pages,

like when you actually know what you're

looking for and you're not just speeding

through the pages,

It's really cool some of the differences

that you can see in the artwork.

And I think that's one of the things

that's kind of sad about more modern

comics is because you don't see a lot

of those pairings anymore.

You don't get to see those cool, like,

takes and mashups and, like,

things that made certain issues really,

really special beyond just the story,

beyond just the pencils.

Like,

you would hit that just perfect

combination, right?

Yeah, you know, and it's kind of wild,

too, in...

For anybody out there that has,

or if your dad collected comics,

or whoever collected comics,

go and look at some of the consecutive

issues of Danes,

and you'll start to notice faces or hair

or other features of characters

made transition and look a little

different from issue to issue or even some

cases page to page because of that right

there.

And that's really cool that you brought

that up because I used to always wondered

myself until, you know,

it wasn't until like a couple of years

ago when I got big back in the

comic books that I started thinking,

getting at the things and you kind of

like throw yourself into it and you start

learning things and that's when i i

finally it was always like i i googled

like why did you know books from one

book to another book or one page to

another page why did the certain

characters look different and it gave me

the full breakout of oh it could have

been this or this and this and one

of the biggest ones like the anchor could

have changed or

they had a guest anchor or it could

have been anything like that.

So for me,

it was kind of like this huge,

real learning curve,

just going back and asking those questions

that I always wondered about when I was

a kid reading comic books,

but I didn't have the internet to tell

me the answers, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, when I was still,

I'm going to say learning to,

to ink in the first place,

I was still doing everything on the iPad

before my,

little digital portfolio at the time had

gotten torn apart.

I came across the one page that I

was, that I was inking for practice.

And I noticed there was something really,

really wrong on the page.

And it was just like a,

like a cover or commission that somebody

done.

And it was like green arrow,

black Mary on the rooftop.

And GA has got his bow drawn and

I'm looking at it and I'm like,

this is wrong.

The way he's holding the bow is wrong

because rather than like,

if this is,

if my phone is the bow, you know,

where it's,

you've got it and it's in line with

your knuckles,

he was holding it kind of like this

on a weird angle.

And I actually know it's more like,

more like this, right?

So it's like pointed away,

but not in a way that's like you're

pointing it away for safety or anything.

It was more just like,

that is the wrong grip.

And the other thing I noticed is the

bow was drawn,

but the limbs weren't

bent and they were definitely not bent at

the right angle.

I mean, I, you know,

grew up doing archery in school and I

used to go to an archery range locally

here a couple of times a week.

I know what a bow is supposed to

look like when it's drawn.

It's part of what got me into reading

green arrow and watching the Stephen Amell

series in the first place.

And so I said to, to, to Jerry,

the one day I'm like, Hey,

I got a question for you that I

don't know the answer to.

And I can't find the answer to it.

When you're inking a page,

you know,

cause you've probably heard these

conversations before who fixes it when

there's like a glaring error like that,

who fixes it?

Or do they just ink it and let

it go?

He's like, well, it depends.

Sometimes if there's time,

if there's not a, like a huge deadline,

it'll go back to the penciler and the

editor will be like, fix it.

You're better than this.

And other times, if it's a deadline,

it's up to the, the anchor to fix,

which is why the anchor has to be

able to pencil as well.

Even if they're not their main focus and

you know, maybe they're like,

seventy percent or eighty percent is as

good as the, you know,

somebody who pencils full time.

They got to be able to go back

and fix things like that.

So I'm like, all right.

So I went and I fixed the angle

of the bow.

I fixed where the arrow was actually

knocked to it.

I fixed the bow string on it.

Yeah.

And, you know,

for where I was at inking at the

time, it looked all right.

But it's that's one of the other things.

And that's why they used to do the

pairings with the more experienced inker

with a novice penciler and vice versa is

because

it acted as like a second sort of

fail safe to make sure that things don't

get missed and there aren't as many

errors.

Whereas now, because that isn't there,

you're seeing creep into a lot of

different pieces.

And this is,

this isn't any one particular publisher.

This is all around in comic books in

general.

When you've got one artist doing

everything,

you do see a lot more tangents pop

in.

You do see a lot more like deadlines

or lines where it extends way past where

it's supposed to.

Things like that would have gotten caught,

but because everything is rush, rush,

rush,

let's get the pages out as quick as

we can.

You lose a little bit of the quality,

right?

And then it's not to say that there,

there aren't,

there's tons of artists out there that do

great,

great work doing the pencils and inks

themselves and the colors themselves too.

But by having the specializations, right.

It's like D and D a bar,

it isn't going to be as good a

fighter.

as a fighter or as good of a

rogue as a rope or as good of

a healer as a cleric yeah sure they

can do everything but if you need a

healer you preferring to have a cleric

yeah if you need somebody to get punched

in the face for you so the rest

of the team can run away you want

that fighter no and it's and it's wild

because the more you read comments the

more you look at the pages the art

you start to notice stains yeah coffee

stains and whatnot

Yeah, coffee stains.

You start to notice like,

what's wrong with this gun?

And you sit there and you stare at

the gun for ten, maybe twelve,

fifteen minutes and you're like,

what the hell was that artist or that

anchor, whoever, who, who,

who let that gun slide through, you know,

because you know,

it's like the injection port is like not

in the right spot or the way the,

the bullet left the muzzle is like just

weird things like that.

You notice like either they've never seen

or held or felt a gun fire to

know that's how it's supposed to look.

Or they were just like,

It just didn't cure.

Like, I gotta get this done.

Like the armor on that Angelina Jolie

movie, Salt,

that put the EOTech Wi-Fi II on the

rifle backwards.

Yes.

You know, movies are...

It's not just movies.

It's comic books as well,

and it's not just comic books.

It's movies.

It's TV shows.

You start to notice weird little things

like that,

and they will drive you bonkers.

There is one...

Just like the way they were carving

bullets in that movie.

Just like, no, just stop, please.

There is one thing in comics that has

driven me nuts for the longest time.

And I,

when I first started talking to Scott

Eaton, I'm like,

thank you for being one of the few

that actually does this properly.

Swords.

I love Nightcrawler.

Nightcrawler is one of my favorites.

Same, same.

It's a whole idea of the acrobats,

the old men insist with L-free movies.

I freaking love it.

But the amount of times that he's supposed

to be using a saber or a rapier,

it's a one-handed sword where the pommel

is like right at the base of your

palm for the balance of the sword.

Meanwhile,

I'm seeing guys draw Nightcrawler with

that much sword hilt sticking out of the

bottom of his hand.

Yeah.

It's like a bit dry sword.

Yeah.

Yeah,

he uses primarily sabers and rapiers,

right?

Yeah.

You know, flowy, precise, thin,

fast blades.

Almost like a sword you could dance with.

Absolutely.

For our Game of Thrones people, pencil.

A needle.

A needle, yes.

A needle, thank you.

That's what he would use.

got mids inc in the comments with the

dnd mentioned if that's all it takes to

get you here dude we'll i'll throw out

dnd comments all the time y'all stay tuned

we're gonna get mids back on before you

know it so

But let's,

let's jump into a little bit of aha

piece meat because that's why you're here.

But I did want to give some education

on what an anchor is.

So I cannot thank you enough for bringing

that in this.

Honestly,

you're the first anchor I've really got to

talk to on the show.

And that's really cool.

Outside of mids,

mids was just on the show.

So I don't want to discount him because

he was really fun to talk to,

even though he sounded like he was coming

off a bender and he was all horse

and yeah.

He's another Canadian, too.

There's a lot of Canadians in this book,

I'm just realizing.

If he's from Toronto, that doesn't count.

Him and Duke are both from Toronto.

They complain about winter.

I'm like, you have no idea.

For those who don't know where Winnipeg

is,

if you were to look at a map

of Canada and imagine where to draw a

belly button for Canada,

that's where Winnipeg is.

We had two weeks in February this year,

just to give you an idea,

two weeks straight,

where we were colder than Antarctica and

the surface temperature of Mars.

In Fahrenheit,

we were at minus-fifty-eight with the wind

chill for two weeks straight.

And that's why Chris Jericho moved to

Florida.

I saw him get his butt kicked at

a bar once.

You know, I... What?

You can't really follow that one up.

Come on, Chris Jericho, do better.

It was like twenty years ago.

Oh, he was, he was a young,

he was a young guy back then.

Come on.

But I've asked everybody this.

So how did you yourself get involved with

AHA?

I know others were like, they,

they applied for it and just waited for

the phone call,

but how did you become a part of

AHA?

I'm going to have stern words with the

Chris's.

I didn't get a phone call.

I got an email message,

maybe a thing on Discord.

I didn't get a phone call.

They got Zoom calls, man.

They got Zoom calls.

Well,

there was the Zoom call when they

announced it,

but it's not like getting a call from

a director saying, hey, you got the part.

That's what I was thinking.

I'm like, oh, that's awesome.

No,

I think they all got emails with the

Zoom link,

and if you didn't click the Zoom link

within the time frame,

I think you got discarded and they went

to the next one.

Yeah, I think it was something like that.

No, I first saw them,

I guess this would have been sometime late

last year when they first did the post

about it,

deciding that they were going to go for

it on the Comic Book Yeti Discord,

and I'm like,

You know what?

It's horror and it's not my usual thing.

I don't really read horror.

I don't really watch horror movies because

the characters in horror movies annoy me

too much because they do too many stupid

things.

First episode of Walking Dead.

Rick is a moron.

You were in the military.

You know in an M-I-A-I Abrams there is

at least one M-IV for every single crew

member along with

What is it, two,

three spare mags of ammunition?

Plus rations, supplies.

The dude is a sheriff in the U.S.

In what, Georgia?

He's gonna know what's in there.

Instead,

he just tries to escape the tank and

run away with just a Beretta M.I.

I mean, come on, Rick, do better.

But no, horror is not normally my thing.

But I had been working my way through

just for practice because that's all I

constantly do.

I've been working my way through inking

slowly but surely all four issues of

Marcelo Ferreira's four-issue run on

Predator vs. Spider-Man.

Ooh, that was a good one.

That was so good.

It was.

It was.

And

I kept saying to myself while I'm going

through these pages,

these are the goriest Spider-Man pages I

have ever seen.

Yes.

In this level of like blood and not

even in carnage issues.

Was there this much blood?

Which is a lot.

And just like these scenes of the

predator.

I mean,

if you go on my Instagram or my

TikTok,

you'll see the ones where it's like the

predator,

like stretching a guy's face off.

Yeah.

And I'm like, you know what?

that that definitely fits the whore i'm

gonna try i'm just gonna there's a reason

why that i was like because when i

though i got issue one and i read

it i'm like why was this not poly

bad yeah yeah because marvel has their

polybag stuff you know like they had the

daredevil um polybag recently which was

written by erica schultz as well but i

was like holy hell i'm like the first

kill that predator had i'm like

why is it this poly bad?

Why is it this like, what is it?

They call it the red lines or,

or red band.

Like that one.

I think it's like page three.

three,

where you see the three bodies hanging

tied up together, upside down,

and they've been completely flayed,

and there's just a pool of blood on

the ground underneath them.

It's like, whoa!

The blood is still just coming out of

them,

so you see the blood dripping down into

just the big puddles.

I was like, I love the throwback,

you know,

because that's the throwback to the movie,

but it was like, holy hell.

And just the way Ferreira was able to

capture the raw tissue without the skin

with his pencils.

The meat signals, man.

Yeah!

Yeah.

They were fun to ink.

I'm not even done the first issue yet

because I think it's a thirty page issue.

It is.

The first one was a thirty pager.

I think I'm at page fifteen or so.

The other issues I think were like

twenty-two if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah.

They were shorter.

I think it was Chris with a K

that actually found all four issues worth

of pencils for me.

That was my favorite one.

The follow-ups after that,

I just didn't care for.

The Wolverine one was good,

but I'm biased because I'm Canadian.

No, I do have the Wolverine one,

and I got the Spider-Man one.

But it was after the Spider-Man one,

which I think after that was like –

was it Justice League?

Not Justice League.

I'm sorry.

I think it was like an Avengers one.

I think it was a Black Panther one.

Avengers.

The Avengers ones.

Yeah, it was the Avengers one.

I just couldn't – I got the first

issue,

and I was like –

No,

I think they expended all their creative

resources in Wolverine and Spider-Man,

especially the Spider-Man.

I thought the Spider-Man was the better of

the two.

Oh, yeah, and bringing in Kraven for it.

Of course Kraven's going to be like, wait,

there's somebody hunting others?

Yes.

I'm so hunting.

I'm hunting that.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

No, Kraven stole that book.

I'm not even going to lie.

Craven stole it.

He did.

That became a Craven comic book.

I don't care what anybody says because the

way he was done in that book was

amazing.

Yeah.

It's not what you expect either.

I'm not going to give any spoilers.

Please go buy this book.

Read it.

Go read it.

Find a copy.

Read it.

It's digital.

I'm not normally big on crossovers, but,

man,

they did –

good with that one and go pick up

the wolverine one i do not remember who

did the writing or the art for it

and i'm ashamed to say that but the

wolverine one was done really really well

because it's basically wolverine starting

to remember that this damn thing has been

hunting him for the last two hundred years

and he keeps going into it over and

over and over again and it's very very

well done yeah um yeah but it was

yeah it was those it was the the

flayed skin the one where the um

where the predator is reaching in,

grabbing the guy's face and peeling the

skin off.

And you just see like the exposed eyes

and the muscles around the eyes.

It was,

it was that page really that I'm like,

you know what?

I can do this.

I can totally do this.

And that was a Spider-Man comic book.

In a Spider-Man comic.

They make it here and it's Peter Parker.

All right.

And where they fucked up is he kidnapped

Mary Jane and the show is over.

Actually, there is one other thing.

in it that drove me nuts in that

issue.

And it's one of those small things that

you only pick up.

If you're like really looking into the

art,

there's one scene where Pete is

masquerading as, um,

as a forensic tech that's come into like

crime scene.

And he's there with the,

the detective doesn't realize that he's

Spider-Man and he's taking pictures with

like an iPhone.

And you can tell what it is because

of the camera.

Yeah.

I'm like,

there is no effing way that Peter Parker

could afford that phone.

I didn't even catch that.

You're right though.

But it's like, no,

he dumpster dives for stuff.

I mean,

even when he was running Parker

Industries,

he was still strapped for cash all the

time.

Yeah.

No, that's a good catch, dude.

I like that one.

But yeah,

doing those pages made me think like,

you know what?

I can totally do something for horror.

And I tossed my name into the ring

and fill out the form like everybody else

did.

And I was expecting to get like,

you know,

if I got picked to do some inking,

some colors.

And then there's that first Zoom call,

and it's Kristen, Kristen, everybody else.

And they're like,

and Travis is doing one of the covers.

I'm like, what?

I am?

Like,

I was not expecting that in this life.

And then my brain went, oh, frack,

what the hell am I going to do?

And then I'm just like, screw it.

I'm going to do,

I'm going to take some inspiration from

those Predator pages and going to take the

other inspiration from being a big history

nerd

And I'm gonna like do a Viking blood

eagle in process.

No,

I'm actually bringing up the cover cause

it is.

I kept working on another couch and my

wife kept looking over and seeing it.

And she's like, that is so gross.

That's really disturbing.

Yeah,

so if anybody's been wondering why I've

been sharing this so much when I'm talking

about AHA, A,

this is one of the two covers that

I have.

I haven't got the third cover to share

with y'all,

so I've just been sharing this one and

the one with the light on it.

Yeah, I really like that one.

I mean, they're all good, but I mean,

of course, I drew this one.

Of course, it's my favorite at

even though I can't look at it all

that often because it's so gross.

Even to me, this has been like, like,

and how I do my clips is I

include the covers from the book that

leads into, you know, the actual clip.

And then from the clip, you know what,

it goes into my stuff.

But this has been one of those where

I'm just like, this is so gnarly.

Like,

and then even the hands kind of almost

like how that predator esque fingers on

them.

So I was just like, yeah, dude,

Yeah,

I was going for that kind of like

desiccated kind of like zombie necromancer

kind of hand with the chipped yellowed

nails and everything.

Thanks, Megs.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, it's... I don't do horror normally,

and so I just like, all right,

I'm going to go for it.

You went for it,

and you dove right in on that one,

buddy.

Yeah, the...

probably the most tedious part was the

vertebra.

And I'm very, very glad that I,

when I pencil,

I tend to do it digitally rather than

I do.

It's weird.

I do the pencils digitally when I'm

penciling something,

but I do the inks physically because I

just enjoy the physical process of inking.

But just like pulling up a,

like one of those high school skeleton,

you know,

dummies that they got hanging in the

classroom and like zooming in on the,

on the vertebra and drawing,

The first few, I'm like, okay, well,

there's six of them that are this type,

and they're slightly different shapes.

So I'll draw the one, copy, paste,

distort, play around with it.

Like,

if you watch the time lapse of the

penciling process on my socials, like,

you can see it, like, pop, pop, pop,

pop.

Go watch it because it was really cool.

That was one of the ones I watched

because I was like, ah,

I got to see it.

It's so cool.

It's neat, too, because if you watch it.

the very first thing that you see is

a physical set of rough pencils that I

took a photo of, then imported the image.

And then I started working the pencils off

of that.

So I do this like weird sandwiching where

I start physical pencils for like really,

really roughs, scan it in,

start the digital.

Once that's done converted to blue line,

print it out, do the physical inks,

scan it in again,

and then start playing around with the,

with the colors.

So.

I don't think people realize how much work

people put into that.

Cause that is a lot of work for

one cover and there's people who do it

multiple times for one cover.

Yup.

Um,

some covers will take an entire month for

an artist to do at like the pro

level.

And there's a reason like they're doing

that on top of all their other projects

and whatnot.

I'm sure they might be making like six,

seven hundred bucks or whatever it is for

that one cover.

but they're putting time into it.

And like when you're working on something

like that and you're doing the inks and

the pencils and the,

and I think this is, and the colors.

And I think this is why it just

floors me when,

when an artist is able to do all

three on their entire own book from start

to finish,

plus the writing and the lettering and

they do everything themselves.

It's just the sheer amount of time that

it takes,

but also knowing how I am knowing how

other creatives are,

when you find that like one piece of

something that you're working on and you

obsess over that one part and wanting that

one part, just right.

The amount of times you'll go back and

redo it or do it a different way,

or you'll print it back out and ink

it a completely different way.

And then when you scan it,

you might take the,

this arm and this character that you ink

this way and you'll cut it out of

your scanned inks and plop it down on

top of your other page of inks that

you liked.

the way this building looked and the way

this car looked and you're like, yeah,

just together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's, I,

it floors me that some guys can just

knock out like, yeah, I, I,

I don't know how they do it.

And I think that's also focused on inking

is just, they focus on the one thing.

Yeah.

So now that he said that,

I want y'all to think about this.

He takes somebody like peach Momoko,

who is one of the hottest artists in,

out there right now.

Like she does so much.

At one point she was producing covers and

her own comic book with Star Wars visions.

And she was also working on her own

demon days behind the scenes for Marvel as

well while doing all that other stuff.

And she was cranking them all out almost

all consecutively in the same timeframes.

she did visions and demon days i think

all on her own like those were her

books her stories her art her everything

her colors she did it all like crazy

crazy work ethic like i just yeah even

when i'm just like drilling down i can't

imagine and that's so

Star Wars Visions had no words.

The story told the entire,

the art and everything told the entire

story on its own, which is really,

really cool.

Yeah.

So when we say words just advance the

art of the story,

that is what we're referring to.

The art should be able to stand alone

and tell a story and the words just

advance that story.

Add more detail, add more nuance,

add more, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's so cool.

I love comic books that way, man.

But so you did a cover and you

also contributed to Pete's Meats.

Yeah.

What can you tell us about Pete's Meats?

No spoilers or anything,

but what can you tell us about it?

Well,

I think the title should probably give

some of it away.

Well, yes, there is Pete.

There is Meats.

Involved.

Not like that.

Get your mind out of the gutter, children.

A surprise twist ending that you really

won't see coming.

And yeah, it's just a fun little story.

And it's not, how do I put this?

Sure, there's similar stories.

in the past, some quite classic ones,

but I mean, sometimes, you know,

the classics are classics for a reason,

right?

There's a reason.

There might be a whole season of The

Walking Dead dedicated to almost this

exact subject.

Probably, but I mean,

how many times has The Seven Samurai been

replicated to horrible westerns?

True, true, very true.

So, I mean,

it's a different take on a classic sort

of trope.

But it was, you know, written well.

There is some great direction in the

script for what, you know,

he wanted Chris to actually pencil in.

And, you know, Chris's pencils,

like I said,

his style very well suits a shorter story.

And it would, you know,

as like a weekly comic strip,

as I said.

So the fun for me was the challenge

of, again, taking, you know,

what I do with how I typically approach

inking and applying it to his work.

his work.

How did I want to keep to his

style, but still play around a little bit.

And there was a few suggestions here and

there with a couple of panels.

I think it was like panel one,

even was just like, move this here,

tweak this here.

Is it okay if I do this?

And he's like, yeah, man, just go nuts.

And I'm, you know,

fairly certain that part of the reason

that they selected me to do anything on

the entire thing

was just the subliminal messaging of

seeing me constantly posting income pages

on the Yeti discord.

Even on your Instagram, it works, man.

Yeah.

I think it was just the,

the seeing it constantly was, uh,

was what made, I've actually,

I think it was one of the Chris's.

Cause I think I asked them and I

can't remember which one of them I asked.

I might've asked both of them.

Um,

and they said something very similar to

something Doug said, um,

when we were on another podcast for,

for inheritance a couple months back.

And it was something about just seeing how

much I'm into the comics and talking about

the characters lore and how much I'm

constantly working on pages drove them to

want to make more.

And it's actually really cool.

Like hearing that, like, Hey,

I'm actually,

I don't even have anything published my

name yet.

I mean, Doug had seven, eight,

successful kickstarters that he worked on

himself plus whatever else he's done i

mean chris is all over his socials and

everything and he's fairly well known in

the indie comics and i hadn't had a

single damn paid well no sorry that's not

true i had two prints for gbs and

then one page for a one page story

that i did last year but like really

like yeah i've got nothing out there with

my name on it really uh so to

be told that like

what I'm just doing as it is without

being paid to do it is making them

want to make more.

That felt really cool to be, you know,

brought in and included because of that,

because sure.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously I want my work to,

to speak for itself and, you know,

make people want to work with me,

but being told that just the amount of

work that I'm doing and enthusiasm for

what I'm doing, making it,

It's really cool to actually hear that.

It feels good.

I get it, man.

You're number four in the AHA anthology

that I have been doing.

There's three more after you.

You're going to get sick of us.

No,

this has been a lot of fun for

me, honestly.

I can't wait to.

So it's funny because I can't wait to

get to the end,

but only so I can go back into

my YouTube studio and make a giant ass

playlist and just call it aha.

And I'm going to leave it at that

as just aha.

That's just going to be the playlist.

And people are like, what's aha?

And they click and it's talking about this

fantastic horror comic book that CHK is

doing, you know.

So that's going to be fun for me

to do on that side of it.

Cause I'm waiting.

I'm like, all right,

as soon as we're done, like this moment,

I upload that last video.

Everything's going into its own playlist

on there.

And it's just going to say, no, no,

no rhyme or reasons.

No like description, just aha.

And just leave it at that and let

people find it on their own.

Maybe do like a really faint overlay of

that.

That cracked open.

Spying behind it.

I just, I just seen your chat.

No, I did.

Yeah, no, I get that.

I, I love her work.

I love the way she does it,

but that's neither here nor there.

But so what kind of tone or horror

style does Pete's meat kind of lean into?

Isolation.

you know, you're,

you're on your own trying to make it

through, you know,

doing what you can to survive.

And, you know,

sometimes it's not what you expect and

it's not necessarily enough.

Yeah, no.

And dude,

every single story I've gotten to talk

about has been like,

just like my next favorite one in the

book.

Right.

So I'm like, now I'm like,

I want to like fast forward to get

to the end of this Kickstarter so I

can actually receive the book.

Cause that's going to be a really fun

episode of Watson, the boss for me,

because I'm actually going to get to open

the bots,

record the episode and then actually sit

down and finally read all the stories

together.

Cause so far I've read the synopsis of

all the stories and I'm just like,

I want to get my hands on it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So did you change your ink type for

like this genre of story versus like,

if you're inking a superhero or something

like that,

how's the difference there between horror

versus like what are your other works?

The same base principles are there.

Line weight, again,

being the most important thing.

The closer something is to the camera,

the thicker it should be.

And I say camera, it's a comic, yes.

But if you view things in the idea

of making a film or a TV show,

it helps, right?

Making sure that that was there.

Doing what I could to play with the

lighting and add a little bit of texture

to a few things.

Making the mechanical pieces look sterile

and mechanical.

Making the dirt feel gritty and dirty,

but still sticking to Chris's style.

The organic components, making them feel

organic organic squishy slimy curvy you

know smooth you know gross whatever like

does a tooth look like a tooth does

a hand look like a hand does a

face look like a face there's little

things that you don't really put a lot

of thought into and you still want to

try and do it even if it's not

like a realistic style or proportions

you still want it to feel like the

thing that it's supposed to feel like

stylized or not.

Right.

And I think it was just approaching it

that way.

I mean, the, the cover I inked physically,

the Pete's meat,

I did the inks digitally mainly just so

that I could get the pages done as

quick as possible for Chris to be able

to start.

Chris did the colors himself.

He did the pencils and he did the

colors,

but getting it to him so he could

get the colors done and get the pencils

or another, the,

the letters in there and done.

just speeding up the process and well

that,

and being able to finish it quickly enough

that I could take the time on the

cover.

Yeah.

Because I knew like my,

my penciling is admittedly slow because

I'm constantly tweaking it and changing it

and shifting things around until I'm happy

with it.

And even then when I'm happy with it,

I'm never completely happy with it.

I knew that was going to take me

longer.

So, you know,

tackled the inks digitally using Clip

Studio on the drawing tablet.

And then, yeah,

just got it off to Chris to see

what he would do with it,

playing around with the colors.

Yeah.

So was there a specific panel or maybe

a moment that you enjoyed a little bit

more in that when you were inking that

one?

Probably the last half.

The way you're laughing, I'm guessing yes.

probably the last panel because i'm

reading this script and i'm like okay well

that's something i'm you know when i see

the pages i'm sure i'll know what it

is and i saw the page like i

got to the page i'm like that is

not at all what i thought it was

is this an actual thing and then i

went and googled it and then i fell

down a rabbit hole learning about this

this thing and what it was yeah and

i'm like

oh, that's why it looks familiar.

It looks like this.

And this was based off of this thing.

and I'm being very,

very obtuse with this so that I don't

want to have to mark a spoiler on

it.

Like I had to do with Duke because

we,

we got into a rabbit hole on the

story and we ended up saying too much.

And I was like, shit, I'm like,

all right,

I got to mark this a spoiler.

So yeah, not to Chris and Chris,

my bad.

I didn't mean to go down that rabbit

hole as deep as I did with Duke

and mids, but we all survived it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like,

just like, is this an actual thing?

And then falling down that rabbit hole

that that was probably the one for me.

I'm like, well, I'm going to make it.

I'm sure it looks like that.

This is really a thing.

Where is that from?

Yeah.

So it,

That happens with me pretty often, though.

I'll see a little bit about something and

just immediately dive down a Google rabbit

hole and Wikipedia and whatever else,

learning about it.

Yes.

I'm so guilty of that,

and I hate myself for it sometimes.

But let's talk about your cover.

I know we had spoken a little bit

about it,

but how did that process vary from –

you normally do –

ink work and that kind of stuff.

How did the like actually contribute in

the whole cover versus just ink in a

page?

How was that?

I have been working a lot more over

the last little while rather than just

doing inks.

I've been doing a lot more pencils.

Um,

I actually did another cover for a local,

uh, comic publisher here in Canada called,

uh, GY six.

Uh,

they've got their issue number one coming

out of a new, uh, new thing.

That's actually going to be carried

locally to a couple of the comic stores

here.

Plus they're going to have it at comic

con.

So, um, I did the full,

like I actually inked that one twice.

I did a digital version and a physical

version so that they've got like a,

like an artist edition one to do for

like a variant cover kind of thing.

Yeah.

Um,

And I specifically inked that one in a

more traditional manga style rather than

because I wanted to go towards their

source material that they're basing things

off of.

Right.

So I've been doing a lot more pencils

over the last little bit,

trying to just improve what I do,

because knowing more about the pencils and

how the pencils are done and what the

marks on the page mean

to an inker and how they're going to

interpret the page to play with the

lighting and the color and everything.

Um,

it helps like knowing what the others are

going to be doing with your work

definitely helps.

So it was a great exercise for that.

Knowing, you know,

how I wanted it to look,

knowing what the inspiration was in my

head behind the cover, um,

between the predator and between,

you know, the,

the Viking blood Eagle and whatnot and how

I wanted to look, you know,

gory enough um just playing like how is

it going to look how is that shredded

flesh going to look what kind of position

is the body going to be in yeah

you know so before i even put pencil

to paper for the first roughs uh i

was poking into like historical viking

blood eagles was this actually a thing did

this actually happen various depictions of

it right i mean there's that that famous

scene from the vikings series where they

bloody king ayla and they've got him you

know hanging there

Plus,

there's a few woodcuts kicking around from

old manuscripts,

from when the Saxons were fighting the

Danes as they were coming into England

after Lindisfarne and what they saw of the

culture and how they were depicting them

in their in their written works.

So there's a few like the woodcuts and

sketches and whatnot that floating around

and just thinking like, OK,

bone structure and where are the shoulders

going to be?

How is the body going to be suspended?

What angle do I want to approach this

from?

Do I want to do just like straight

on from the back?

Do I want like an over the shoulder?

Do I want like a,

you're looking at it from like the point

of view of the person actually doing it,

which is what I ended up going with

and just trying to figure out like the

rough overall layout.

And then I did like the really,

really rough pencils that you see in the,

in the time-lapse, you know,

imported it into the,

i took a photo of it imported it

into the clip studio and just started

playing with it and poking at it and

like you watch the time lapse and you

see multiple iterations where i'm changing

from a blue pencil to a red pencil

and back and forth and yeah things in

certain like i'm happy with this part i'm

happy with this part and you know what

i wanted to stay and use this reference

for something else i would have one color

and then work in the other color and

know constantly be be shifting everything

back and forth until it got to the

point like okay yeah let's let's print

this and then play with the ink so

yeah now so oh lost my place hang

on stand by where was i oh yeah

we were talking about the cover i scrolled

up too far and i lost the whole

thing

What do you think makes a cover grab

attention in today's very crowded indie

market?

That's a good question.

That's odd for me because admittedly I

don't read a lot of indie comics because

I'm just getting into it.

It's not that I don't want to read

them.

I think with me

If it's something that's going to be a

longer series, I'm going to get into it.

Now that there's a few issues of Gerald

von Sutter's Immortal Coil,

I grabbed that with his last campaign to

make sure to grab issues one and two

because I want to start going through it

and really diving into it.

I've seen Gerald's work and his pencils

are freaking amazing.

I've gotten to do a couple of pieces

for prints for him.

I did the one variant cover for him

for A Thousand Cuts.

That was one of the first pieces I

did on somebody else's work that actually

ended up out there as a result of

the artists themselves sharing it.

Even when I'm reading books,

I just finished reading through Paul J.

Bennett's series, Victory of the Crown,

just came out and I crushed it in

a day.

He's an indie author.

He's originally from the UK.

He lives in Ontario.

He's got three different series that are

all told

in different parts of the continent and

one series is like six books another one

is like six books and then like the

main series is like fifteen books and this

last book ties all three series together I

like that long build and that history

whereas because of just the nature of

indie comics unfortunately as much as the

artists and the writers have all the

stories in their brains a lot of us

are doing this as a side thing because

we have jobs and bills to pay and

what not

And we don't get to get the issues

out as quickly as we want.

And so I tend to wait until there's

multiple issues if I'm going to grab

something.

As much as I might like a cover

and want to grab it,

I know for me,

it's hard to pull the trigger when I'm

going to read it in like, fifteen minutes.

Yeah,

it does make it hard to spend the

money, for one,

knowing you're going to have to wait six

months,

maybe even a year for issue two on

the book.

And it's not even that.

It's just the way I read.

I've always read fast.

The other thing for me, too,

is if it's going to draw me in,

it's going to be the line work on

the cover.

If it's a cover drawing me in

specifically, I want to see good inking.

With how much focus I spend on inking,

I want to see good inking.

If it looks sloppy or haphazard or it's

not inked well,

it's not going to draw me in.

I want to see something that catches my

eye,

something

different.

Sometimes it's a face.

Just the way a face is done.

Sometimes it's the pencil.

Sometimes the way it's lit.

Sometimes it's the scenery in the

background.

Some covers are sold.

Never mind the characters on the cover.

If the scenery is done well,

it's going to draw people in.

We've all seen comics with terrible

background scenery.

We've all seen comics like interiors,

exteriors with amazing scenery and the

characters are like, eh.

We spend so much time getting sucked into

looking at the world because the world is

done so well that it seems lived in

yeah that'll draw me in um sometimes it's

just like oh awesome i like this other

thing that this person did i'm gonna get

this too yeah i yeah yeah and even

if it's not something that i'm going to

necessarily enjoy the reading because it's

just not my cup of tea i mean

let's be honest we're all creatives it's

all subjective some people love certain

things some people don't like i loved uh

john reedy jr's

way he drew spider-man i did not love

the way todd mcfarland drew him as some

jacked up muscle-bound body that's more

Wolverine than Peter Parker it is because

he went from Wolverine though to Peter

Parker though but that being said you know

McFarlane's a great example there's always

something to be found in everyone's art

that is great

I hated the way he drew Spider-Man,

but man,

I love the way McFarlane drew Webbing.

Yeah.

He changed the game in Webbing.

Yeah,

he's the first that drew the spaghetti

Webbing.

It's everywhere.

What happens to all the extra webs?

He did that.

That's his thing.

And more than the way he drew Spidey,

more than that one cover of him covered

in spiders and squatting there,

the way he did Webbing changed the

character more than anything else he ever

did on Spidey.

yep right and i think there's like one

cover that he really did that everybody's

like i want that cover and then the

webbing to me those are the two things

you know he did for spider-man but let's

keep getting on man i didn't realize we

were already at like an hour and twenty

it's amazing how time flies when you're

into it yeah but um

So you've worked with other creatives,

like literally that's your job is you're

going to work with other creative people.

So what do you think is a good

collaboration?

When one person puts out an idea and

you all just spiral down a rabbit hole,

sometimes it just works.

Yeah.

Like, um, I, yeah.

Um,

yeah it just sometimes it just works you

you like for inheritance we've got the the

discord that uh brendan and doug and i

set up and until we all appeared on

a podcast together like two months ago

we'd never actually even gotten on a voice

call with each other before yeah all three

of us at once all of it had

just been like four a.m random essays on

discord of ideas and hey do we like

this better do we like that better and

we're just like

you know,

rapid fire ideas going off to tweak things

or change how they look or what if

we did this or, Hey,

can we try this?

And it just, when it works, it works.

And there's,

you just got to find people you have

fun with.

I think that's,

that's where the best partnerships are

built is, you know, with, with,

with anything creative.

If you can follow each other down that

rabbit hole.

Awesome.

That's,

that's going to turn out something good.

That's going to turn out something fun.

Shout out to my boy Kelvin Cayley.

He's getting ready to go and do,

I think, a podcast for MPX tonight.

He popped into the chat room and I

was just like,

what the fuck are you doing?

So pardon me if anybody's seen my face.

It's because literally Kelvin popped into

the wrong room.

He popped away and then popped back out.

I was just like, what are you doing?

you probably missed it because he popped

in at the bottom where i let everybody

in oh yeah yeah i know i didn't

see anything pop up there but no that's

why i just all of a sudden started

laughing because he just popped in

realized he was in the wrong room he

gave me one of these and was like

gone so but that's my boy that's my

brother dude so um

how do you communicate with writers and

pencilers during a project?

Is it email text messages?

Are y'all going on back and forth on

Instagram?

Honestly, mainly just discord because it,

it timestamps everything.

You can add video, you can add images,

screen gap grabs.

You can pop into a voice chat if

you need to real quick.

And it's just got everything there and you

can pin the messages.

It's honestly, it's,

I mean, I've in, you know,

my day jobs,

I've worked with so many different

companies that use completely different

chat systems that are all trying to

replicate Slack and they all do it to

some level of success or not.

And the best communication program out

there is really discord.

Like they, the guys that made it,

they pretty much hit the nail on the

head.

I'm pretty sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And not even like our,

our plastic Canadian ones,

but like the American ones.

Exactly.

That was my point.

Yeah.

They're wiping their ass on twenties for

sure.

Um,

Sorry,

I'm still laughing because he just sent me

a chat.

He's like, hey, my bad.

I was like, that's just funny to me.

So what do you think is the biggest

challenge working in indie comics?

I can't remember if you worked for any

of the bigger studios yet or not,

but what's the biggest challenge?

That's the hope.

What's the biggest challenge out there for

you?

I'm an inker.

Fair enough.

I mean, in all seriousness,

that's probably for what I do

specifically,

that's probably the biggest challenge with

indie comics is because often the writers

that are funding everything and hiring the

artists themselves,

they can't afford to pay an artist like

a penciler and an inker and a colorist

and a letterer.

And if they were to try and do

that,

it's going to raise the costs on

Kickstarter.

and the target that you gotta hit

substantially.

That's the biggest thing.

I mean, even the big publishers,

like I said earlier,

they're not using inkers as much anymore.

yeah and it's funny you brought that up

because when i was doing the new comic

book day uh content there wasn't a whole

lot of anchors out there that i would

be listing as a part of a creative

team for a big name book and i

always because you would get the penciler

that the uh colorist the artist the cover

artist and the writer and i'm like

nobody does inks anymore.

I'm like, cause there's, I mean,

I'm talking big books, Marvel, DC image,

and there would just not be an anchor.

Yep.

And it's the,

the anchors that are good stand out and

they still get work on a regular basis.

And sometimes you'll see issues where it's

several people,

different people doing the inks because

they're trying to meet the deadline.

Maybe the penciler doesn't do inks

themselves.

Maybe they don't have the time to do

it because they're doing pencils on the

Multiple projects.

Yeah, exactly.

You know,

sometimes they just prefer doing it that

way.

Right.

The workflow just works for them.

I mean, we've we talked Jim Lee earlier.

He still uses Scott Williams.

Doesn't mean Jim Lee can't ink.

If you look at the nineteen ninety two

X-Men trading cards, he did all that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they look great.

I mean, those are still over there.

Yeah,

the trading cards are literally just

sitting right over here on the shelf.

Yeah,

I've got the book where it's actually like

they go into discussing how the project

came about,

why we decided to do it this way.

The colorist,

because he did all the colors with

actually physical markers,

all the cards in that set were all

physically colored.

None of them were digital.

That's so cool because I mean,

I don't want to get up because my

cats will jump up and expect me to

get up and get them snatched.

So I'm not going to get up,

but literally like ten feet away.

I think I have damn near the entire

series.

Yeah, it's yeah.

I mean,

it's you ask what's going to be what's

the hardest thing in any comics or working

in any comics and trying to get into

it.

It's that I do a niche thing that

isn't as common anymore.

Right.

And it's not that.

it's not common.

It's not that it's not needed.

I mean, inks are needed in comics.

Unless it's a like full on,

like painted issue, like, you know,

Alex Ross kind of stuff.

Oh yeah.

Which don't get wrong.

It's gorgeous, but man, time consuming.

You know,

all the pages got to be inked at

some point,

but a lot of folks are either doing

it themselves or they're paying one artist

to do both, which, you know,

it's one of the other downsides with just

creatives as a whole.

There's a lot of undercutting going on

where, you know,

Like,

my actual page rate that the pros have

told me that I should be charging for

what I do, I can't charge.

Yeah.

Because I won't get any work at it

at all.

Especially when you've got some guys that

are doing, you know, yeah,

I'll do a page of inks and pencils

together for forty bucks.

Yeah.

And you see so much of that, too,

on Facebook, man.

I'm just like, how are you making, like,

okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's unfortunate.

What's the quality of that like if you're

only charging that?

Well, that's just it.

Some of the guys, it's still quality work.

It's just maybe they do it faster and

it doesn't take them as long.

Maybe they're fine taking that to do it

just to get the work.

Maybe they just want to get their name

out on something.

Who knows?

I mean, there's any number of factors.

I mean,

even just like how far a dollar will

stretch in one country versus another.

Right.

I mean, that's a factor.

Right.

Because especially when we're on the

Internet, it's you're everywhere.

And the other thing, too,

is we're artists, we're creatives,

we're always hungry to do work.

So we'll do what we can to.

To get the jobs.

I mean, it is what it is.

That's why I don't charge what I've been

told I should based on what I do

with my inks.

And that's that's just a reality of of

comics as a whole,

regardless of what role you're in.

whether you're doing the story or you're

doing the inks or you're doing the color,

or even if you're just editing a comic

and going back and tweaking dialogue,

right?

You're still, you know, it's,

it's a nonstandard industry.

It's, you know,

what does someone think your work is

worth?

Yeah.

It's funny.

You said it's a nonstandard industry,

but the industry has a standard that's

nonstandard and that's what's wild about

it.

So, but let's start wrapping this up.

I need down for some rapid fire questions.

Go ahead.

All right.

Traditional or digital?

Traditional.

No question.

I did have favorite horror artist,

but let's just go favorite artist.

Oh, um, right now Scott Eaton,

because again,

all that like direct one-on-one feedback

I've gotten from him has been amazing.

Like just amazing.

And it's been really fun to talk like

his process with him one-on-one like that.

Favorite artist of all time though.

John Romita jr.

I grew up on his Spider-Man run in

the nineties.

He drew that long and lanky lean Peter

Parker.

And it's that rough, quick sketch style.

That's just an evolution very clearly of

his father's style,

but he made it his own and went

his own way with it.

And like you see a page and you

know, it's John Romita Jr.

And other than him, obviously Jim Lee,

because I mean,

That issue of X-Men,

and you know which one I'm talking about.

Oh, yeah.

I have it.

I do, too.

I actually might have multiple copies of

it.

I'm pretty sure I do.

That I don't have.

But just the way he approached that cover,

that fold-out cover, right?

Yes.

I mean,

even just that simple scene of Gene,

when they're doing that exercise,

the gold team and the blue team doing

that exercise to try and tag Chuck at

the very beginning.

just that scene where Gene is talking

about Gambit's looks and Scott's like,

remind me to drop a truck on him,

a big truck, a really big truck.

Yeah.

Right.

Even just a simple dialogue scene like

that, the way he captured Gene's face,

the way he captured Scott,

just looking like,

I'm going to kill that Cajun.

Right.

You know,

and just the way he got like, yeah,

man,

like there's so few guys that can do

what he does.

Yeah,

and that was back in the day when

all the X-Men were sleeping with all the

X-Men.

Pretty much, yeah.

Yeah, pretty much.

So, if you had a dream project,

what would it be?

Excalibur.

Ooh, fucking A, yeah.

Excalibur, yeah.

One of my, actually,

what made me fall in love with Eaton's

work specifically was New Excalibur,

I want to say it was okay where

it's after Talia had her stroke in the

middle of like a big supervillain fight

and issue seventeen was her like starting

the recovery process from a stroke and

that's a very humanizing thing that you

don't get a lot in comics especially

superhero comics regular human frailty is

not something that's typically addressed

in comics I mean Magneto was in Auschwitz

It's twenty twenty five.

Magneto is like a hundred some odd years

old and he is still jacked.

Dude, big time.

But like regular human frailty and that

those hospital scenes, her, you know,

lying in the hospital bed unconscious with

Sage just watching her making sure she's

OK.

Talia in her own head talking to herself

about like,

am I ever going to be able to

do this again?

Right.

Her going through physiotherapy and

learning to walk again when she used to

like

do handstands on her fingertips while

juggling.

I mean,

her father is granted from an alternate

dimension, but he's still freaking white.

Right.

Yeah.

And I also really loved it because it

was really the beginning of Cain Marco's

turn as a hero because he really,

really cared about Talia and wanted to

make sure she was OK.

And just a lot of great emotion in

those pages.

So Excalibur, I mean, you know,

I started reading X-Men classics, right?

So to me, Rachel Summers is Phoenix,

right?

Shadowcat, Nightcrawler.

What is not to like about the idea

of working on Excalibur?

And Captain Britain.

I mean, Brian Braddock.

I mean, okay, technically it's Betsy now,

which is great.

And I love that Betsy's got her own

thing there.

And then she's with Rachel.

Freaking love that.

But just,

Like,

the entire Captain Britain mythos does not

get enough love.

Because, I mean,

you're getting your superpowers from

Merlin.

I mean,

we all know King Arthur and Excalibur and

the Round Table and Merlin.

To be given your superpowers by Merlin and

have part of your power based on the

faith and belief of the entire nation that

you're supposed to protect,

that's pretty cool.

Yeah.

No, a hundred percent.

That's why I was like, dude,

that's a good one.

But one word to describe your art style.

I have no idea, in all honesty.

I have never even heard of that.

Yeah, I don't know.

I really don't know.

Ask the Chris's next time you see them.

See if you can answer,

because I'd really like to know myself.

i'll do that i'll do that but um

what's coming up for you next uh well

uh obviously uh aha is i think we're

like what seventy eight percent funded or

something like that right now i think so

yeah maybe more yeah um i know tomorrow

if anybody has already been looking at the

campaign uh and has not actually looked at

the comments and updates from

Chris with a C tomorrow,

some bonus things are going alive as being

available.

So some of the original art pages are

going to be available for aha.

So you can add them to your existing

order.

So if you want original pages from aha,

you can.

So you know what that is?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

So that's up there.

I think a couple of the other covers

are up there, some of the internal pages.

Another Kickstarter that I mentioned

earlier,

Inheritance with Doug and Brendan,

that just got funded a few weeks ago.

Brendan was finishing off the rest of his

projects, and he has,

I believe as of yesterday,

tucked into the pencils.

So as soon as I get those pages

from him, they're getting printed out,

and I'm hitting the inks on those.

And then they go to Doug as I'm

finishing those off.

So I'll probably ink my way through the

entire issue first.

It goes to Doug.

Doug wants to flat Inheritance himself,

so letting him do it.

So he's flatting those and once they're

flatted,

they come back to me to do the

colors and then, you know, like a pinball,

they go back to Doug again,

do the letters.

Beyond that,

I've got a side project that I'm slowly

picking away at the research on.

The idea being to use comics to tell

actual history and not

sensationalize it like three hundred or

something don't get wrong three hundred is

great but it doesn't tell the actual

history yeah right my thought was tell the

actual history of some important figures

and characters so that's sort of a on

a on a side uh side burner um

yeah uh beyond that i do have uh

well cross your fingers for me i got

an interview on thursday um

with a Canadian publisher to potentially

be working on a hundred and eighty four

page graphic novel doing the inks.

So that's good stuff.

That'll keep you real busy for a while.

Yeah.

And then just, yeah, slowly plugging away,

you know, adding things to the portfolio,

constantly posting on, you know, TikTok,

Instagram, Facebook,

blue sky.

I'm always sharing the different projects.

That's a perfect lead in man.

Tell people where they can find you.

Uh, yeah.

So on pretty much everything I can be

found under Travis James inks or Travis

James art, uh,

depending on the platform and what was

taken or not.

Um, LNK.bio slash Travis James inks,

all one word should get you to everything.

Um,

Usually TikTok is the first place you'll

see the stuff posted.

I set up a camera with overhead and

I'll do like time lapse of physical inks.

I'll do time lapse of digital inks when

I'm doing something because some things I

just I want to practice colors on and

I want to knock out the inks quickly.

Yeah.

And I'll do that.

One piece, for example,

that I'm working on right now,

I started coloring it earlier.

um and this was just for fun i

saw this one artist on instagram loved her

stuff uh elisa felice she's done some work

for for marvel she's got her own series

um i commented on the one piece she

sent me like a high res things to

the heck of it and i hadn't gotten

around to them yet but i saw another

one that she did of just one character

i'm like you know what i want to

ink that just for fun so i inked

it digitally she loved it asked whether or

not she could color i'm like well i

was going to color it as well so

if you want to, sure,

I'm going to be coloring it anyway.

She's like, Oh no, no, then I'll wait.

Then I'll wait.

So I actually started the colors on that.

Um, and you know,

a lot of times you'll see me toss

up pages not to, to sell or to,

you know,

to promote any particular project is just

a piece that I think is cool.

And I ink it and I'll color it

because I just think it's cool.

I don't want to work on it.

And I think that's one of the other

fun things about,

focusing on inks is i'm constantly getting

to play around with different styles and

different looks and different pencils and

the idea of being able to do that

every day and just see tons of cool

art first and add that little touch to

make it pop even more that's really cool

and i mean that's that's i think one

of the big reasons i do what i

do so even though i don't have any

major projects coming out that you're

going to be able to necessarily get into

your hands um

check this stuff out.

I mean, I'm constantly posting stuff.

I'm always down for,

for some suggestions on things to play

around with.

You know,

I'm always working on something new just

to expand what I can do.

So awesome stuff.

You won't be bored.

No, you definitely won't.

Go get lost on his Instagram for a

little bit.

You'll be happy you did.

But all the links he mentioned are down

in the description of this video,

including the link to the Kickstarter AHA

for you to check out.

But if you made it this far,

you already know.

this is what we do we shine a

spotlight on the creators behind the

series the artists behind the shadows and

the talent bringing indie comics to life

make sure you check out aha a horror

anthology and support the campaign follow

travis support his work and keep your eyes

on what's coming next because this is just

the beginning

Ladies and gentlemen, you know what it is.

This has been the USDN podcast where indie

comments come to life.

Y'all be safe out there.