FupDuckTV

I recently had the opportunity to interview John Wigger about his relatively new Web Comic, Zombie Roomie. The comic follows the adventures of John, the normal guy, and his roommate George, the zombie. The stories are funny, the art is amazing and I think it will be one of the up and coming Web Comics. Check it out.

DaVe: What made you decide to start your own WebComic?
John: I’ve read Scott Kurtz’s PvP for six years and during that time I graduated from college with a double major in Drawing and Computer Animation along with a minor in Art History.

Around June I started thinking I could do something more with my free time rather than just playing World of Warcraft and thought doing something artistically would be worth my time. I started researching how to actually setup hosting and an archive system (I use ComicPress).

Eventually, come October I was as prepared as I could have been, besides working far enough ahead on a sizable buffer.
A side note, anyone planning on starting there own webcomic always hears to not put up their strips until they have at least a month’s worth of updates in the can… they hear it and disregard it. I was exactly the same. I so wish I had had the restraint to put the brakes on and get a nice buffer of strips ready as there are times I’m busier than I’d like so I have had to spend the entire night before an update getting a strip ready for the morning. So, if there’s anyone reading this that is planning to make their own webcomic. I’ll be another of those voices saying wait until you have as large of a buffer as you possibly can before you start posting. I’ll probably also be one of those voices you tune out as you post your first strip with none in the can. Heh.

DaVe: Where do you come up with your ideas and story-lines?
John: When I was originally playing around with what kind of webcomic to produce I started with a real general idea. It was too general and not focused enough to give me a driving story to produce comics from… it was much more along the lines of a Far Side or something like Kris Straub’s Chainsawsuit.

I had an idea for a gag that involved a zombie and things started funneling into my brain about more zombie based jokes. I started playing around with character designs and various amounts of decomposition and zombie gore. Eventually I landed on just dark/ reversed eyes (black where they’re normally white and white where they’re normally black), lines around his mouth, and of course blue skin.

So, I had the idea for a zombie living with a guy and now I was left with what kind of zombie he’d be. A mindless shambler zombie would have given me maybe five or six strips before I’d have to struggle with ways to have him interact with other characters without just eating them. Definitely giving him a personality and ability to speak was something I would have to do to keep him a viable character.

Also, I have a few good friends from college that I talk with still. One of them has gone above and beyond to help me with ideas, he allows me to bounce stuff off of him, or even send me scripts for strips that he’s come up with. Long story short, I set up this world where a guy lives with a zombie and what kind of zombie he is… I can think of typical roommate issues and give them a zombie spin and work from there. When I want to address something a bit more fantastical than I just go back to the kind of comic I want to produce and the world I’ve set up in notes and discussions with friends and try to fiddle down the idea until it’s something I can work with.

DaVe: Who are your artistic influences?
John: Cartooning-wise Scott Kurtz (www.pvponline.com) and Mike Krahulik (www.penny-arcade.com). I’ve read their comics the longest and I’ve noticed that I have incorporated some stylistic things that they’ve done in my own comic.

The tone and writing for the character interaction has been compared to Kevin Smith. I’ve seen his flicks dozens of times and his ties to the comic fanboy world have pervaded my consciousness enough that I’m sure I’ve picked up on his back and forth enough to crib stuff from him to call him an influence.

DaVe: What other WebComics do you regularly read?
John: Of the big names out there: PvP, Penny Arcade, Chainsawsuit, Evil-Inc, Sheldon and Girls with Slingshots. There are a few lesser known comics that I read too: Edmund Finney’s Quest to Find the Meaning of Life, Unbearable Bears Presents! and 1977 the Comic. Then there’s a handful of other comics I read from time to time but not every single update when they come out.

DaVe: Do you follow a standard process: Sketch -> Scan -> Ink / LineArt -> Color -> Caption? Or do you use a different process?
John: Until recently that was exactly my process.

I had a super old Wacom Graphire 3 and I just could not make it do what I wanted so, I went back to drawing on paper with blue leads (so the pencil lines would drop out in a greyscale scan) and inking before I’d scan it.

For Christmas I received a Wacom Bamboo Fun. It’s much larger than my old tablet and immediately I could work it and receive results much closer to what I could produce on paper. I toyed with the idea of phasing out the paper/scan method as I practiced on the new Bamboo, but, the results I was getting was fairly close to the quality I had been able to get done with the old barbaric paper method.

In the end, I decided that I could just essentially practice on the fly while doing my comic. I’ve seen a marked change in just the two months that Zombie Roomie has been updating in my cartooning… I’m just continuing the experiment.

Check back tomorrow for part 2 of my interview with John Wigger…

Tags: WebComics // Add Comment »