William Hodge has reached the halfway point of the story. A story he is creating on a daily base, for all his Kickstarter-backers to follow. Hodges is showcasing his love and skills for the medium in a way he describes as following:
“The way I produce my art is completely digital. I use 3d reference for my work. I create all of the people and most of the props and backgrounds. Sometimes I purchase backgrounds/digital sets. If I need something generic, sometimes it’s easier to just purchase instead of taking the time to create it. I set up the scenes, especially focusing on creating different and interesting lighting. Once I render the scene, I then draw and ink the characters, usually each on their own layer. The backgrounds, ie buildings and things like that, I do work directly over because there’s no need to set up the perspective and I don’t have to rule a bunch of straight lines. I experiment a lot. I use a lot of brushes with different textures and I’ve created a lot. When I draw a lot of the lines, I set the brushes differently to get different effects. Like I said, I like to experiment. I believe in using any tool that will help you achieve the look you want. When I used to ink on boards I used to use sponges and toothbrushes to get textures. The reason I work this way is because I want my stuff to not look like anything else out there. I used to draw from other people’s drawings in comic books. I used to use the same poses everyone else did. Now I create my own poses. I try things from different angles.”
For the Kickstarter project he is creating an exclusive story WITH the possibility for backers to OPT IN as the villain in this special story, using the reward of their choice!
Hodges continues to state: “In my book, all of the heroes achieved their powers. They didn’t get them by accident or by science. For example, the character Ojo is one of the steel skin monks. There are really monks who practice an iron skin technique. To me, it appears that humans are getting bigger, faster and stronger from generation to generation. Records are broken all of the time. So, I figured it’s a logical leap that in comic books, a man could achieve the ability of flight. And this is why they become a Mystery School. This is a place where they will train and learn from each other to improve themselves. Eventually, they will find other members and there will be other mystery schools, not all on the side of the angels.”
Click the link for more information and to support The Uncanny on Kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/williamhodge/the-uncanny-convention-special-comics
Visit the site to read The Uncanny Prologue entire issue for free:
http://wyldcardstudio.com/uncanny/?p=460
To learn more about William Hodge and Wyldcard Studio visit:
http://wyldcardstudio.com and https://www.facebook.com/williamdhodge
About the Creator
William Hodge has been a comic book fan for 40 years.
In the “extreme 90s” he did some professional work. He penciled a story in DC Comics Showcase ’94. He did art chores on Dr. Weird for Gary Carlson and Big Bang Comics. After having flirtations with other companies that didn’t turn into work, he decided to go into creator owned work and published one issue of a sci-fi comic called NanoSoup thru Millennium Publishing. Over the past decade, the need to work consistently and pay bills took priority and comic books had to take a back seat.
But how can you ever forget your first love?
Over the past year with a tough economy, William has been working erratically as a freelance web developer and this has given him the time to work on “The Uncanny”. His issues have been selfpublished and out for sale, others are completed and currently working on the next arc. It’s finally time to start living the childhood dream.
