CB: HI Viktor, Kosta and Andrew. Thanks for joining us.
VK: Thanks for having us, ComicBuzz! You guys rock!
KY: Hello
AO: Hi!
CB: First of all Congratulations on issue 1 selling-out.
VK: Thank you! This is such a great start and it seems we are picking up speed as our fan base is growing. I get fan mail almost every day from people and storeowners telling us how much they love the book and that it sells out really fast.
KY: Thank you.
AO: It’s great for a new title like ours to get that kind of a solid launch, since it hopefully gives readers a chance to find us and get hooked into the story!
CB: Can you tell us a bit about yourselves?
VK: Well, I am Bulgarian, and grew up in my home town of Varna (on the Black Sea) until I was 18. Then I got drafted into the army for about 18 months, and after that I got accepted into the National Academy of Fine Art in Sofia, where I received my Masters, specializing in print (etching, lithography and that kind of stuff). I’ve always loved stories and characters. I really didn’t have any fun drawing nature or buildings as I found them gorgeous, but boring to draw. However, I have always been interested in faces and the personalities behind them. I’ve wanted to draw comics all my life, but finally got the guts to do it in 2005, when I drew my first little story – the pilot episode of Pherone.
KY: I’m not from the comics planet. My education was in nuclear physics, my job in computer science. But for 20 years, Viktor and I have been telling each other funny stories – and we decided to write down one of them.
AO: I’m from Boston (where I currently live with my wife and cat), but I spent about ten years roaming L.A. as a screenwriter and game designer. So I’m very familiar with the landscape of Blue Estate, from little tiny mansions in the Hollywood Hills to sleazy Sunset Boulevard strip clubs (purely for research, of course)!
CB: Viktor When did the idea for BLUE ESTATE come about?
VK: After I finished Pherone, I fully realized how much I love drawing comics and that I wanted to make another story where I could invest myself a lot more and have full control over the process. Pherone was done while I was working at Foundation 9, so I wasn’t the only one who had a say in the story. One beautiful day in late 2008, Kosta and I started talking about a story we would love to tell and some characters that would make us laugh. That’s when BLUE ESTATE started shaping up. The story morphed a lot and the characters shifted until we found each one’s place in the overall scheme of things and they fit perfectly. I think Roy, Jr. was the first and last character to change. In the beginning he was a tough P.I. from a very serious noir universe. Then he became a goofy guy in his 40s, a wannabe, trying to catch the last train of his career… In the end, after the whole story was done, I felt something wasn’t right and decided to freshen everything up. I suggested to Kosta and Andrew that we make Roy, Jr. a young, lovable dude, who is a little chubby, geeks out a lot and is very positive. Everything fell into place and then we revisited the script to make sure Roy, Jr. shines like the true star he is!
CB: Kosta could you tell us more about the origin of Blue Estate?
KY: From the very beginning, Roy was the character who drove the story. But he changed a lot: from a superhero to this funny guy who manages to ignite a war between powerful mafia groups.
CB: Viktor How would you describe the series?
VK: I’ve been using this one sentence that seems to work pretty well – BLUE ESTATE is an intoxicating cocktail of Pulp Fiction, Snatch and Get Shorty with a splash of It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
CB: Viktor Any body who has seen the covers for the series can see what a talented artist you are, at what point of the process did you consider bringing in other artists to collaborate on the series?
VK: Thanks! Well, I wanted to tell this story faster then usual. Since we don’t have the luxury of controlling time in comic books, I wanted to find a different way to keep the audience on their toes. So I decided to try and change the styles in places where it helps the storytelling and enhances the characters. I used a similar technique in Pherone, where all the flashbacks are a very different painterly style, while the rest is graphic black & white with rough splashes of colour. I noticed people would do double-takes and stop to look again through the pages and concentrate more. I figured if that’s the effect I am achieving with a jarring style shift, I could actually tame that and use it a lot more subtly in very specific places to make for a really smooth and entertaining read that is not boring, but rather challenges the audience in a really cool way.
CB: What is Viktor like to work with?
KY: It is great fun – and it’s unfortunate that plenty of those fun events will have to stay behind the scenes! We were smiling when developing the story, laughing when talking about character clashes and really excited when Viktor was drawing characters and even acting some of them out. But at the end, I was really surprised when he managed to sculpt the whole gallery of personages in a week – literally sculpted all the characters in clay as reference models for the other artists – and now you see them in action!
CB: Did you ever think about drawing the series yourself?
VK: Yes, at the beginning. But then I felt one style wouldn’t get across the twists of the story well enough — and while it would still be a fun read, it could be even better with other talented artists jamming with me. The universe of BLUE ESTATE is a fun place, which makes it a perfect playground for different styles.
CB: When did you start the search for artists how did you find Toby, Nathan and Robert?
VK: When we were done conceiving the story, I started thinking of the people I know that would be a good fit. Toby, Nathan and Rob were among the first I asked to join me, and I am so glad they did. I met Toby at SDCC a couple years ago while he was still drawing his book Rodd Racer and I fell in love with his art. I really wanted to collaborate with him one day and so when BLUE ESTATE was ready to go I gave Toby a call and we started exploring characters and mood. His brush work and elegance of lines are absolutely superb.
Nate and I worked together as guest artists on DMZ #19 (“Friendly Fire”) and I really liked what he did there. I love his stuff not only because he is a brilliant artist, but also because of the life he injects in the characters he draws. Nate took on some of the darker parts of the story and he nails it!
I’ve been a fan of Robert’s work for quite some time now and he was one of my regular stops in the artists’ alley in SDCC every year. Rob and I had created this 10- minutes-a-year friendship that we really enjoyed and looked forward to. I shot him an email with a brief overview of the story and characters and he replied, “Let’s do it!”. You can’t explain his work; nobody else draws like that and it’s so beautiful and unique. His part in the book is to boost the story like nothing else. It’s like you have an instant tequila shot when you hit his pages.
CB: What was it about Toby, Nathan and Robert that made them the right people to work on the BLUE ESTATE?
VK: First of all they are brilliant artists! Second, they are very professional and easy to work with! Third, we all seem to have a fun side in our styles that comes through the art and jives perfectly with the nature of BLUE ESTATE. Our styles also correspond to one another, which makes for a very nice palette when I need to direct the storytelling and make the shifts smooth or jarring. For example – Toby can easily transition to Nate or Rob; Nate and Rob transition to all of us very smoothly; and then Toby and I make for a very jarring visual jump, which I use when I want to surprise the audience a little more and underline that moment in the story.
CB: After you worked on the story with Kosta how did Andrew get involved with scripting BLUE ESTATE?
VK: Both Kosta and I are Bulgarians, and while my English is much better then his, I still don’t feel comfortable writing a screenplay in English. Dialogue is especially difficult when you are a foreigner. We felt the story was pretty solid and were looking for someone to just help polish it up and put it in the right format. We went through several writers, but didn’t “click” with any one of them. That’s when my friend Jed Weintrob connected me with Andrew, saying – “he is the guy you need.” Andrew jumped right in and made so many things better in the story. Not only did he make the characters richer with brilliant dialogue, but he also helped with the structure of the overall story. Andrew is a very important part of what BLUE ESTATE is today and I am so grateful we found him.
CB: Andrew would you say you are a comics fan?
AO: Yes, though my favorites tend to be alternative and autobiographical titles by the likes of Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes and my friends John Mitchell and Jana Christy. But I’ve enjoyed a wide range of books over the years, including Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, The Sandman, Preacher…and, of course, Mad!
CB: It’s a big team to work on one comic, is it a challenge to manage all the different aspects?
VK: Yes, it is. I am precisely orchestrating everything so it doesn’t become a chaotic clash of styles. In order to do that, I put lot of effort into making sure the preproduction is rock solid and that all my art direction is as clear as it can be. It takes a lot of communication to make the book happen. We are all on email and skype the whole time. A big chunk of my time also goes to promotion and maintaining the web site.
CB: What did you think when you read the first script Andrew wrote?
KY: I realized how nice it was to work with someone who understood the spirit of our story at first glance – and found the perfect language for it! He joined us last, but managed to contribute in all aspects.
CB: For each issue how do you decide which artist will draw what pages?
VK: The first thing I did when the script was final was to break apart all the episodes and then find the trigger points in the story where we’d need a style shift. I actually had all 12 episodes figured out before we even started. It’s the story that demands when a shift is going to happen, and then I decide who is going to draw that. Now, keeping in mind what I talked about earlier – how some styles are a smooth shift and some aren’t as much – I use that as an advantage and make sure the right styles are next to each other. Rob takes on a lot on the “star life” aspects of the story – he deals with some of the flashbacks where I need an extra visual “glamour” boost, or sometimes when a scene needs to stand out and feel a bit surreal. Nathan takes on the darker scenes, as his style has a natural grittiness to it. We’ll see him mostly drawing the Russians and Italians and some tense moments. Toby has the most pages of all, and he’s basically everywhere. I do some of the pages where danger hangs in the air, or I need to inject a sense of seriousness and drama. I do enjoy drawing the jokes though, and I’m definitely going to do some of the really funny pages.
CB: How did you get involved in the Blue Estate comic?
AO: I’ve done a lot of work over the years with a film and video game producer/director named Jed Weintrob, and Jed knew Blue Estate’s contributing editor Philo Northrup, who in turn connected me with Viktor when he was looking for a writer for the title. I think it also probably helped that I had experience as a screenwriter, since Blue Estate was definitely inspired by movies as much as comics!
CB: How long does it take to create an issue of the comic?
VK: A month. We take our time and cook it well.
CB: What did you think when you first heard the story?
AO: Well, I was already a big fan of twisty ensemble crime stories like Snatch, and it turned out that movie was a big inspiration for Viktor and Kosta, the guys who came up with the original concept and characters for Blue Estate. So we were all on the same page about the vision and tone of the project right from the start, and we had a great time working together. Even the rare creative differences generally led to fun discussions and satisfying solutions.
CB: As issue two has just shipped, can I ask how far ahead are the team in terms of art and story?
VK: The story was done before we even started, as was the art direction on every level – story telling, props, environments, outfits, etc. We had a nice buffer of a couple of months, but a few unfortunate events slowed us down. Having to do my own promotion and web site doesn’t help either — it actually takes up a lot of time! (For example, as much as I enjoy interviews, after I’m done answering these questions I’ll have to work a few more hours today to catch up! J) The episode is ready a few days before it needs to go to print. I hope we’ll be able to make some better progress in the future and make up for the time we couldn’t have!
AO: As Morpheus says in The Matrix, “Time is always against us.”
Check out the Reviews of the first three issues below
http://comicbuzz.com/review-blue-estate-1
http://comicbuzz.com/review-blue-estate-2
http://comicbuzz.com/review-blue-estate-3
It was nice to hear from the creators. Blue Estate is a great book. I hope it goes on for along time.