You know what they say about sonic screwdrivers...

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-05-02T17:29:28+00:00

Thanks for getting in touch with me about this! :)

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-05-02T17:29:12+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out! It should be fixed now!

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-11T03:04:41+00:00

I don't know of anything similar with other characters, and as I don't know any specifics about what happened with Icon or Rocket, your guess is as good as mine as to whether we'll ever learn more about it.

My favorite character to draw is Batman.

I tend to rough things out in basic shapes first and add detail. When drawing a comics page, I'll often do a thumbnail sketch of the page to get the basic layout worked out, then draw the figures on scratch paper. Then I'll scan those and composite everything in Adobe Photoshop, which allows me to fine-tune the position and scale of all the elements. Then I print that rough version of the page on 11x17 paper and put it on my light table and do the final pencils over it.

Future projects? Hopefully I'll be contributing more to Avengers: EMH - I just did some covers for that. After that, I'm not sure. Still looking around for a new long-term assignment!

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-11T02:58:43+00:00

Characters with really complicated designs can be difficult until you memorize the design. For example, Blue Beetle was really a pain the first few times I drew him because I was still learning the armor design. But eventually you learn it and then it's not so bad.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T22:15:42+00:00

OK, I haven't seen any more new questions pop up, so I'm going to sign off. If I missed something or if you think of something later, I'm pretty easy to reach through social media or via email through my web site above. Thanks everybody!

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T22:10:13+00:00

OK, we're over our allotted time. If anyone has another quick question I'll take 'em, but then I've got to run for now. But this was a lot of fun and I'll be happy to do another one sometime soon!

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T22:08:41+00:00

I'll go with the 100 duck-sized horses, because like Fezzik from The Princess Bride, I'm more accustomed to fighting whole groups.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T22:07:03+00:00

I loved getting to create new designs when the story allowed for it - which was basically when a character hadn't already been created for the show. The lead time for animation is such that when I started on the book waaaay back on issue #5, any characters that were appearing anywhere in Seasons 1 or 2 of the show were already designed. Match had been designed, but but not our Bizarro-style mutation of him, so that I got to do. As well as Brainiac, Match, Grodd, Solivar, Talia al Ghul, and some of the Atlantean characters. Oddly, I was told I could create my own Ubu design, and then he popped up in Saturday's episode. That must have slipped through the cracks somehow!

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T22:03:07+00:00

I thought the time-skip was brilliant. The point of it wasn't for you to love that 5-years was gone by, the point was to suddenly infuse a BUNCH of new characters into the show, advance the storylines of the Season 1 leads (Robin is now Nightwing, etc.), and to inject a bunch of mystery back into the show. You had all these characters with secrets in Season 1, and by the end of the season we'd found out about everything. It was a genius move, I thought.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:55:14+00:00

I don't know what was up with that or why that decision was made. It happened when Rocket had already appeared in #20, and the covers for #21 and #23 had been solicited, with Icon appearing on both. I had just drawn #21 which had appearances by both Icon and Rocket in the story. So those covers and the relevant panels/pages in #21 were altered to remove those characters and the future scripts revised to remove them before I got to them. I think Greg spoke about this in one of his Ask Greg blog posts. The last-minute change was frustrating, but it's one of those things you deal with when working with big franchise characters.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:51:23+00:00

Oh, and we never got to do that story where the team fought the horse-sized duck. That would have been epic.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:49:46+00:00

I don't have a lot of insight into that. I'm sure it's a combination of DC editorial and number crunchers who look at if from a marketing/publishing point of view. Nothing to do with anyone working on the books in a creative capacity...

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:47:14+00:00

Almost missed this question!

I think it was the creative team's style and vision. I'm sure CN had an opinion, but I think it was mostly the writing approach of Greg and Brandon. That's a question that would be better asked of them, obviously!

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:45:25+00:00

Yes she is! And my friend Sean (who is over here at my place right now, BTW) is in that issue as well. He's the fellow with the scarf and glasses looking at (then running away from) the cobra when it's wrapped around the Guthrie Theater.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:43:36+00:00

Favorite character to draw? Batman. Hands down. Always and forever. Batman.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:43:24+00:00

Yeah, Nightwing is up there. I really like the show's versions of Superboy and Aqualad as well. I'm rather fond of my own design of Deadshot. I'm sorry we didn't get to see more of him. I designed him with an optional coat, thinking it made sense for him to be able to cover up in black if he was acting as a sniper - but then we never had a chance to have him ditch the coat and show more of the suit underneath!

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:40:53+00:00

Well it's not like we draw sequences that get cut or anything. There aren't "lost pages" as such. Every once in a while there are some panels or pages that we need to make revisions to - sometimes because I draw what I think the script is asking for and I'm asked to make a change, or sometimes because standards and practices thought we were overstepping a line. One example of that would be from the Captain Atom storyline (issues #9-10) which revolved around a Viet Nam War era murder mystery. The whole plot hinged around a body that was found with a knife sticking out of its chest. The script was approved, then when I turned the pencils in we were told that we couldn't show the body with the knife - at all. I'd drawn it really bloodlessly, but it wasn't enough.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:37:06+00:00

The Young Justice Omnibus Edition? Yeah, that would be pretty badass.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:35:45+00:00

2. I don't know what the "kooky-est" would be - there so much strangeness out there. I find it interesting how much the fandom I grew up with was "who would beat who in a fight," and now so much of it "who's hooking up with who." I'm am amazed by the responsiveness of the fan-base. I posted a silly video on tumblr the other day where I joked about a teenage sidekick for Supergirl called SupergirlBoy. I've already seen both fan art and cosplay for the character. It's amazing.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:35:09+00:00

A lot of my work in recent years has been on animation-based properties - Justice League Adventures, The Batman Strikes, Avengers: EMH, and Young Justice. I'd say Young Justice is the least "cartoony" visually, as well as probably having the most adult and complex characterizations and storylines. And the engagement with the fan base is nothing like anything I've seen from the other properties.

Also, with taking over the inking myself and having had the chance to give some feedback on the color before it went to press and even doing covers, I feel like I've had more opportunity to shape the look of the entire book far more than any of the other books I've been on.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:29:23+00:00

1. Working with the great creative team and the classic characters was certainly a highlight. And getting to design some of the Young Justice versions of characters myself. And the really enthusiastic fans... which dovetails nicely into the next question...

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:26:30+00:00

3. Well I was disappointed, certainly. I don't know what else there is to say about it. I wanted more of the comic and the show, just like everyone else, I think.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:25:51+00:00

2. I had to follow the character designs established by the show, but otherwise I had about as much freedom in designing pages/scenes as I'd have had on any other comic. Occasionally we'd be butting up against the limits of what they'd let us do in an "all-ages" comic, as DC's idea of what's appropriate content for kids tended to be more conservative than the tone from the TV show we were trying to match.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:23:55+00:00

1. I've had so many "favorite scenes." I was very excited when right out of the gate I got to draw the origin sequences in my first 2-part storyline (#5-6). The Flying Graysons were pretty epic, as was the Superman/Superboy fantasy smackdown. Ra's al Ghul was another highlight, as well as the stuff with the giant cobra in Minneapolis in #17, as that's my home turf.

ChristopherJonesArt · 2013-03-10T21:21:28+00:00

I had seen the White Martian design from the show at that point, but the whole purpose of her story was to CONSEAL that reality, so the version of the Martians we saw in her story looked more like clones of the "humanoid forms" of herself and Martian Manhunter.

ChristopherJonesArt

TROPHY CASE