Oh, Those Self-Centered Artists….

Hi, Folks!

Benita and I have a deal: I’m the guy who gets out in public and pushes our comic, and she keeps a low profile, keeping our privacy safe.  It’s worked well.  With that in mind, and in the spirit of being a typically self-centered artist, here are some things about me:

1. I’m a nerd.  I may not look like a nerd or talk like a nerd, but I am.  Other people have judged me to be a construction worker, or a biker, or a sports fan, but I’m not those things.  The first show I ever remember seeing on TV was Star Trek, in its original run on network TV.  I was deeply affected by “The Lord of the Rings” growing up, and I believe that the Peter Jackson adaptation of the LoTR is one of the greatest movies ever made.  Yes, I came, I saw, I nerded out.
2. I have no tattoos, piercings, or intentional scarification.  It’s not my thing, really.  It wasn’t something that people did much back when I was a kid.
3. As a kid, “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory” scared the crap out of me.  I don’t have fond childhood memories of this film.  I believe the blueberry scene was the most terrifying.
4. If I had the money and equipment, I’m pretty sure I could build a working suit of Iron Man armor.  I have page after page of semi-technical drawings to back this up.
5. While we watch DVDs, Benita and I don’t have cable or a television that can receive network television.  We haven’t watched TV, in my case, since about 2001.  I don’t really miss it, and I get a lot more done without having it as a distraction.
6. I never played a music instrument, and I had no sense of rhythm or any apparent aptitude for music.  At age 24, I picked up the guitar, and I’ve gotten pretty decent at it.  I’ve given professional guitar lessons to quite a few students.  I have about two-dozen stringed instruments hanging around the house.  It seems to me that if I had discovered music as a child, I could have been virtuoso.
7. I was once so affected by a novel I read that I stopped reading fiction for about six years.  The book was “Gloriana” by the incredible Michael Moorcock.  Much later, I penciled a six page story in Digital Webbing Presents no. 6, and the story that followed mine was written by Michael Moorcock.  Sure, as connections go, it’s pretty weak, but it pleases me none-the-less.  Nowadays I read fiction again.
8. I share my birthday, the eleventh of December, with none other that the tremendous Marvel penciler John Buscema, co-author of “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way,” and well-known as the penciler on Conan the Barbarian for many years.  Again, it’s not much of a connection, but…
9. While not an extreme experiencer, for the most part, I’ve had a lifetime of encounters with the paranormal.  Eventually, I’m going to write a book about it all.
10. I did not go to art school.  I had some random art training when I was a teenager, but when I went to college I got my degree in medieval history and a minor in English.  When I was a teenager, I had all the arrogance of someone who thought they were the best artist in the world.  It must have been insufferable, because looking back I am now aware that not only was I not a child prodigy or savant or anything like that, but that my skill level was set firmly in the mediocre range.  When I picked up art again in my 30’s, I pretty much had to start from scratch and retrain myself.  It was a humbling experience in many ways.
11. Before I became an illustrator, I spent years trying to become a published author.  I wrote five novels, and a few times I got close to getting a publishing deal.  These novels were all medieval fantasy.
12. I have a life-long fascination with Zeppelins, dinosaurs and paleontology, railroads and steam trains, ancient civilizations, the 19th century, and armor.
13. To this day, I don’t know if I’ve developed a “Scott Story” style of art.  It’s all invisible to me, because from my perspective I simply try to draw the best I can, and how I draw is how I perceive the world around me.  I have no stylistic crutches that I consciously fall back on.  Yet, I suspect there is an individual style there, even though I can’t see it.

That’s a good sampling of who I am.

Scott.

Inside The Book No. 13

These are my initial character designs for Alaric the Axe, a villain seen so often in Johnny Saturn.  Really, this design was not far off the mark from how I initially drew Alaric.  Looking at this now, I wonder if some of his appearance was subconsciously influenced by Thulsa Doom’s barbarian henchmen in the movie “Conan the Barbarian.”  Alaric’s old costume looks a little too “90’s” to me now, and I’m glad I gave him a new costume in his later, one-armed incarnation.