Brobots, Fried Rice, and the Importance of Colorists: An Interview with Sean Dove
This is an ongoing series where I interview API comic writers and artists with questions that dig a little deeper into who they are, how they got into comics, and what their thoughts are on API identity in the comic book industry.
Quick Bio: Sean Dove lives and works in Chicago, IL, where he runs his one-man design studio And Thank You For Flying. Born in Hawaii and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Sean graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. He has been freelancing full-time since 2009, specializing in illustration, screen printing, comics, and design. Oh and he drew an awesome Back to the Future piece for a good cause once!
I heard from your Brobot, J Torres, that you are part Chinese American. Can you share a little bit about your family history and what it was like growing up hapa?
I’m Chinese on my Dad’s side. His Mom was full, Dad is half, I’m quarter. I have a strange relationship with it, most people don’t know and assume I’m just white and I’ve never been sure how to feel about that. My Grandma never spoke Chinese around us and my dad never learned, so I don’t have a strong cultural relationship with it.
My parents grew up in Hawai’i, and I was born there but grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Over the years I’ve visited Hawai’i a handful of times and it’s one of those places I instantly feel comfortable and more in tune with that side of my family. Beside that I think my main relationship is through food. My Grandma passed down her recipes and eating and making her char siu pork or beachcomber ribs has always made me feel closer to my Chinese background.
I was checking out your blog and this line you said really stood out to me, “I tend to think in color, so a lot of this work is kinda thought out before hand.” Can you share a little bit more on what it means to think in color, and also what you feel that colorists bring to the comic game?
A lot of that has to do with how comics are made. I think a large portion of comic artist mainly pencil and ink, someone else ends up doing the coloring. But when I’m drawing something I’m also normally handling the colors, so I end up seeing or having an idea of what the final will look like as I’m drawing it. It also is one of my favorite parts of drawing, so at times I rush toward doing it, sometimes too fast!
Colorists (and letterers) are one of the most under-appreciated part of a comic creative team. Color, beside adding volume and shape to a drawing, can also affect the mood and can bring a visual representation of characters emotions. It’s a super powerful tool that I think a lot of people take for granted.
I just downloaded and read Fried Rice Issue 1. You know I gotta ask: why the name Fried Rice? Also, in this issue, you have a great short comic called Goodnight Marcel, where you tried to stay awake for 24 hours to do a 24 page comic. That sounds painful! Can you share what it was like/what was going through your head at the 16th/17th hour?
Fried Rice a lot of times is made with leftover ingredients, thrown in to a wok and fried. I liked the idea of the comic being something like that. Each issue could be made up of an assortment of comics, it could be a mix of old comics and new and together they make something different. So that became Fried Rice.
Goodnight Marcel was my first 24 hour comic. 24 hour comic day is an annual challenge originally came up by Scott McCloud. The concept is to draw 24 pages, in 24 hours and nothing can be written before hand. It’s a crazy experience, you need to keep a pace of about one page an hour and by hour 16 or 17 your body starts to do weird stuff, your eyes are strained, your shoulders and arms hurt, by hour 19 or 20 your whole body can get stiff and my eyes felt like they wanted to pop out of my head.
It’s a cool experience and very rewarding. It’s not often you can produce so much work in so little time. Comics are something that can take a ton of time, so having a full comic done in a weekend is amazing. After doing it a couple times though I don’t think I need to do it again.
Back in 2014 you successfully kickstarted “The Last Days of Danger,” which was a hardcover book of your illustrations inspired by spy movies. What was that process like? Is crowd-funding the new way for artists like yourself to get your work out in the universe?
Thirty days of watching people donate can mess with your head, but it’s really satisfying when it’s over. I had some delays that I wish I could have avoided, but overall it’s super empowering to be able to afford to produce higher end products like a hardcover book.
I think crowd-funding is huge for people that want to self-publish. Working with publishers is great but the process can be really slow, and not all projects are good fits for them. Very quickly you can cultivate an audience that wants to continue to support the things you make, and Kickstarter is a great way to make stuff for them.
Onto your new comic, Brobots. This comic is hilarious! I swear I was best friends with 2 Brobots in college. Besides 2 bro-y UCLA college students, what was the inspiration behind Brobots? How’d it come to be?
J and I have known each other for awhile. We meet years ago through a mutual friend/studiomate Mike Norton. A couple of years ago J brought up the idea of working on something together. He would shoot over quick ideas and see if any of them stuck with me. I would mock up a couple character sketches, but nothing was really working. Then he shot over an email that said “how about The Incredible Brobots?” and the name just jumped out at me. After that I started working on sketches, we went through a bunch of weird designs, most are pretty terrible.
One day though I was poking around on the internet and came across a picture of Gladiator Voltron. I remembered him from when I was a kid, he was three robots that could combine in to a bigger robot and that got me thinking. So I borrowed his colors, I liked the idea of each of the robots being different colors, one red, one blue and one black. For the black robot I based his design on Mazinger Z. I was a fan of him growing up, but in America he was called Tranzor Z. For the Blue guy I always liked T-Bob from M.A.S.K., so I thought it would be fun to riff on his design a little. After that they came together pretty quickly.
How’d you come up with the art style for Brobots? On your blog you mentioned how you weren’t 100% happy with just using a computer to draw, and instead went through what seems like a very involved method that mixed everything. Why the change of method and how long did it take you to do the artwork for this entire comic?
Over the years the way I’ve drawn has kinda morphed, I got more and more ok with how cartoon-y I leaned. As a kid I read a ton of superhero and Japanese comics, both tended to have a lot of detail and for the most part realistic looking characters. For a long time I tried to draw like that, but I don’t think I was ever super comfortable. I would have to do a ton of work and was never really happy with the results. Once I started realizing my strong points it got a lot easier to kind of find my way. The basics of how I draw are built on strong shapes and simplifying stuff down to it’s bare bones. I had a teacher tell me at one point the KISS principle, “Keep it simple, stupid” and I try to take that to heart, it’s so easy to over think things.
For Brobots I drew the first several or so pages a few years ago, but the rest of the book was completed between the middle of November till the beginning of January. So around two months start to finish. That is drawing, coloring, lettering and designing the full book. I was really proud I was able to complete the book in that time frame. To complete the book in that amount of time I needed a system and at first I thought I could just do everything on the computer. The thing I found though is I wasn’t super happy with how it was looking. I found that if I printed out my layouts that I did on the computer and did a quick pass on paper I was able to find stronger shapes and clean up a lot of things. After that I would scan those pages and ink them in photoshop. I was a silly extra step but I think it really helped in the end.
Brobots was selected by Diamond to be a Recommended Read for kids 6+. Congrats! Besides a strong pun game, what are you hoping kids get out of reading this? Will there be future Brobot comics coming out and how can folks support?
I hope they enjoy the brothers friendship, camaraderie, resourcefulness and problem solving skills. Also just a lot of laughs.
J and I are already talking about the next book and have tossed around some ideas for it.
The best way to support the book is to either go to their local comic book store and ask them to order a copy (JAN161586) or pre-order a copy online.
