A new vampire breed I’ve been calling a Screecher!
–Rich
Category Archives: SMU Concept Art
Why the hell are we doing this?
That’s what I asked myself the first time I snapped out of a writing trance at 2 am on a work night when I first started working on Frank Enstein: Special Monsters Unit, my first foray into comics. My friend Rich Smith and I had always jested that we combine our talents and create something that would rock the world. He being an artist and I a writer, these jests didn’t become anything more than fun party conversations until a couple of years later when we both finally looked at one another and said, “Why haven’t we done this yet”?
I, Dave Caswell, am a film school graduate who realized very quickly after school that my chances in the film industry were slim to none at best without a solid foundation of work under my belt. That could never shake my joy for storytelling however, so instead of moving to Los Angeles and getting coffee for script supervisors and the like, I would stay in New England and try my hand at writing.
From a young age, I developed a knack for writing stories, a trait which I blame my father for influencing. He was an avid movie fan who threw the notion of age appropriateness to the wind and let me watch whatever I wanted at a young age. Robocop, Terminator, Predator, Aliens and Total Recall were my go-to viewings at the age of 4. While my mother, a second shift nurse at the hospital, still slept each day, I was glued to the TV watching these movies back to back everyday. Hey… who said the TV wasn’t a good babysitter?
All throughout my childhood, in school, I gravitated toward any course that involved my being creative or giving me the ability to write. At many points, I would write ongoing stories that involved the other kids in class and much to their enjoyment as well as my own, would read each new days story progression aloud at the end of class. This is when I first knew that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Naturally, my love of movies and storytelling led to me informing my parents that I would be attending film school after I graduated high school.
Well, it’s been about 6 years since I’ve graduated and while I’ve held a job at a television company during that time, I haven’t actually been published or made any money from my writing. I have however generated tons of story idea’s and written many pages for a wide spectrum of work that I’m quite proud of. But I still at this point of my life needed a spark. Some sort of kick that would lodge me from my comfort zone…
Enter Rich Smith, a self-taught pencil artist from northern Connecticut who began drawing at the age of 5. His skills began to develop at an early age due to his love of Batman, reruns of the Twilight Zone, many 80’s and early 90’s movies, and cartoons. At the age of 8, he was given a drawing table that he would use over the course of the next 20 years to sharpen his abilities. To this very day, a much larger Rich Smith sits at that drawing table, bringing comics to life that a younger Rich Smith could only have dreamed of.
Striving to bring a stylistic and all around different feel to comics, Rich wanted to create a comic that blended panels and borders with the art itself. His style is influenced by many things such as comic books, video game, Japanese art, and various artists (Jim Lee, Joe Mad, John Romita Jr, Andy Kubert, Humberto Ramos, etc.)
Rich and I met through a mutual friend a few years and hit it off immediately due to a common interest. We were both relatively creative guys who lacked a push.
The original Frank sketch
It took awhile for us to finally click with an idea though. It started when I told Rich about an idea for a comic book I had that combined everything I loved about horror movies and culture with hard-boiled, action packed, cop movies. The spark that ignited the wild-fire that we stoke to this day was a simple sketch that Rich sent me on an otherwise idle Wednesday back in June of 2011.
The sketch itself was rough (in fact Rich might be pissed that I even uploaded it) but it was all there. Frank Enstein, the monster detective that I had imagined was beginning to come to life (or back to life?). This was the first time that I had seen something from my head turned into something tangible. From that moment on, Rich and I realized we finally had something to work with.
We started meeting on a weekly basis after that sketch. Rich would have updated Frank’s look and I would have made some progress in a story idea for the first story arc of the comic book. Slowly but surely, our idea began to come together.
Enstein’s progression
It took the better part of a year before we had a premise that could stand on its own two feet. It is essential to have a good world for good characters to take root in and we didn’t want to skimp in that category. What we created was a dilapidated city with crime so bad that it required two police forces. One for the humans, and one for the monsters that terrorized the good people of Black Rock City.
We didn’t want to roll with the mantra that can be found in thousands of other stories. The heroes that know the truth about monsters in a world that’s mostly blind to their existence. While that may work in other stories, we wanted to set our world apart. Black Rock City is a place where humans and monsters live side by side. Their fragile tolerance of one another parallels blatant racism from earlier decades.
So back the the initial question; why the hell are we doing this? We do it because it’s something we love to do. Simple as that. There’s a point where a project you’re passionate about becomes something you don’t consider work anymore. We’re at that point now and we want to share that project with anyone who cares to see it come to maturity.
The point of this blog is not just for Rich and I to promote our work, but also to chronicle the steps we take in the direction of getting this thing off the ground. I’ve always found myself curious as to how the first uncertain steps were taken by any great creator – be it at artistry or writing – and the hurdles they had to clear to reach success. With any luck, this blog will fulfill that curiosity for someone else just getting started somewhere down the line.
Check back when you can. We promise some pretty cool stuff.
-Dave
The Bleed 