Illustrating Hatman

Greetings all. Steven Ware here, just wanted to talk about my second experience in doing a full fledged comic book for 3twins media. It was a dark and stormy night...no just kidding. After having done a few covers and a smaller comic book for the guys I was asked to illustrate the Christmas Carol episode of Hatman & Indigo. I had decided to work in more realistic illustration style for the Dicken's portion, and the sketching and inking proved more daunting than I had anticipated, and there was plenty of 'LIFE' getting in the way. But when the work was complete, I was pretty satisfied with the finished product...and the feedback from the guys and others was pretty positive. To make a long story longer, I post this in hopes to encourage everyone to keep pressing on with their endeavors...in the end we will all be able to pat each other on the back for a job well done.

~Steven

New Character Design!

Today I bring you a concept image of one of the new characters to the world of Of Mages & Pages (our game in the works to be released exclusively on the Nintendo Wii U).  This is Raviela the griffin.  Rumor has it she's part dragon, but I wouldn't bring that up to her if I were you!  This concept drawing comes to us by way of our in-game artist (and everyone's favorite Hatman & Indigo artist), S. LaDon Ware!

We at 3twins hope you all have a blessed and Merry Christmas!

-Jason

Pumpkin Man Sub-Saga Recap: Part 2

The Return of The Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man was the second installment in our Pumpkin Man Sub-Saga (which from here out I will refer to simply as "Return". This story featured the return of not only the Pumpkin Man, but a throw away joke character from Issue 3, The Badger. The Badger was intended to be an obvious parody of Wolverine and we loved him so much that we decided to bring him back as a reoccurring character. Since we had previously established that our heroes should keep a good distance from Regular Man, this story gave us a good opportunity to feature The Badger and take a look into his origin.

Anyone who saw The Hatman Clause Part 3 will notice that the voice and characterization of The Badger has changed since this comic. In that story we chose to ignore it, but I will state now that the official cannon explanation is that soon after the events of "Return" The Badger reclaimed his former life and over time his previous personality returned as well. The forgetful Badger, while heroic, had been a broken man, afraid of the unknown and chose his words carefully. As his memory returned, so did his confidence, and the wavering higher pitched voice full of fear was replaced with his natural bass tone. (That being said, the truth is, we just got a different voice actor and he decided to take the character in a different place. We were intrigued with this new take on the character and changed him slightly to reflect this.)

Back to the recap of "Return." The story opens sometime after the events of the first Pumpkin story. Regular Man and Farmer Bill (quickly joined by The Badger) barricade the door of Farmer Bill's barn because it houses the infamous pumpkin. Keeping him locked away from the farmer should ensure that the pumpkin will not regain his full power. Farmer Bill grows forgetful and confused, so the Badger and Regular Man encourage him to go inside while they finish up. A newscast explains that the Terrible Trio are engaged in some sort of crime, so Regular Man and The Badger decide to take care of it. Before they can, the barn bursts open knocking Regular Man unconscious. The Badger, weak minded at this point in his life, is drawn in by the power of the pumpkin. The effects wear off soon and The Badger leaves to get help. Farmer Bill hearing the commotion finds his son lying on the lawn and through suggestion of the Pumpkin, thinks the pumpkin power will give him the strength to save his son. He approaches the barn and becomes the fully formed Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man once again.

The Badger flees to Hatman & Indigo's to warn them of their returned villain but his forgetfulness strikes and he can't remember why he came. Indigo wishes that the Badger's memory problems would be over and we are treated to a flashback of The Badger's origin at the hands of some aliens. After the flashback, Pumpkin Man breaks in and kidnaps Indigo.

Happy to be excluded from a kidnapping this time, Blonde joins Hatman and The Badger to help defeat Pumpkin Man and free Indigo. Because the Pumpkin has telepathic power of suggestion over narrators, he can control Hatman and Indigo (who both filled in for the Narrator while on vacation in the previous Pumpkin story). We also learn that the Pumpkin not only has the power to levitate things but can control the growth of pumpkin vines as he captures all the heroes one by one, mummifying them with vines, with the exception of Regular Man whom he decides to ship away in a wooden crate. Blonde is left to face the orange menace alone, which she does heroically, by spraying him with a heavy dose of the farmer's pest poison. This causes him to melt into a pile of goo as the vines recede and our heroes are freed. Hatman frees Regular Man as the group discovers that the toxin did not defeat the pumpkin, but mutate him. He now no longer needs Farmer Bill as a host body (he's formed a body of vines and his gooey head resembles it's former shape) and Regular Man's power doesn't defeat him. The Badger does however destroy him with the help of Indigo creating the "field goal" our homage to the "fastball special" featured in X-Men comics when Colossus throws Wolverine. Hatman wishes the defeated goo to be trapped in an inescapable box and all is well.

As with the first installment, while I re-watched this story, I thought that it was a step up from the first. Steve's art had noticeably improved (with the exception of his take on Blonde for part 1) and the storytelling was tighter. The addition of a few more panels and some extra Narrator duologue would have helped, but all in all, it is entertaining. As with many of our stories, this could be a lot funnier. The funny is more in concept than in blatant jokes, and this is something we struggle with constantly, trying to find a good level of both action and comedy.

What will happen next? Well, you only have to wait a few more hours! Issue 44, part one of the third installment (confusing, I know) in the Pumpkin sub-saga will post at Midnight Eastern Time tonight!

Jason

A sneak peek at Christmas

I am currently in the process of writing "A Hattington Christmas Story" which is going to be a parody/tribute of the beloved holiday classic, "A Christmas Story". I've had the idea for this rattling around in my brain for a couple of years and now I'm finally writing it out. I've blogged before a bit of how we try to make our parodies fresh as well as really portray the original material in a good light. This is no easy task and we really do put quite a lot of thought as well as some research into these types of stories, maybe more so than the mainstream "parody" movies do (i.e. Superhero Movie). I'll share with you a little bit of my process so far.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had several long discussions with Steve, Michael, Andy and my wife, Michelle (she does the voice for Blonde) about exactly how I should tackle this particular project. As you will remember with "Hatman Clause" I took more of the base concept from the source material and wrote something entirely new and different. Well, with this I want it to be more close to the source material, and yet still tell an original story. Which as you might guess is going to be like a tightrope act in order for it to work.

So, in these various discussions I picked the brains of my fellow 3twins-ians and asked, "what scenes from the movie should we portray?" and "what should we try to shy away from or more or less alter in a way?". I'm not going to give you a whole lot of spoilers for the answers we came up with, because, where's the fun in that. However, I will give a few teasers as to what I've come up with:

A Christmas Story was set in the 1940's and was about a man recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. Well, the approach I'm taking with my 3twins tribute version is: Setting it in the 1980's and it will be Hatman recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. So, the story will have the same "feel" and we can still reference '80's things like the movie referenced '40's things.

The next question was, "Do we have our regular cast of characters play parts in this?" Or "Should we try to extrapilate a past for Henry Hattington out of what we already know and therefore, certain characters (i.e. Leppy, Indigo, Blonde...) who appear in nearly every single issue will be absent from this story?" And the answer we agreed on is the latter, many of our regular cast will not be in "A Hattington Christmas Story". However, I am working in new characters that will somewhat "fill the shoes" of the absent cast members as well as a surprise here and there for a few cameo's from people we have met in the Hatman universe.

As you can guess, this will be a bit of a departure from our normal adventurous style, however, I really hope that when it goes online, it will feel like a warm tribute to the classic Christmas movie that is number one for many people.

-Jason