On August 23, 2004, OFF CAMPUS will cease to be the
product of one man, when all-new artist Omar Aria Setiawan debuts with
his first comic. OFF CAMPUS will still be written by its original
creator (and probably always will be), but the strip will now benefit
from having a second artist, a move that should finally return the
comic to a regular posting schedule. Omar's initial contract
calls for eight comics every month, which translates to roughly half of
the artistic workload.
(Left): A sample pencil page from a previous project, provided by Omar.
As you can clearly see from the samples provided,
Omar is a very talented artist, both in terms of raw illustrative
ability, as well as story-telling technique. While his art-style
is admittedly quite different from my own, no other artist who
auditioned for the position demonstrated both qualities as masterfully
as he did. Besides, when I finally decided to seriously pursue a
partner in crime, it occurred to me that it might even be better if the
new artist brought a completely original feel to OFF CAMPUS. If
nothing else, it ought to prevent the strip from becoming visually
stale.
(Right): Another sample page from Omar; this one with colors over his
pencils and inks.
Omar comes to us from the island of Central Java,
Indonesia, a nation that, incidentally, appears to be brimming with
comics talent (many of the artists that tryed out for the job hailed
from there or Argentina). He's a 26 year old artist with a
background in Architecture, but has spent the last year and a half
pursuing work in a field he fell in love with as a kid: comics.
He's also quite the XBOX fan, and wants very much to get into game
development and design at some point, too (not too soon, hopefully!).
(Left): More pencilly-goodness courtesy of Omar.
Anyway, I suppose that's more than enough hype from
me. I'm going
to close with some prelim sketches Omar sent me . . .
. . . as well as the try-out
comic that netted him the job (based on a script I did this past
June). If this doesn't get you jazzed, nothing will.
Good Shit: My
favorite comic book series right now is Sleeper: Season Two by Ed Brubaker
and Sean Phillips, published by Wildstorm/DC. Please give it a
look, as isn't selling nearly as well as it ought to be. I'm also
digging on the musical stylings of the San Marcos-based rock band Blue October, as I just can't get
enough of violin with electric guitar.
