Interview with Tristan Jones (Konami)Date published: 2015.02.17 Q: What is your history with the Silent Hill series? Pretty sure Silent Hill was the very first thing I ever approached IDW about, WAY back in 2007 at SDCC, while I was still writing the TMNT at Mirage… Approaching editors at San Diego Comic Con…! Man, was I naive! I’d always been a huge fan of the games. I remember Silent Hill 2 being the first game I really sat and just played pretty endlessly because I was so absorbed in what was unraveling before me. Q: How much of Downpour’s art direction inspired your look of Silent Hill? With licensed projects like this, I try to make things look as close to the source as I can make it, without compromising my own style too much. I know as someone that reads quite a few licensed books, that it really drives me up the wall when something just doesn’t FEEL like it should, and a lot of that comes down to the visuals in my mind. Fortunately, Downpour was pretty drab and grimy visually, which suits me just fine! I DID want to put a few kind of nods to the visuals of the previous games that I felt worked. Some got in, some didn’t. Q: Could you walk us through the general overview of the creation process? We had pretty tight deadlines on this thing, so I was working pretty much totally digitally, so I’d get the script, visualize it in my head and pretty much roll straight into roughing out the imagery. The great thing about working digitally, is that I can just go straight into inks, rough things out with the heavy blacks. I usually pencil digitally (if that makes sense), lay the page out, then print it off in blue-line, ink it traditionally with my brushes and pens and then scan it back in for Mike to colour, but that wasn’t going to work this time around, so I kind of just bypassed the printing and made do with things there in the Cintiq. I think it worked out pretty nicely… Once Mike’s done colouring, I’ll take it back and play around with some things, maybe tweak things he might’ve missed, add focal points, etc. The great thing about working with Mike on this was I barely had to give him any notes. He’s a fan of the games himself, so he knew exactly what to do! Q: What was your favorite monster to design/draw? I was kinda surprised at how much I enjoyed drawing the prisoner creatures to be honest! Something about their faces… And the doll that’s in there — that whole sequence outside the shop was a hell of a lot of fun. Getting to draw the nurse in #2 was fun too. Just the perverse contortions their bodies make. There’s a panel where the doll is on the hood of a car that’s personally one of my favourite panels in the whole story. I also kinda loved pushing Sewell, as well. There are some shots here and there where his face changes and I’d lit him to make him creepier. Kinda wish I could’ve drawn the Red Pyramid in there, but that was the only “no” I got working on it. Q: How long have you worked in comics? I was a writer for the Ninja Turtles for about four years, at Mirage and Titan in the UK and I wrote one story when it changed hands to Nickelodeon and IDW. That goes back to about 2006 I think… Since then I’ve been drawing to keep my foot in the door! Writing’s a hard gig to crack, harder still to stay in, so drawing was kind of the fall-back, but now I’m doing both, which is exciting! 9 years now! Crazy… Q: What would you do if you ever found yourself trapped in Silent Hill? You gotta play by the rules in Silent Hill… Doesn’t really let ANYONE get away with doing anything else! |