Bad Dog Books

Tucked away in the mysterious depths of Finland, Charha has something of the witch about her.

While collaborating with Fel on HC Vol. 3, expected to be complete in 2010, she drove the development of HC’s rather unusual artistic nomenclature. In dividing the duties and tasks involved in the coloring process on this particular piece, she made the following diagram:



Sparta is what turned Star Wars into the Special Edition. A second pair of eyes, a second set of artistic skills and predilections. The primary artist’s responsibility is to devise the composition, select the colors, feel out the weight of the image…

A talented mind like Charha, then, can find opportunities the primary artist might not have thought of. some light beams here to enhance the mood. A tighter rim light on a character to make her stand out better. A reflection on the ground to show it’s been raining.

While working on two stories for HC Vol. 2, namely “House Of The Rising” by Zooshwolf and “What It’s All About” by Vahnfox, the lexicon expanded further (most notably bleem, which is Vahnfox’s cute word for bloom).

Working on Zooshwolf’s story was a novel experience - he does everything in markers, making these strong, stark color regions that offered a surprising number of opportunities once I got them into Photoshop. Zooshwolf has such an eye for dramatic compositions, use of light and reflection, that I really got to turn my ‘Sparta’ up to ‘300’.

While Vahnfox already colored in digital, it was the story and his character designs that really made his story interesting to me. Up here there are a lot of strong matriarchal characters in our literature, celebrated and feared in our national saga. These powerful women are traditionally very protective over their land and household. Sometimes they’re witches and such… most of the time, however, they’re mothers.

Even when I didn’t have the word balloons to get the story, the character of Julia Miles really spoke to me. She was clearly an independent adult woman whose femininity was neither downplayed, mocked or exaggerated. Anyone who’s seen a Finnish mother deal with someone who bullied her children will know what I mean!