BRANDON BADEAUX INTERVIEW

Brandon Badeaux is the talented young artist responsible for the illustrations in Star Wars: Republic #61, 64, and 67. He also rendered the pencils for Empire #23 and the mini-series "Nomad" in Star Wars Tales. You can also check out his other works in Superman, Green Lantern, and G.I. Joe.

See Brandon's latest work in Star Wars Tales #22, which features part 2 of "Nomad" and a Republic Commando story (not illustrated by Brandon), at comic book shops starting tomorrow (February 23, 2005)!

Star Wars Tales #23 Art Cover

TUCWS: Hello Brandon, thanks for coming and having a chat with us. It's a real pleasure to finally talk to you. First off, you're a relatively new artist to the Star Wars universe, illustrating three comics for the Republic series and a single issue for Empire, as well as a couple stories in the revamped Star Wars Tales. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you became interested in artwork?

Brandon Badeaux: Well I’ve always been interested in the field as a whole. Both of my parents were artists, though neither pursued it for capitol gain. I’ve been in A.P. art programs in the state of Louisiana since I was in the third grade were I would get bussed to another school everyday. When your little the first things we study is the masters. Comics, while not highly regarded in the field of art, are the closest things to those works in my opinion. I mean where else do you get to do ultra realistic drawings of people doing unrealistic things. I’m 25 now, and I’ve been interested in comics from the time I was pretty little so I grew up with all these characters.

When it came time to go to college I ended up choosing Savannah College of Art and Design, where we actually had a major devoted to sequential art there I feel I grew exponentially as an artist and had the guidance of some great professors. During my junior year I started getting recruited by some companies one of which was actually Dark Horse though at the time they wanted me to draw Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ended up falling through. But by my senior year I had Lucas film and ILM looking at me for their creature department and DC asking me to draw Superman. And I felt that I could make a more of an individual name for myself through the medium of comics so here I am.

TUCWS: One thing that we've noticed is that most authors and artists who come to do work with Star Wars have prior work under their belt. What other projects have you worked on before Star Wars?

BB: Well Superman, Harley Quinn, Green Lantern, Weapon X, Marrow, and GIJOE. Though I usually got murdered on inks and colors so its kind of hard to see what the original visions was for those books now.

TUCWS: Are you a fan of the Star Wars movies? When did you first see them and which is your favorite?

BB: Yeah, I love Star Wars genre. I’m a big fan of the old movies and Empire is my favorite, I really just like the thread between Luke and Yoda. I mean hey, swamp, kid from Louisiana, this coulda happened to me, and plus that fight at the end in cloud city I can watch again and again. I think I was able to see Empire in the theater when I was like two or three, when was that? 81 I think. And Jedi I definitely saw in the theater. I also had these old 45’s (records) with the Star Wars saga in audio form that came with a flipbook that you can see the pictures and read info on the characters. So it was long a long time ago.

TUCWS: One thing that really blew me away with your works is that you have a pointedly different artistic style than some of the other artists who have worked on the Republic series. While others go for a very photo-realistic style, yours seems to retain a wonderful comic book feel to them. What can you tell us about this?

BB: Well I haven’t really seen any photo realistic stuff. But I just try to have fun with it in a believable way, though lately I’ve been able to put a lot more effort in tonal values. I only have so much time to do my work so it’s really because I don’t have the time to do photo-realism.

I tend to draw straight from my head without using too much reference and I think my storytelling style is a little different, in the sense that I like to put the reader right in the center of the action. I think these two things help keep your characters very organic. I see a lot of artist, even big name cover artist, who very clearly are drawing straight from a photo which tends to give a flat feel to the artwork so the best ref is life drawing, unless your character is flying through the air or something then you better just know a little about physics, anatomy, and perspective. Other wise you get people who look like they are standing on a podium in an approximation of what they are actually supposed to be doing. But for the most part everyone worth their salt has their own style and you end up developing it naturally with time. I know there are a ton of comic book artists in the field that copy another artists style line for line, but people who have really honed there craft tend to just develop on their own. I just hope that my style will be a hard one to copy or duplicate.

TUCWS: What types of training did you go through to become a professional artist?

BB: along with all my formal education, I really have a love for what I do. I think with out that, it would be hard to keep up with production demands and such. Now I’d be lying if I told you I’ve never gotten burnt out on a project. But those really cool pages are the ones that keep you going as a pro, well that and the hopes that you’ll have your own intellectual property that could be the next Star Wars.

Being a pro and drawing on your free time are vastly different in the sense that when your drawing for pleasure your always in the mood to create, but that’s not always the case as a pro. And nobody can train you for that but I’d say the major thing that helped was my education in story telling at SCAD. Editors won’t even consider you unless you can clearly and concisely tell a story.

TUCWS: Out of all of the Star Wars comics that you've illustrated, which was your favorite to work on?

BB: well I enjoy the Nomad series the most probably because it takes place in a part of the galaxy that’s very frontier like in the sense that all the characters are new and were not bogged down with all the Star Wars mythos. It’s kinda like having someone pull your reigns off and let you just run with it. Now the story won’t make sense until issue four wraps it all up, but it should be a fun ride. I’m currently working on the third installment of the series on a scene where we get to show a war and the Star Wars equivalent of paratroopers which is just plain fun to design. And Rob Williams is a really good writer and very open to suggestions and changes. so I really am stoked about this mini series, trust me you’ll all like it too, mainly because it’s a little different from the other Star Wars stories.

TUCWS: Republic 61 with Bail Organa surprised me because there was quite a bit of action in it, plus it had some of the first space battles seen in the Clone Wars comics. How do you go about rendering starfighter battles?

BB: Wow I didn’t know that these were the first starfighter battles. I think that had they not been inked I would have done them different now. The hard part about space battles is that you have to be able to establish a sense of scale and movement. The best way to do this is to have a planet or star or some kind of space anomaly near by to establish direction and movement, and second you need to overlap ships quite frequently, otherwise you’ll lose your scale and wont be able to tell big ships from little ships. And the third trick is to try to make the trails from the jets of your crafts, this will let you do dog fighting maneuvers without adding 20 new panels to a scene. I personally dread those scenes because they can be extremely difficult to sell in this particular medium simply because we really don’t have the time in 22 pages to really do an effective star battle unless we have longer more ongoing stories that allow us to do a book that’s 2/3 starfighter battle.

But the ships in that book were a chore to design. The pirate fighters I had to change because my original designs ended up being too close to what Lucas wanted for the clone trooper ships, which have now subsequently changed for Episode III. But I ended up liking the ships I designed and wish they could be used in the movies as they have two sections that would be able to rotate on axis and change the shape of the ship from flat to X shaped and anywhere in between they ended up a cross between and X-wing a B-wing and something from lost in space.

TUCWS: We also see a lot of Coruscant in Republic 61, particularly the Senate Chambers and Palpatine's office. What types of visual references did you have to illustrate these areas? Anything from Revenge of the Sith?

BB: No, no ROTS stuff, in fact there’s a whole list of things, characters included we aren’t allowed to show in the comics right now. So I use the Internet for reference a lot, I have a few SW books now on design and those are helpful, but Jeremy or Randy will send me pictures of Palpatine's office and other areas when necessary. As for Coruscant most of the buildings look very similar so if you get the idea and basic shapes they are going for, you can make up whatever you want, some of it is reference and some is intuition. Like saying hey it would be cool to have a roof top garden or atrium, or helipad, or what not, though usually that stuff gets glanced over in the coloring stage. So some of it gets lost in the bg’s

TUCWS: Some of your other scenes are tremendously busy, with lots of characters or background shots. How long can it take you to complete individual panels? How long does it take you to draw an entire comic?

BB: It really depends on what I’m drawing as far as difficulty level some pages and panels are no-brainers and some like you said are chocked full of everything and each figure is an imaginary actor that’s not in the script, so I have to make it all up from scratch. Take a look and you’ll see that many of them are doing something different, like kids playing with a Star Wars dog, or fixing a broken freighter, or kissing a loved one. Generally, all I get in the scripts are a block of text that says, “crowd scene” with the words “hustle and bustle” thrown in there. I’ve kinda got a reputation for being a detail freak so my writers trust I’ll come up with some thing good to help their story along. So to answer your question It can take as little as 8 to 10 hours for a page or as much as 16 to 20 hours so by the time I’m done with a book I really don’t want to see it for a while because for the last 4 to 6 weeks it seems like, its all I look at and I’m the type of guy that only sees the details I didn’t have the time to put in.

TUCWS: In some of your background shots in Republics 61 and 64, I've noticed a couple of TIE Fighters and X-Wings and Cloud Cars. Are these cameos like in the movies?

BB: They were just shout outs to show that they had similar tech back then too. Though recently, I’ve been corrected by fans on my continuity, but sometimes I forget my timeline and accidentally put the wrong ship in the wrong time. I’m also a huge fan of Ralph McQuarrie's work. To me, his ships tend to be the coolest looking, so I like drawing the ties and cloud cars and such. The guy is brilliant and he is really the one I think who is responsible for giving us the feel of Star Wars. Now that feel is a little different with the prequels, but like I said, those designs are the ones that say hey I’m a Star Wars comic. But I do mess up my timeline. I’m told that I have a tie in the Nomad story but I didn’t know the timeline for that until after it was already drawn, not that it was important to the story.

TUCWS: In Republic 64, we have a comic that has the story going backwards, so to speak. Was this any particular challenge when drawing the characters?

BB: Yeah it kinda was but it would have been the same if we went forward. I had to age Ronhar Kim in the beginning and then progressively make him younger taking lines out of his face, some of which disappeared during coloring because I drew them to lightly. But people seemed to notice anyway so its cool. I liked that story but John Ostrander gave me something like thirteen different scene changes with lots of different Backgrounds so those were a challenge because there’s just more work to do for the design stage but I was really interested in the story of that one, simply because it really gives some serious insight on how manipulative Palpatine can be in a very simple and concise way

TUCWS: I've noticed that there is even more in Republic 64 that foreshadow the original movies, such as the bridge of the Republic Cruisers and the hologram of Sideous. What materials do you reference when deciding to do something like that?

BB: Well for the bridge of the Republic cruisers I wanted to do the same bridge as a star destroyer because unless I’m mistaken there is no reference for it. but it’s pretty obvious that the Republic cruisers are star destroyers or eventually become star destroyers so it was a natural progression. the hologram of Sideous was in the script and Brad Anderson did a great job with the effect there. And once again references to the original trilogy really drive home the idea that this is Star Wars even if Luke, Han, Darth, Leia and the Ewoks aren’t in it. So hopefully it’s good to see those little throw backs in there from time to time.

TUCWS: What about referencing character's faces, such as Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi or weapons like the ones that the Blue and Red Guards use?

BB: The internet can give me some pics and then I have to kinda make a mental map in my head as to what shapes their noses, foreheads, eyes, mouth, etc. are, and turn the image around in my mind to draw them from whatever angle I need them. I never seem to be able to find reference of these guys in the positions I need them, of course I do like odd camera angles so its kinda my own fault. Right now I’m doing a cover for Tales with Wedge on it. Seriously, every shot of that actor I’ve found is from the front, dead on. So you kinda have to make do with what you have.

TUCWS: In Republic 67, we're finally on some world other than a desert or forest. How hard is it to draw different environments such as a winter planet verses a jungle planet, or even outer space?

BB: Its not too bad, I have a subscription to National Geographic and a good imagination, so that’s not a big deal. I like unusual places and really have to start getting everyone on board that these worlds are alien but still believable so hopefully I’ll get you guys some really alien looking worlds soon. Anyway by the time I’m done with one book I’m completely ready to do somewhere completely different. I enjoyed the inside of the Geonosian ice needle, especially that almost splash page of Thono staring up at the giant structural support to the hive.

TUCWS: Just out of curiosity, what is up with the cave full of dead Mandalorians in Republic 67? We see a single panel with them, but really no story behind that.

BB: lol yeah, there is an amusing story behind that and I’m not sure if it will get me in trouble. Lets just say that if you’re a fan of something and you want something so badly to be in a comic that you feel the need to write mean things to the editor on Dark Horse message boards you may just get what you wish for, but not in a the way you want it, were like an evil genie that way.

I’ll just say I was told to put those dead mandos in that panel and only that panel there after I did my thumbnails. but I really think it spiced up that panel because it added a sense of menace to that scene.

TUCWS: You went from Republic to Empire. Did you modify anything in your style to reflect the changes in the environment and time period?

BB: Well not really on the one Empire story I did. I just tried to make things look dented and dirty, though there were a ton of textures that got washed out in the coloring process. But for the most part everything in Republic has curves and everything in Empire has more hard angles. There is a world of difference between the concepts in the prequels and the concepts in the original trilogy. Which really can get confusing at times so we see things as bright and shiny then angular and dingy with out much of an in-between, and that’s really the trick between doing the two books. Republic has some neat designs that fit today and Empire had some neat designs that fit yesteryear I personally would have kept the same theme throughout both trilogies but that’s just me. Although I view it from someone trying to tell the stories, and know the nightmares that can take place when trying to keep up with what happened where, and what ships were invented in what time period of a fictional story. Of course I tend to write” big “so I can’t really talk.

TUCWS: Boshek is one of those characters that have not been covered much in the Expanded Universe, although he does have a short story based on him. Have you had to read up on the characters, in any comic, to see how they might move and act?

BB: Naahh, rockabilly space smuggler pretty much sums him up. And for our story he's an ugly guy who gets the attention of a hot chicka, so he’ll believe anything she tells him. He’s scared yet defiant, as he’s in hiding from the Empire. And his best friend is a little old man. Jeremy kinda filled me in on the details but really in all honesty, he only appears on screen for literally 3 seconds. I got a lot of grief from Lucas film because it didn’t look like the actor. But I think I get a harder time than most because they know I can do it. I even got grief for making him too muscular even though he’s only shown from a bust and is in a bulky flight suit. Now, one of my hobbies is bodybuilding and I’m a big guy so to me that is skinny. Now maybe I’m not a good judge of muscularity, but considering he had to do some amazing stuff, I mean my arms are 19 inches around and I couldn’t do that rope bridge jump while holding on to rasha, so I think he needed a little beef on him. I think I got side tracked. Oh, I did study Haden Christenson a little to get that whiney, annoying, defiance to come across as Anakin on the page and a little for Palpatine to get his manorisms down but I’d only do that for major characters

TUCWS: And Captain Bex… what can you tell us about her? She was certainly a big surprise in the comic, and seemed to push the lines a little in some panels. ;-)

BB: How so? Ohhh your talking about those chesticles. Star Wars needed a little jiggle. But seriously I think she may turn out to be a cool character. she’s one of the many in the SW universe who are on the fence as to their political alliance. I think there are a great deal of parallels between Rasha and many, many Americans right now. So for right now she’s a character who is applicable to our day to day lives, what with the state of the country.

Remember the Empire was at one time a republic and a symbol of peace between worlds, so a sudden shift may find alliances tested and she's one of the ones caught in the middle. So in all honesty I can’t wait to go back to her. Plus she has the jiggle factor, how can you go wrong!

TUCWS: Will we be seeing anything of those two in the near future? The story certainly calls for a second. And we'd like to see more of them…

BB: Yup. Jeremy and I have been brainstorming as to where we’re going with old Bo, but I can tell you this much if I have a say, there will definitely be a soap dropping scene in the imperial prison. Just kiddin. Umm, yeah we plan on hopefully doing a little miniseries with him and that’s about all I can say. But it should be fun and I should have a little more time to devote to it. Empire 23 was kind of a rush job on my end from a production stand point

TUCWS: “Nomad” is shaping up to be an interesting tale. What can you tell us about the next installment, due out in a couple of weeks?

BB: I really love the way this story is shaping up all I can really say about the story with out giving anything away is that our protagonist, Darca, gets stranded on a remote planet with little to no technology after he charters a transport with some unsavory smugglers who try to rob him, kill him, and eject his body from the hatch. he fights his way through the smugglers and lands the ship himself, and from there we pick and the story starts. Though I ‘d love to expand on some of these parts of the story that are in between books. But Dan Jackson did a great job on the colors and Rob did a great job writing it. And my art is a little more detailed than the first Nomad installment as I’m really getting a feel or these characters.

TUCWS: Did you use a specific reference when you visualized the lead character, Darca Nyl?

BB: He is a product of my imagination. while using the all black suit and green lightsaber that Luke had in return of the Jedi. I went with an all leather suit in the first issue because of the sand storm planet, which was much like the planet Jupiter, to protect against the elements. However, the suit is adjustable as we’ll see in the third installment so he can make it tight or loose depending on how hot an area is. As he goes through the story he will get more and more disheveled so things may change, plus he has a duffle bag of goodies so if I need an out fit change, viola. There are some elements of his back story that lead to some ideas in his design but I can’t go into that. But as far as biology of this guy I went for tall dark and handsome type with lots of scars and that seventies poofy hair as a throwback to the old trilogy. But no reference. Wait till you see his jump suit for the paratrooper scene.

TUCWS: Something that has always interested me in comics is weather effects. They give the comic a more kinetic feel. How did you create the “sandstorm” effect that’s seen about 2/3 of the way through “Nomad”?

BB: that’s a pretty technical question. but I gave Dan a good idea of where to go with the storm by doing a curved speed line effect in the backgrounds over what I already drew as background. I’ll send over a picture of the pencils so you can get a good idea. And you’ll be able to see much more easily than I can explain.

TUCWS: How closely do you and the author of the comic work when illustrating the panels? What about with the colorist?

BB: Usually in this industry nobody speaks until something’s finished, and only to say,” yeah I like it”, or “you ruined my work”. But lately I’ve been in pretty close contact with both Rob and with Dan. With Rob we talk about trimming and adding panels for new books and with Dan I’ve actually had a hand choosing some of the colors for new characters on issue two in places. but both are really open to suggestion so Its nice to be able to all work together to try and bring out the best in each other.

Jeremy as well, he’s very open and trusts what I’m going to do with his characters as well so I’ve really enjoyed my time at Dark Horse, but at all the other companies I’ve worked for, nobody will really wants to talk to you. but as far as writers go they are all different but its usually the guys who write poorly who are the most militant when it come to the panels.

TUCWS: Give us the process in which you complete a comic book from start to finish?

BB: Its pretty simple I read the script all the way through, then as I read it again I will do thumbnails. Those are 3x4 in mock ups of what the design work will look like what figures go where and where are the spaces for the word balloons. After that its pretty much a day to day grind just pluggin away until its done then you just make it happen. For the most part I like to work linearly through the book starting at page one and moving on. But eventually there will be a page that I really won’t want to draw so I skip it and save it for last because at the end of the book I’m so happy to be almost done that I won’t care that its hard and usually will do a better job on it than I would have had I done it first. Sometimes if I’m really crunching on deadlines I’ll rough out a bunch of pages in about 2 or 3 days and go back and clean them up later but it’s a simple process on my end. Time consuming, but simple.

TUCWS: Do you have a favorite scene or character that you’ve worked on in any of your comics? Any favorite characters from the movies?

BB: Killing Master Thono. it was fun to do that giant explosion. The bridge scene in Nomad was a good mid air shot. The crash scene of the ship in Nomad part 2 was cool. But I still have a lot of characters to explore I’ve recently started getting some covers and I really prefer drawing big so I have two cover right now that I can’t wait to do. But I would love to do a big shot of Yoda, that's the only Star Wars character that I’ve drawn outside my professional work when I was a kid.

TUCWS: Will you be returning to the Star Wars universe after your Tales story, “Nomad,” is complete?

BB: Yeah unless something else comes up on Tales that I like the story to, but I think they want the BoShek story but I don’t really book until I’m getting close to finishing a project so I may have more to say on that later on down the road.

TUCWS: What other non-Star Wars works do you have that are coming?

BB: Right now I’m hard at work in my free time developing a creator owned project that will be a fantasy story with a few twists but the character designs are out of this world. If you guys think my Star Wars stuff is detailed … well lets just say that no one else will want to draw these designs. But right now it’s a twenty issue finite story cut into two sections and hopefully In the next year or two I can start production on it.

Though right now I’m only working on Star Wars simply because Dark Horse treats me very well which is something I wasn’t really all that accustomed to considering my last few experiences. Randy and Jeremy are both top notch and I have a great working relationship with them. so I look forward to continuing on with them.

TUCWS: Have you seen the Episode III teaser trailer? How much are you looking forward to that movie?

BB: I have seen it. All trailers show the coolest scenes from a movie so I think trailers in general are misleading. I like what I saw though and I really have to see how he wrap its all up. Anything else I know I couldn’t disclose even if I wanted to, they have these nice clauses in your contracts that prevent info leakage. Generally threatening castration now I can lose a job but hey… well I ain't talking.

But I do intend on doing a really cool episode three pinup. Its designed and ready to go once I get the chance to work on it. and I can’t wait to unveil it.

TUCWS: Can you give any of our aspiring artists any advice for art in the future?

BB: Whoah, I don’t know I guess just love what you do and no matter what happens just be true to your own ideas even if others are unsure. It’s a corny answer and I’m generally not like that, but its true. Art is subjective, there are people out there who wish I didn’t have the gigs I do. You can go online and read such wonderful comments like, “he’s so mediocre it make my eyes bleed”. But I know that’s not true and that’s what’s important and as long as you have enemies your gonna have friends. So thank all you guys reading this and for being friends to me, and I hope I can keep ya’ll posted on what’s what in the life of… well me I guess.

Oh, and go to school and get you and edjimacation… you don’t have to, to become a pro but it tends to help.

Conducted by Andrew Liptak and the TUCWS Staff, Febrary 2005

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