Interview with Shawn Crystal

Deadpool's adventure begins

Last month Marvel released a two issue Deadpool story with pencils and some inks by Shawn Crystal.  We recently got a chance to do an interview with Shawn about his time on the book and what’s coming up in the near future for this talented artist/SCAD professor.

1.    Can you give our readers a bit of background about yourself and how you came to Marvel’s attention?

My comic’s career started about 10 years ago. I penciled a mini series for Wildstorm, “Resident Evil: Fire and Ice.” From there, I dabbled in comics, worked in animation, concept art, and teaching. Since the Resident Evil job, I had been working to get my comics career off the ground. I attended many conventions where I met many artists and editors.  I met Marvel Executive Editor, Axel Alonso. He liked what I was doing, and said he would like to work with me, but the project had to be right for me. When the new Deadpool series took off, the annual seemed like the perfect job for my style and me. It all just took off from there. I feel so lucky to be working with Deadpool, he’s such a fun character to play with.

I also have a few Graphic Novels in the pipeline with Oni Press.

2.    How do you mix your time teaching with the time needed to draw comics?

This is the great riddle of my life. It’s hard, REALLY hard. I have a wife (Stephanie) and two children (Zoe and Zac) also. So I am constantly trying to balance Family, teaching, and comics. My life has become a giant game of Tetris. As hard as it is, everything is going great and I’m as happy as can be. I just hope i can maintain my sanity!

3.    When doing the art for these two issues did you and Daniel Way collaborate on the story a lot or was it sort of a more traditional writer/artist type deal?

Dan and I have actually been friends for many years, and have been trying to get something going for a while. This was a really great opportunity. These two issues weren’t tied into anything, so Dan really had the freedom to do almost anything. We talked, and shot some ideas around, and he came up with the pirate idea. I flipped. Deadpool as a pirate, Hell yeah, I’m down. Dan really let me build the visuals for the story before he wrote anything, the character designs and props. After that, he scripted it, and I got busy drawing.

4.    What influences you while you’re working?

a.     While I’m working, I like to listen to TV series. Series that I have seen, so I don’t get distracted. I go through the entire Sopranos run, Deadwood, Northern Exposure, and the first 4 seasons of Entourage. I also squeeze in a Godfather run every now and then; I watch GF 1 and 2. It’s like a vacation from the TV shows. A treat. Those are my favorite movies.

b.    Sometimes I listen to music when I’m inking. Music is hard for me, because It makes me feel very aware that I’m alone working. TV shows make me feel like there’s something going on. I guess it’s the fact that characters are developing and story is moving. I’m a complete Hip Hop Junkie, so when the need arises, I’ll pop in some gems.

5.    Even your background characters seem to have their own feel to them.  How much time do you spend designing the characters you draw?

a.     The first stage of every job I do, is character design. I spend a good bit of time making sure all of my characters are designed well. I make sure that their personality comes through in the design, and they each have an unique silhouette. This all helps with the storytelling and clarity of the read. Comics is a visual language that uses symbols (drawings) to tell the story, so I see each character in the story as an important symbol the story as a whole, so even the characters in the background need to give my world a believable feel. How many people on the street really look alike? I love finding the unique qualities of the world around me and drawing them.

6. Can you give us any details as what you’re doing with Oni and are
you going to be doing anything else with Marvel?

Right now Marvel is keeping me VERY busy. I just finished a short for Deadpool 900, and am about to start another job which hasn’t been announced yet. I have two books in the very early stages of development.  One is called BloodRed with writer Ande Parks, a sci-fi
revenge tale. The other is still in conception with writers Adam Glass and Mike Benson (who wrote the Deadpool annual i worked on.)

7. What’s one comic you think you could work on without ever tiring
of drawing the same character or characters?

The Hulk, i could never get tired of that! I love drawing monsters.

Thanks again to Shawn for giving us a bit of his time.  You can get an idea of what Shawn’s got in store for his part on Deadpool #900 over at his blog: http://inkpulp-shawn.blogspot.com/