An Interview with Brian Brock of Reaper 7!
Comic title: Reaper 7
Comic URL: http://www.crimsonnight.net
Creator(s): Brian Brock
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-fi
1) What is your comic about?
I *hate* trying to summarize my comic, but hell, here goes. Reaper 7 is a Fantasy/Sci-fi epic ™ that tells the story of a man who gets entangled with the ancient past as he tries to battle against a collapsing Empire. Whew! That only took one sentence.
2) How did you get started making webcomics?
Well, back in 2003(?) I decided I wanted to draw daily strips for newspapers out of love for Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury. After creating some 30 strips I submitted the work (which, frankly, was bad) and received a string of rejections. During that time, I started reading manga for the first time ever. Works such as Akira, which remains one of my favorite comics of all time, and books such as Understanding Comics made me really open to the idea of drawing a full page comic. At the time, I knew very little of webcomics outside of a handful of sprite comics but decided I wanted to draw a comic online. After creating 40 pages of my first project (Crimson Night), I launched it sometime in the middle of 2005. It ran for about a year and I learned a lot during that time, but ultimately canceled it because the story lacked focus and the art was lackluster. I kept practicing for another year and launched Reaper 7 in July of 2007.
3) Five years from now, what do you see your comic becoming? Will it be over? Will it have grown larger?
Five years from now, if I stick to my outline, Reaper 7 will be about halfway done or a little more than that. Hopefully, the audience will grow with it.
4) Tell us about your main character. What are his/her motivations? How did he/she join up with your other characters and why?
This is a really hard question to answer…
I have 3 main characters:
Isaac is a former Imperial soldier who has turned on the empire because when he was in the army he did some very bad things…which I’m not going to reveal. He gets trapped with the other main characters by force…
Seven is an ancient weapon that was chryogenically (sp?) frozen during a great war that wiped out a very technologically advanced civilization about 2000 years before the comic. She is at war with her existence as a weapon because of some unspecified events in her past, and tries to avoid conflict…
Daevlon is a noble of the new ruling dynasty of the Empire (which took over a mere 3 years prior to the start of the comic) who naturally doesn’t trust Isaac, and wants to protect Seven from forces that would try to use her for or against the Empire.
5) Who is your favorite secondary character and why?
Cecil. He was actually one of the first characters I designed for Reaper 7 around Christmas of 2006, and was actually going to be the main character in early drafts. That changed, ultimately, when I couldn’t get inspired enough to write a full story about his character. Of all the secondary characters, he has the most detailed personal history.
6) What is your favorite comic page?
Chapter 6: Page 13, when Cecil draws his sword for the first time. It was happy with the way that turned out.
7) Is there a storyline you’re really looking forward to? What is it about? Give us a spoiler warning if necessary!
Chapters 7 and 8 deal with Isaac’s past, and tell his personal history. It’s violent, dark, and I’m really excited to get it out.
8 ) Can you give us a short explanation on how you make your pages? If you have a tutorial or anything, please link it.
I sketch the pages, ink, and add half-tones all in photoshop 7 (yeah, behind the times) with my cheap wacom tablet. I’m looking at upgrading to a mac and the latest version of Photoshop when I can afford it.
9) Be your own critic! When it comes to your comic, what are you looking to improve upon?
The art. The story. Everything.
If I had to analyze my own art I’d say that my facial anatomy needs a lot of work, and I need to improve character posture to emote situations a little better. I could do more things with panel and dialog layout, and there’s some technical aspects that I’m trying to pick up as I go along. I’m an amateur, what can I say? I still accidentally click buttons or miss a hotkey command in Photoshop and have to spend a half-hour trying to figure out how to get out of the mode I’m in or undo a major mistake.
As far as the story, well I’m my own worst critic. I’ll leave it at that.
10) What was inspiration behind Reaper 7?
I was reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and I became really interested in the story of how empires or just big countries fall apart. So I set up a world where a new Empire has arisen out of the shadow of an old one, and set the story during it’s inevitable decline.
Thanks for caring!