The final portion ZEGAS #1 is up and running! Click n’ read!

Or if possible, read it from the beginning without weekly interruptions: ZEGAS “Birthday”!

I’ve posted a bunch of ZEGAS related artwork and comix, ranging from preliminary sketches, process details, or early strips. Click below!

This is the first time I ever drew an official ZEGAS comics. Before , the term “Zegas” was something I scribbled on notebook pages, with no real meaning or intent. I just thought it sounded and looked cool. This page actually marks a huge turning point for me as a cartoonist. This one page is a result of me being extremely frustrated with the quality of my comics. I was 21 at the time (9 years ago) and thought all of my work was stiff drivel too preoccupied with “meaning something” and “being serious”. I pretty much made this page without giving a flying fuck about what it “meant” or where it would fit in. It’s only appropriate that I still feel the same with a comic under the same title.

Although “Zegas” is the name of the family that my main characters now have, it was originally the name of this one character is a suit and a mask. I tried to do longer narratives with him, but I mostly used his to do a warm up page or background figure. He was my “go-to”, so to speak. I drew the following page a few years after his first appearance. I wanted to ink with a thicker and messier ink line, use gray wash, and apply the last bit of actual Zip-a-Tone I had.

I recently drew this as a thank you card to a friend. It paved the way for how the ZEGAS siblings act toward one another.

With a few story concepts floating about, I knew that I definitely wanted to have a sandstorm be a regular aspect of the ZEGAS landscape. Oh, and ghosts. Sandstorm ghosts.

As you may have noticed from the early page above, ZEGAS was originally the name of a character that would popo in and out of my comics. He was seen a couple of times in some FUT MISO pages ( http://www.act-i-vate.com/37-1-16.comic ). He was a blatant Ditko/Toth man-in-suit knock off. He has since been mercifully re-imagined to be Emily’s brother Boston, but in this drawing I still drew the mask.

Somewhere down the line, after I’ve exhausted every other story idea, I will bring forth… Zegas 3006!

So this is the very first layout I did for “Birthday”. It’s probably the most coherent piece of layout I did for this story. My thumbnails usually consist of stick figures and loosely thought out balloon placement. I must have been on the phone to draw so detailed!

This is a basic example of my penciled page. Although kinda messy, it’s enough for me to start inking.

Some inking and a little bit of color and I end up with a final page. I wanted to use a limited color palette to keep things unified. There was no reason for me to fill the page with every single color. I’m sure I’ll approach some stories that way, but I wanted to keep things very simple.

Early sketches of Ortega, the “Heimdall of the Desert” I called him.

Ortega sketches, earlier still. He went from being a bunch of loose lines to a more solidified body. I ended up settling somewhere in between.

Ah, the story’s love interest, Manny. I love drawing short hair on girls. I found that it forces me to really make their face feminine (I’m always afraid of drawing women like men with wigs). I didn’t want to give her a generic chick face, though, so I puffed her upper lip and gave her thick eyebrows. In the actual comic, I also endowed her a bit just to change things up. She looks like a burn victim in the naked pic. Hmmm, story ideas…

There you have it, folks. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the semi-coherent manner in which I conduct my comic book making. I can’t thank you guys enough for sticking around throughout the entire ordeal, week in week out. ZEGAS will return very soon. I’m so excited by this comic and I hope you are, too.