Jacen Burrows talks to The Great Curve

Original content! Whoo! It was bound to happen. Sterling Curve Contributor Brian Warmoth tackled indie artist Jacen Burrows for an exclusive chat about past and upcoming projects. Check it out.

Jacen Burrows’ career in comic books has taken him a long way from his childhood coastal homes of San Diego and New York. He’s since gone to Georgia for his formal training in sequential art and worked in California before finally settling down in Champaign, Illinois, where he now works as an artist for Avatar Press. His work has included major mini-series written by the industry’s biggest names such as Alan Moore and Garth Ennis, as well as box and cover art for the PC and console game Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City and its soundtrack. Having grown up reading comics, he’s more than eager to sit down at the local coffee shop to the background noise of some big band music and discuss his work. His new series 303 (written by Ennis) is currently ongoing. The Great Curve contributor Brian Warmoth sat down with Burrows for this exclusive chat.

TGC: As a comic book penciller, you face a lot of different demands when you plot out your work. What makes your job different from other areas of visual art?

BURROWS: With comics, you have to look at it a lot more like it’s a storyboard. The most important thing is telling the story, much more than selling something that’s a single image. If you’re a graphic designer or any other sort of visual artist, you have a single image that can encapsulate everything you need to tell. With comics, you have to spend a lot of time just laying how a page is going to flow, how you’re going to get the entire story down through a series of images.

And there’s a whole juxtaposition in figuring out how to make sell what you what cleanly and clearly. Comics have this problem a lot of the time with being too insular and having too much of a history of expecting that the audience has a knowledge of how comics work. So you have to actually step back from that and try to approach it fresh so that if someone’s never picked up comic book before, they can look at it and still be able to know what’s going on.

TGC: What pulled you specifically to doing sequential art and comic book artwork as opposed to doing some other form of visual art?

BURROWS: I grew up reading comics. I liked the idea of telling a complete story, because in a way you can be a writer and an artist. It’s not just an illustration. I was always worried that if I was an illustrator I’d be that guy who draws vegetables for the newspaper where it’s "IGA’s lettuce is a dollar ninety-nine this week." I don’t want to get stuck drawing things I don’t enjoy drawing for a living.

There were other things I liked doing outside of comics, like video game design and things like that that I have worked in. But comics always pulls me back because I want to do something that’s a complete story that can actually move the reader. As an example, being a kid, I read Watchmen for the first time and actually had an emotional reaction to the story. It showed the vast potential of what the medium can do.

TGC: You graduated the Savannah School of Art & Design’s sequential art program. What made that unique as an arts curriculum?

BURROWS: Oddly enough at the time, I got a scholarship for illustration. So I went there for illustration. They didn’t have a sequential art program. But the year I had arrived they had announced it, because there had been several students in their illustration program that had been pushing for sequential art for awhile, and they finally said, "Okay, yeah. We’re going to do it." I was there, and I figured, "Hey, this is what I was going to anyway. I was going to get a general illustration degree to draw sequential art." It just seemed like synchronicity. So I decided to take the plunge and jump in, and the parents weren’t happy. Now, I guess they’ve kind of accepted this is what I was going to do anyway.

The only other place that I know that was actually offering sequential art was the Joe Kubert School, but they don’t offer a bachelor’s. They offer a certificate of completion, which isn’t quite the same.

TGC: How is the curriculum structured there? How did they tackle teaching sequential art?

BURROWS: Generally, it was pretty much like a typical illustration program. You had all the drawing basics, the design basics, lots of life drawing. But then there’d be comic specific classes which would give you short assignments - scripts that would have three pages of stuff going on, and then everyone would have to draw it at home and bring it in, put it up on the wall, and there’d be long term discussions about what sucked and what didn’t. It was a slow process, but then towards the end of your program you could start doing graphic novel classes, which are more like your own thing. And those were a little bit longer form.

TGC: What did your final project look like?

BURROWS: I kind of cheated. My senior year, I also had an advanced anatomy class. So for the final for that class and graphic novel, I did a story of a knight going to rescue a princess going to rescue a princess against a hoard of skeletal warriors on skeletal warriors, so that way I could get an A in that class and an A in my graphic novel class.

TGC: Did Savannah prepare you at all for the business aspects of working in the comic industry?

BURROWS: The constant critiques really help you step away from the work, because what’s being critiqued is always the work, and you need to have a thick skin in this industry. You’ll be dealing with writers and editors whose goal is the best possible book, not necessarily what you want. You may decide that you want to do something a certain way because it serves you. It looks great. It’s going to make people think, "Wow, this guy can really draw." And you see that a lot with these younger manga-inspired kids. They’re concentrating on giant action images and not storytelling. Art school definitely prepared me for dealing with editors. That’s pretty much it.

TGC: How did you get from the end of that program to working at Avatar where you’re at now?

BURROWS: Well, I was not really good enough to work in mainstream comics when I got out. It takes an awful lot of work to get that good. So I started by working for role playing companies and just doing stuff for any kind of side art project I could get a little bit of money for. And I had a lot them kind of screw me out of money, but when you’re starting out you’re doing it more for publication and experience more than actual money. I did stuff for a lot of really small press companies and worked my way up.

When I got to Avatar originally, I assumed it would be a stepping stone to a bigger company. But while I was there, they started getting jobs with these really big writers that specifically wanted me to work on their projects, and it just became home. Because I wasn’t about to go someplace that wasn’t going to offer me projects with these kinds of writers.

TGC: It was a creative goldmine obviously.

I got really lucky. In the right place at the right time.

TGC: Which genres and artists in artwork and comic book artwork have played the biggest roles for you in how your own style has evolved?

BURROWS: Early on of course, there was Frank Miller and Alan Moore’s stuff. I was always more inspired by writing than art. But artistically I liked stuff that was very clean, very cinematic, and where it really looked like the characters were grounded in the environments really strongly. And Dave Gibbons – the guy who did Watchmen – was amazing at that. He also worked for Frank [Miller] on Give Me Liberty and the Martha Washington stuff. Once I was at college I got exposed to a lot of stuff that I’d never seen before – a lot of manga, a lot of European work, and lot of those guys really influenced me. Seeing Moebius and Atomo, Katsohiro Atomo was a huge influence. Seeing when Epic put out those original Akira books – the little thin ones at the time - I was blown away. Because here you had fairly dynamic but fairly cartooney characters in these almost photo real tensely architecturally drawn environments. And I was like, that’s what I want to draw. That’s the stuff right there. If you look at the stuff I’m doing now, it’s actually kind of Atomo-esque even though the environments are completely different. That’s still a huge influence on me. And I like figuring out how to do that. I don’t really look at myself as a realistic artist. I like trying to figure out how to do expressive characters in a realistic environment.

TGC: How would characterize your situation as a comic book artist working here in Urbana for Avatar versus other types of jobs in the comic book industry?

BURROWS: Being in town with the company is nice because I get to have a say in the production. I get to look at the scans – the early colored work – to decided if it’s something that looks like what I intended or if I want to have it edited ahead of time. But generally, with comics especially, you don’t have to be "there" anymore. Everything is done through the internet now. And lot of guys work digitally right off the bat. They’ll basically scan in a rough pencil drawing and then digitally ink it. Being in town basically allowed me to develop a stronger relationship with the editor and the production guy and really get the good assignments right off the bat, which is nice. I can discuss with them how I want the final production to turn out. A lot of those artistic decisions – I get to say more than I typically would have.

TGC: When do you usually work? I know everybody has their own sense of pace, and everybody works at different types of the day. How long does it take you to finish an average book?

BURROWS: The pacing of the pages is always a constant battle. In the last couple months, I’ve gone around a corner artistically and gotten a lot stronger, but it’s also slowed me down a bit because I’m going back to fundamentals to do things right from the beginning. So I’m up to about 15 hours a page, and that generally means a day a half to 2 days a page, which isn’t really fast enough. I have to get up to about 22-23 pages a month in order to be a monthly artists, but I’m working towards that.

Generally, I am a nocturnal person. I usually get up around 2 or 3, do a little bit of work in the afternoon, and hang out during the evening – say 7 to 10 – with friends, run errands, whatever. But then I get the bulk of my work done from 10 p.m. to 5-6 a.m. The cats aren’t messing with me. There’s no phone ringing. And I can just lock myself in my little studio room and put on a DVD or some music and just draw without interruption. There are people out there who get up at like 6 a.m. and just start working, and I don’t understand how they do that. I cannot focus or draw when I just wake up. It doesn’t work.

TGC: What do you listen to or watch while you’re creating?

BURROWS: I rent a lot of movies, because I like a constant flood of new stuff. I have a pretty big DVD collection, but I don’t tend to watch stuff over and over. So Rentertainment – great selection. I just go down there and try out all their different foreign and art flicks. My favorite genre is still cheesy horror- well, all horror really – but it’s a lot easier to find cheesy horror.

Musically, I’m just all over the place. I’ve got hundreds of CD’s from every genre. Like when I’m working, I really like listening to a lot of the post-rock stuff like Mogwai, Godspeed, that kind of stuff. Different electronica stuff is good, because you can just zone out as long as it’s not too distracting. Psychedelic rock can be really fun too. There’s a couple of bands – one called 35007, one called Terra Firma, and another one called Sunn – that do this really psychedelic, ambient, but heavy music. Like 15-minute tracks where it’s almost like a drone in the background with a little bit of melody. It’s great to block out the world. Anything that you would actually be listening to lyrically, even in terms of a lot of content, usually isn’t good for working. But I’ve got a lot of everything really.

TGC: What’s the dialogue typically like between you and the writers you collaborate with?

BURROWS: I work in full script, so all the panel descriptions are already there. All the dialogue is already there. Generally, their panel descriptions, at least at this point now that they trust me as an artist, stay pretty loose. Like they’ll say, "Panel one. Character comes into the room."

I get to decide what the camera angle is that best suits the mood of the panel and what the character is dressed in or what their expression is based on the dialogue. Early on, guys like Warren Ellis would give me every bit of description possible, because they wanted to make sure they kept control. Now, they know I’m going to do the story service instead of just trying to show off my own abilities.

So there’s the scripts, which are kind of like direct letters to me, since they know usually that I’m working on it ahead of time. Occasionally, we’ll send emails back and forth discussing something, and I’ve talked to a couple of them on the phone briefly, but usually not about the actual projects, just to make friendly introductions.

TGC: What’s been unique about some the different writers that you’ve worked with? Say, how does Alan Moore work with you as opposed to Garth Ennis?

BURROWS With Alan, he didn’t specifically write a script for Courtyard. He wrote the text that was adapted, but he was involved in the entire process. So he would overlook the script and then make suggestions, and then all of that stuff was tweaked before it got to me. And then I would start doing the art, and we would send him photocopies fairly frequently. He would make suggestions. He was actually the one who came up with the idea of doing double vertical panels on every page, which visually I thought was really cool. Really challenging. I’ve heard his actual scripts are really dense.

With Garth and Warren, who both actually write in a fairly similar style, it’s much more structured. They have a very specific vision for the books before it even gets to me. They know what they want, so when they get to me, they can just within a short period of time convey the tone through the descriptions and just set me loose.

Garth in particular has a lot of fantastic moments when I get to go nuts. There are a couple of panels in issue 2 of 303 that are the kind of thing that every artist wishes they could draw. They’re just these huge scenes with incredibly detailed action happening, and that’s great.

TGC: Being that everything you’ve done at Avatar has been very genre-specific; be it war, horror, or crime-noire, what kind of research do you find yourself doing on these various projects?

BURROWS: I’m a very detail-heavy artist. I like it to be as accurate as possible visually, because that’ll help sell the reality of the story. If someone draws a gun and it’s just a weird-looking box that doesn’t look like a real gun, you’re instantly pulled out of the story. So when I sit down and read the stories, I’ll sit down and write notes for everything that I can possibly research. I’ll go online and Google it.

For Scars, I ended up with probably a hundred images of just autopsy room equipment for one scene in the book. With 303, you’re talking about a war book with this whole modern spec-ops war theater, and you really need to be accurate on that stuff, or the people who actually know the real thing are going to call you on it.

So I usually go on Google and collect images and burn them onto a disc so that I’ll have just a disc of stuff for 303. And I’ve got an old Mac laptop I keep in my studio that I can just use for images. I just pop the disc in and use the files as I need to bring them up. I do as much research as possible visually.

TGC: Do you have any intense desire to work with superhero books after all this horror and war story stuff gets done?

BURROWS: My favorite genres are definitely the more mature horror, war, and crime. And I want to do the bulk of my work in that. But at some point, I really do figure I have to do superheroes, if for no other reason than there’s a huge chunk of the population that will never know my work is out there. And I think I’m getting to a point artistically where I might actually be able to bring something new to the visual representation of superheroes. Not necessarily how they’re drawn, but in terms of storytelling – just my particular vision. It’s as valid a genre as any other. It just tends to end up being a little cheesy a lot of the time. That doesn’t mean it has to be. I figure if I can do good superheroes, I’d like to try it, but it’s not my ultimate goal.

TGC: If you got complete creative control and could do your dream project, what kind of book would you make?

BURROWS: I would either team up with a writer I really like or attempt to do it myself. I would definitely want to do some sort of giant post-apocalyptic zombie epic. That would be just the most fun I could ever have. The idea of drawing these giant bombed out cities full of flesh-eating undead would be the greatest job in the world. How does it get any better than that?

TGC: What comic books did you read when you were younger? What’s in your collection?

BURROWS: I actually discovered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first, since I was very young, and I realized that the cover of their first issue was a rip of Ronan, so I picked up Ronan, and then that hooked me onto everything else that Frank Miller had ever done. I went from him to Alan Moore to several others, like Grant Morrison and all of those guys.

These days, I’m still keeping up with the major Vertigo writers. Favorite books right now: 100 Bullets. Eduardo Risso. I love his work. I don’t draw anything like him, but I absolutely love his work.

I would love to someday work on something that’s as affective and as moving as Preacher and Transmetropolitan – something that’s a longer form. Those are the pinnacle to me. And I even did a cover to one of the Frank Miller books (Robocop).

When I was younger, I was really into a lot of the indy comics like Grimjack and Scout. Grendel. One of my favorite books right now is a book called Artsesia. Stray Bullets is also one of my all time favorite series.