California.
I've been working on the Zindan: The Last Ansaars comic series since Issue #0 (which debuted at the New York Comic Con back in 2014), as letterist. Being a part of #TeamZindan has been nothing but a positive experience for me as an artist. Even though I'm located a fair distance away from the writers, in Riverside, California, I still feel a good connection with the team. I have been given positive input on what works, and ideas on how to fix things that don't. I am always asked my opinion on color schemes from the other artists, granted I also do colorist work in my career as well. There is a sense of unity, and team work here.
Lettering is an art.
Getting down to my work process as the letterist, when I first started out on this comic my mission was to get an idea of what the comic was about, and try to understand the flavor and atmosphere Zindan has. Most people don't realize that lettering is an art in and of itself, and the goal of any letterist is to make sure the two don't clash. -And of course, that everything is legible!
Style.
Zindan struck me right away as being both very stylized, and also high quality level work. I wanted to make sure my initial take on the letters merged with this as much as possible. Because Zindan is a South Asian / Middle Eastern tale, after getting an idea of what the comic was about, both story wise and visually: I did research on writing and calligraphy from that part of the world, to make sure I kept things consistent with the artwork.
Color schemes
The golden treasures and flames, were the elements that I took from the comic to create its various letter color schemes. Which you can see, when you look at things such as the location/date boxes, and SXF used in battle scenes. The font used in those, also follow the Mughal flavor for consistency. I do my actual lettering in Adobe Illustrator, I like using that program because it keeps my work vector and resizable. Though any page cutting or resizing that may need doing, is always done in Photoshop for convenience. Sticking to script, catching any errors, as well as being willing to make edits (if something was later rewritten for the sake of the comic flowing better, along with correcting your own errors... Both may pop up from time to time, but go hand and hand with making a book) are important qualities any good letterist aims for, thus I do my best to keep to that. It's been three issues so far on this comic, and I still look forward to, hopefully, many more.
