The Journey to Roundhouse Hooligans

Part Issue #3

Hello and welcome back to the third instalment of this series.

When we last left off I had just realised I couldn’t do this all on my own (remember the whole “holy shit, I can’t draw” thing?…yeah, that!) and would possibly (absolutely) need a little help to see Roundhouse Hooligans move onto the next stage.

I’ll get to that next stage in just a bit but first I want to digress (I’ll be super quick I promise) because in my haste I skipped over a bit in Issue 2 of the Journey to #RHH and I really wanted to give you a little more insight into my progress and writing style. So, while I possibly break all the Blog rules here is a little bit I wanted to add (and forgot) into the last blog. With about 30 issues (all first drafts) completed, there was enough evidence to realise this story was going somewhere. I had my beginning and most of the middle was already worked out in my head and I knew how it was all going to end.

My style of writing is a little different to most, I don’t follow a road map as I write, I go where my imagination takes me, the process and sometimes, I don’t even know who’ll end up dead by the end of the issue. I believe this style is what has given me some of my greatest content, I’m confident enough in my own imagination to know that in the end the whole story will come together with a few (sometimes several) re-writes. So, as I write my stories half the time I am shocked by scenes just as much as I hope the readers will be, and this makes the process of writing so much more fun for me!

 With that said let’s move on to the next exciting part of the journey and this is a really fucking exciting part, seeing them come to life and putting faces to the names! I began looking around for an artist that could pull off a story like RHH. We needed them to have a gritty style and be ok to draw some touchy subject matter at times (a fair few artists refused to draw for us based on a few scenes from the scripts I sent them, a problem Brizeycon and I would face again with The Other Side of Justice) Luckily though, an artist by the name of Samir Simao had no such hang-ups about drawing some risky content! (Honestly though, there are so many amazing indie comics where new writers and artist push boundaries and so I’m still surprised by those who play it safe and refuse to try something different)    After speaking to Samir about his unique style and getting to know him more I had a great feeling he was the right artist for the job, but… I still wanted to test him though, I knew I liked him but was his style perfect for my Hooligans?. My biggest concern at the time was the unique cartoon style Samir used with his gritty, rough and bold lines. It looked amazing, but because RHH has a lot of drama and some sex scenes I needed to make sure that this style could capture the emotion I was chasing. I sent one of the more erotic scenes to Samir to see how he would handle it and, obviously I loved what he returned to me.

The other amazing thing about Samir, the dude works quick, insanely quick!! Which was perfect because there was a lot of story to get through and he was enthusiastic to commit to a big project (another fear when creating something and picking a team to work on it with you, will they stick around?) We talked nonstop about the story over the next few weeks, I explained my vision for the project, where I could see it going, it’s potential! (umm, hello live or animated action series!) Samir was enthusiastic and invested, I knew it! So finally convinced that Samir was the right artist for the job, I asked him to join me in creating the Roundhouse Hooligans!

Fuck…Yes! The Hooligans had found their artist and soon the hundreds of pages that littered every flat surface of my small unit, all those words and scenes would come to life! I could soon share what had been in my mind for the last few years with friends and family.

 

To be continued

L.A Keim