From the Pulse...
BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO
What if you found a hidden weapons cache below a frozen area? What if that frozen area were one of Jupiter's moons? The people working on Europa are shocked to discover the weapons and send Nathan Kane from the UN to investigate and see what the discovery means. Artist Chris Sprouse said the discovery "could change the way humanity thinks of itself, but its more likely to destroy humanity entirely." Sounds ominous and something you'd expect from writer Warren Ellis. Working with Sprouse on the art is Karl Story and Michael Golden is providing the covers for all six issues. The sci-fi tale begins in October from WildStorm. We caught up with Sprouse who provided us character designs and some details about what makes waves in this Ocean.
The artist teased us with a little about what Ocean is. "A six-issue mini-series from WildStorm about the discovery of something dark and dangerous beneath the surface of the frozen ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa," said Sprouse. "Nathan Kane, a United Nations weapons inspector, goes to Europa to determine whether or not the discovery poses a threat to mankind ... and boy, does it ever! What lies underwater beneath Europa's frozen crust could change the way humanity thinks of itself, but it's more likely to destroy humanity entirely ...."
An exciting concept and idea, Sprouse, a veteran of several sci-fi series, told us what intrigued him about working on Ocean. "The chance to create new worlds or at the very least new technology is what attracts me as an artist," he said. "I've always been a science fiction fan, and visually I've always been most jazzed by sci-fi hardware and technology. To be completely honest, my very first thought was 'yes! I want to draw this!' And that was after only reading few pages of the first script. I was seeing scenes in my head immediately as I read, and that's always a good sign - an indication that the script I'm reading is going to be well-suited to me. The scripts are so tight and complete that all I'm adding to the concept are visual ideas."
"The more I heard or read [of writer Warren Ellis' plans for Ocean], the more I wanted to work on the story!" continued the artist. "I had some other work to finish before beginning Ocean, but I still did sketches and design work in my 'spare' time, and thought about my approach to the series. I wanted to do more detailed and slightly darker work than I'm probably known for, so I tried to work that out before ever starting the first page."
Sprouse did a lot of research before beginning the art chores on the first issue. He likes to be prepared when working on new series, so he's always looking for information and materials to help his art be as true to the project as possible. For Ocean Sprouse said he "collected all the books and photographs of Jupiter and Europa I could find, did a lot of reading and internet surfing. And not just for planetary reference either - my studio is piled high with books on space flight, mining, guns, fashion, underwater exploration and lots of other subjects."
As most people following this project know, it was announced a while ago, but the release date wasn't set until now. Sprouse told us some of the reasons why this project has taken so long to get on the WildStorm release schedule. The entire story is written, but it was because of Sprouse's other commitments and an injury that this series is just now close to its October 20th release date.
"My editor, Scott Dunbier, knew me well enough to want to give me lots of lead time on this book, so it was scheduled so that I would be very close to finished with the entire series before the first issue ever came out," Sprouse explained. "Also, I had some issues of Tom Strong to finish before beginning Ocean, so that pushed my start time back a little. Then I broke my wrist at some point while finishing up the Tom Strong work, so that added to the long lead time as well."
Sprouse wanted his work in this series to be distinctive from his other projects. Although he's drawn a lot of the types of characters that star in this series before, he worked hard to make sure these new characters didn't look like cookie-cut-outs from his previous works. "I think the biggest challenge was coming up with a new cast of characters who looked completely different than anyone I'd drawn before," Sprouse admitted. "I don't want to fall into the very bad habit of drawing the same kind of face on all of my lead characters in any series I do, so I deliberately tried to base the characters on people I knew or at least on physical types I hadn't generally used in my work before. Yeah, I've drawn bald guys with goatees before, but I tried to make our main character, Nathan Kane, look as real and individual as possible, from his facial expressions and body type to the way he stands or looks at someone."
"The script is what inspired Nathan Kane's look the most," continued Sprouse. "He had such a well-defined personality in Warren's script that I saw him in my head immediately, down to certain expressions and posture, and I just tried to get that down on paper. I looked at photos of various actors and some pictures of friends who looked a bit like Kane to refine things, such as making his goatee a little more realistic and to work out the lighting on his face and head a little more naturalistally than I might have been able to do just out of my own imagination. I don't want to name specific people because I don't want the reader to see Kane and judge him on whether or not he resembles a certain actor or whether I captured a likeness well or whatever - he should look like Nathan Kane, a unique individual. I still enjoyed drawing all of the future-tech stuff, but I ended up responding to the characters more than I thought I would. I liked Kane's personality, in particular. I can only hope I did the characters justice--they were all pretty interesting people in the script."
Along with Ocean Sprouse is working on a few other projects. "I'm going to be doing more Tom Strong work - covers AND interiors, including the final two to three issues whenever the series comes to an end, but beyond that, I don't have anything definite lined up yet."
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