Hi! So we are here today with the
fabulous Brian Stelfreeze, and if you
don't know who Brian Stelfreeze is,
it is a safe bet you've never picked up a
comic book in your life.
You've worked for all of the bigwigs.
All the bigwigs and some of the little
toupees, as well.
Well, and some of the little toupees
that are doing really cool
groundbreaking stuff you've had a major
hand in, which is super cool. But right
now, everybody's talking about Black
Panther. So if you could put together
like a quick 30 second primer for
anybody that's like never picked up a
comic and knows nothing about it,
what would your key points be? The... the
nation of Wakanda, this African nation,
it's the most advanced technologically
advanced nation in the Marvel Universe.
It evolved completely separate from
influence from the rest of the world. And
even though they're extremely advanced,
they're still governed by a king, by a
monarch. So it's a kind of a weird
duality that they're so advanced but
they have this ancient form of rule. And
T'Challa is doing stuff in other countries
constantly. He's off saving the world, so
he doesn't have as much time to pay to
his own nation, so that kind of causes a
little bit of strife. And this is him
dealing with that. And this is a cool
collaboration because you are working
with Ta-Nehisi Coates,
Yes. Who comes from journalism. Yeah.
So did you guys have to kind of have a little
development and discovery period where
you found your language together, since you're
from way different backgrounds? It's kind
of strange. I was really nervous because
most people that come from
screenwriting or novels into comics,
they're used to solving all the problems
with their magic words. So um, a lot of
people that come from other medium into
comics, they over-write everything. But
what's really cool is he took to writing
comics just immediately. And, uh, not only
that, but, uh, but as soon as he started
seeing my designs and layouts he started
adapting even faster. Like you've gotten
the call, you know you're doing this, what
are your first steps? Like what are those
first days of collaborating like? And
like where do you kind of map your
course from? The first steps is
really surprisingly giving calls to
people that are smarter than I am. Giving
calls to physicists, giving calls to
politicos, and just different people to
kind of find out okay how to make this
world real. And it's it's a little bit
weird, but I try to grasp the feeling of
what we're going for. Like kind of
quantify as a genre. Y'know, are we going
for horror? Um, y'know are we going for
comedy? Action? And then I try to get
comfortable with that style, so I do a
lot of drawings in that style to get
comfortable with it, so it's not
something I have to be conscious of when
I'm sitting down and drawing. And uh and
then once I'm there, then I actually
start getting into the work. I start
doing a layouts, which are are like little
thumbnails of the pages. And then
from there, I get the pages lettered,
mainly because like I don't know how
much room the lettering is going to take.
I can kind of guess, but I'll turn my
layouts in and get them lettered so now
i can actually see exactly how much
space the word balloons are taking up.
And also having the lettering there
I can read while I'm drawing the
characters faces, so I can get the acting
a little bit more on point. And then
I just go to finishes from there. You know
sometimes pages go fast, sometimes it
goes slow. I find that comedy and action
moves a lot faster, but drama, suspense or
that stuff moves a lot slower. And I see
Black Panther as a drama with action
notes. So Black Panther... one of the cool
things about the what I'm doing with
their with a character like for me like
i usually start off a drawing really
messy and just kind of like drawing a
shape. It's not really about like drawing
at this point it's about like making a
series of mistakes and hopefully
they're quiet mistakes that you don't
notice, and I'm kind of constantly
correcting them until I get to something
that looks cool.
Alright, I'm happy with that.
No, actually I
like doing it this way because when i do
it this way i'm actually not like
finishing the drawing. I'm kind of like
getting the drawing part of the way
there and just sort of finishing it while
I'm inking it, so I don't get like you
know tremendously bored with it because
I'm drawing it over and over and over again.
What's really fun is the style that I
develop for the Black Panther.
And I mean everything that I do is
kind of a variation on stuff that I do
anyways, but I kind of decided that I
wanted something that was a combination
of naturalistic like looking pretty much
like real life, but I but also extremely
hard edge graphic. So I'm doing stuff a
little bit more angular than I normally
do. And I think for me that really kind
of sets up the feeling of tension in the
story. But it also doesn't exclude being
able to do subtle emotions on characters' faces.
Probably one of the coolest
challenges of the story is the fact that,
y'know, it takes place in this African
nation, so it's not like i can draw
people in knit shirts and khakis.
Or like, y'know, Ford
suits or anything like that. It's a
everything has to sort of feel like
Africa, but at the same time feel very
different. So I spent a good deal of time
just looking at the textiles in Africa. I
kind of made the decision rather than
kind of going OK, well, this place is
going to be Sub-Saharan Africa. Or this
place is going to be a specific Africa. I
wanted to take influences from every
part of Africa.
Yeah, so Wakanda is this African
melange. It's just like a lot of different
clothing and different draping styles
from all these are different both
classic and modern cultures.
So here's something I've always wondered.
Because I've watched you work on art at
various points in time, and I'm always I
I've watched other people watch you,
and there's always this sort of like
open mouth awe... Do you ever like sit
back and go, "Man, I'm good at this!"
Actually, um it's a it's it's kind of a
kind of weird because the way that I
draw like a like I have I have a brother
and and he is what I would he has a
God-given talent. Like I don't have like
talent, I have knowledge. And that's what
I do. It's like I try to figure
things out. I try to just do things
over and over and over and over again,
failing most of the times until i get it.
And I think to your average onlooker,
knowledge masquerades as talent. And you
have a super cool book coming out later
this year.
Can you tell us about it? I'm excited.
It's, and usually what I do is I
do these are little sketch books, which
is kind of like the year's collection of
work that I've done, but this book
is going to be kind of like just a giant
sketchbook of just about everything. And
it's going to cover like some of the
early stuff that i did my career up to
the stuff that I did probably the week
before the book comes out. So it's
really just a collection of
watercolor pieces, pen and ink pieces,
commercial pieces that I've done for DC,
Marvel, everyone. And at the same time,
because teaching is a real large
component of what I do, it's got like a
lot of step-by-steps in pieces were kind
of like go through exactly you know how
I how I did the piece. So it's
it's really kind of fun book.
Alright. And that's how it gets put together.
Boom!
Look at you go.