Following in a long line of near misses, this was an inked page from a test script for a small publishing company. I met the owners at comic-con 2012, The loved my work, and said they would be in touch. I later ran into one at an unrelated event, he brought up again how they liked my work and wanted to talk to me again about working on a book for them. Eventually they did contact me and asked me to do a sample page. I go the script from their completed first issue as well as come samples from other pages to base my characters off of of since they had already been designed. My Dad was visiting from across the country so it was bad timing, but I managed to get it done. They got back to me in reasonable time, and basically said, “Thanks, but your style is not what we are looking for on this book, we will probably have another book in the future for you though because we do love your work… just not for this.” I get this basic response a lot about my style not being right or marketable, or what they are looking for. Usually, I assume it is a way of letting me down nicely, or it could be true I guess. Either way, I’m used to it and I’m OK with it. Except when, as has happened several times over the last year or two, people approach or pursue me and then after some work is put in they suddenly decide my style is not right for their project. My samples are not misleading. How I draw is plainly on display and doesn’t change drastically once I start on a new project , I have 3 basic styles and a bit of variation in there, but again no big surprises. Also none of these people has contacted me about the “other project”, or “upcoming book”, they have for me further down the pipeline. Most of these people have still not come out with the book or project they had not wanted my style for either, so maybe no one’s style was right for them…
Also just to prove I have plenty to not like about my own work without all this help, here is the page along with my rough layout for it. Almost all the changes I made in the final I think made it worse and stiffer, yet knowing this and trying to avoid it, it almost always turned out this way. That being said, I still think the page looks good and they should have hired me :p
