This week sees the introduction of Belen Pilaftsidis-horsch as the new colorist. Mike Nelsen, who colored the first 13 pages, had to bow out when he realized that being a father of a new born was going to take up more time than he anticipated. Ozzy did a great job at inteviewing and whittling down the number of very fine canidates for the position. We finally decided on Belen and have been very please with her work ever since. She has down a fantastic job of matching Mike’s palette and color tone.

Other art by her can be seen on her DeviantArt gallery.

This week, I want to show how Ozzy has improved the story and made the pages much more dynamic than I wrote.

This is the original page that I wrote:

Page 12.

Eight panels, four rows of two.

Panel 1.

POV is a sideview looking at the Governor behind his desk and the nuns seated and standing in front of the desk. Nuns are on the left side of the panel.

BORN OF WAR

The training of our respective orders has given all of us abilities beyond those of ordinary women.

GOVERNOR

Even here I have heard of the Godly work performed by the women of your different orders.

Panel 2.

Reverse of the previous panel. Governor is now on the left.

GOVERNOR

Can I get you a ship to take you to Free Tortuga? It would be but the work of…

INEZ

Thank you for your offer, Governor, but our chartered sloop at dock in the harbor below will take us to Free Tortuga.

Panel 3.

Born of War has gotten up and is moving towards the door.

BORN-OF-WAR

We must go now. The tide will be turning soon.

Panel 4.

Outside the Governor’s in the hallway leading to a large staircase.

INEZ

Captain Warrick, a small amount of politness and courtesy to someone as powerful as the Governor would not go amiss. There was no reason to be so curt with him.

Panel 5.

All four of them are walking down a wide staircase, which ends in a foyer and the front door. POV is behind and above them. This is a blatant look down their cleavage shot. Inez and Born-of-War are walking side by side, Teresa and Anne are behind. There is a footman at the door, ready to open it for them.

BORN-OF-WAR

Sister Inez, I am unfamiliar with the courtly airs and other fripperies that you possess. I say the things that I mean. As on the training floor, cutting to the heart of a matter is the most efficacious.

Panel 6.

The four of them are walking down the broad steps outside the Governor’s house. Behind them at the top of the steps are the doors that they just came through. There are two British soldiers, lobsterbacks, on either side of the doors. There is a carriage with a driver waiting for them at the bottom of the steps.

INEZ

I merely mention in passing that there are situations that are not the training floor. All of life is not combat, Captain.

BORN-OF-WAR

All life is combat in the trials before God, Sister.

Panel 7.

They have all gotten in to the carriage. POV is from the side of the carriage looking through window in the door. Inez leans out and raps with her staff on the side of the carriage to alert the driver.

INEZ

That explains much that has puzzled me.

INEZ

Driver! To the harbor!

Panel 8.

POV on the back of the carriage as it goes through the covered gateway of the fort. The ocean can be see in the distance.

First off, huge number of panels. You would have had no way of seeing any sort of detail in that page. So Ozzy broke it up into two pages. This is page that’s up this week:

PAGE 13.

Five panels

Panel 1.

The four of them are walking down the broad steps outside the Governor’s house. Behind them at the top of the steps are the doors that they just came through. There are two British soldiers, lobsterbacks, on either side of the doors. There is a carriage with a driver waiting for them at the bottom of the steps.

BORN-OF-WAR

Sister Inez, I am unfamiliar with the courtly airs and other fripperies that you possess. I say the things that I mean. As in combat, cutting to the heart of a matter is the most efficacious.

Panel 2.

Born of War enters the carriage after Inez

INEZ

I merely mention in passing that there are situations that all of life is not combat, Captain.

Panel 3.

They have all gotten in to the carriage. POV is from the side of the carriage looking through window in the door. Teresa leans out the side of the carriage to alert the driver.

TERESA

Driver! To the harbor!

BORN-OF-WAR

All life is combat in the trials before God, Sister.

Panel 4.

Close up on Inez.

INEZ

That explains much that has puzzled me about you.

Panel 5.

The Blood and the Bournemouth sailing through stormy seas at night.

I especially like the close up on Inez. Very good visual punctuation.

And so that’s how Ozzy has made the story better.

Though they’re not all nuns, actually.

I don’t remember specifically how I came up with these characters and why I decided to be ecumenical. The fetish element of nuns with their tits hanging out definitely played a part. The movie Witchfinder General was also an inspiration.

And the book The World Turned Upside Down about religious political extremism during and after the English Civil War might have also been a part. And Monica Bellucci’s character of the papal assassin whore in the movie Les Pactes des Loups was also part of the mix.

One of the things that I wanted to do, and you can see it happening already, was create a tension between the two teams. A tension not only based on religion but on class as well.

I was stumped on this page. Couldn’t figure out how to go about showing the casting of the spell that makes the shadow that enshroudes the Blood larger. So I was going on my evening walk and this track came up on the shuffle:

Bio-tek: Leviathan

Inspired by Christopher Lee’s dulcet tones, I came up with the page that you’ve just seen.

The Mayans.
I went back and forth and forth and back on the hieroglyph question. The reason that I hesitated on going with the hieroglyphs was that I didn’t want them to be gibberish. I was influenced by Alan Moore did with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen where foreign language speakers had their own language in the word balloons. So, I wanted the hieroglyphs to at least get close to the meaning of the dialogue. Unfortunately, I think that there are pages in the future where the hieroglyphs will be a more nonsense than they are on this. Some of the words I’m using in the dialogue have no translation in the hieroglyphs that have been deciphered so far. But the visual impact of using the hieroglyphs outweighs my intent of keeping things sensical. And Marco has done a great job with both the balloons and the translation captions.

This is the source I’m using for the hieroglyphs. At the time of writing this post, the site is down.

Ever since I watch Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and 2 (2 and 3 are one big movie so I only count it for 1(same as the matrix)) and Master and commander, I wanted to do a pirate book, I had a few ideas but I never had time to do it, because I been working on different projects for different companies full time for over 4 years actually “Sails of Blood” is my 6th Graphic Nobel in a row, so I saw Jason’s add looking for an artist for a pirate book and I immediately apply for it, when he answer my email he told me that he already had founded an artist for the book and I was totally disappointed, but a few days later he contacted me again and hire me, destiny?, yeaa I think so.

I didn’t know if I was going to have enough time to draw and ink the book because I didn’t know how many pages he needed a week but he explain me that he can only afford to pay a page a week and ones again I though , this is perfect!(destiny again)

Is been a big sacrifice to make time to draw and ink this project because I do it in my “spare time” but I try to go the extra mile in every page and is totally worthed because I see the website and the pages that we have produce and I really love Jason’s Writings, Mike’s Colors and Marcos Lettering, this is by far my favorite project and team.

I had worked with Marco A Najera before, he lettered one of my short stories “the Myth of the chupacabra” and it was the best lettering I had in one of my stories so far so I decide to bring him on board to this project I knew that he was going to be great and I wasn’t wrong , he did it, from the logo to the inside cover, amazing lettering and design, he put this book on a different level.

Ones I finished the first pages I started to look for Colorists, so I put an add I had a bunch of great Colorists that answer my call, some of them were great but I didn’t see the right style (and price), Mike Nelsen’s reply to my add, showed me his website and I saw the perfect style for this book, actually I had something a bit different in mind but when he showed to us the first pages I said wow!, this is so much better. He surpassed my expectations.

So I hope you enjoy this book as much as I’m enjoying drawing it

the best is yet to come

Ozzy Longoria

I’ve gotten incredibly lucky with the artists on Sails of Blood.

A bunch of years ago, when I began to write the script, my friend Jen recommended an artist, Ian Castruita. I got in touch with him and he decided to start working on the book. He produced really good pages in a very strong style. However, because I wasn’t paying him, he had to drop out spend time on his growing number of paying art jobs.

I finished the script and at the beginning of this year, I decided to get this project off the ground and start looking for another artist. I asked around and got a lead on a forum, PencilJack. I posted my pitch there and got a gratifying number of responses from a good number of very talented artists. I quickly came to the realization that I’d have to pay a page rate. No one could commit to a schedule for free, and understandably so.

Ozzy was one of the artists who had responded to my posts and he and I quickly settled on a page rate that was in line with my budget. Which is also the reason why this graphic novel gets updated once a week. That’s all I can afford to pay.

Ozzy brought on board both Mike and Marco, who had worked with Ozzy on other projects. I was going to do the lettering and SFX myself, but it quickly became clear that I wouldn’t be able to produce work on the level of the rest of the art.

I’m blown away by seeing something I wrote take form like this, with such incredible art.

Something else.

The ‘Link To Us’ link doesn’t actually go anywhere at this time. We’re working on creating the necessary banners for link swaps. I hope to get that done this week.

Let’s talk about where this graphic novel came from.

A friend of mine suggested to me “Why don’t you do a story about a vampire pirate?”. She thought to confound me with an undoable story idea. No such luck!

I’d been reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, so I immediately thought of making the vampire an alchemist and that’s how he’d be able to withstand the sun without bursting into flame. This also fed into Jacob van Ritter’s background as a student of Christian Huuygens. And in the first draft of this story, van Ritter’s ship, the Blood, was piloted by a clockwork steersman which had been created by Robert Hooke for van Ritter. But I couldn’t come up with a way to infuse it with angelic intelligence, so Clockwork Guy was edited out.

I’d also been reading Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods, by Chris Shaw and that’s what fueled my idea of making van Ritter’s crew Mayans high on toad.

Nun assassins? I need an excuse/reason for sacrilegious cleavage?