Steven Howard who i started Unico Comics with has just had a brilliant interview done over at www.jazmaonline.com you can read the interview below or visit the site by clicking the link.
Richard: How did you discover you wanted to be an artist? Steven: It’s something I've always wanted to do, when I was little I would doodle everywhere and anywhere much to the annoyance of my school teachers, as my school books would be full of them. Later in life it was discovered I was dyslexic and I think that’s why when younger I would just draw all the time it was the only way I knew how to really express myself.
Richard: What was your involvement with Unico?
Steven: Unico comics was set up by myself and Michael Burness mid 2005, it all came about by accident really. We had been out celebrating Michael’s birthday and I happened to mention I wanted to draw comics, but not being much of a writer myself I was looking for somebody to write a few scripts for me to work on. The original plan was for me to use these to submit work to other companies. Michael then turned in this fantastic script for what is now called (Hellion) he enjoyed writing so much that over the next year he had written a few more scripts and Unico comics was born. There are now six of us who are the main hub of Unico but were always looking for more writers and artist to contribute to the Unico Collections series.
Richard: What did you contribute to the "Unico Collections"?
Steven: The editorial duties were shared by Michael and myself, I basically took care of the page layouts, making sure they were the correct size, cleaning up the pages if needs be and of course making sure it ran in the correct order. I also did the art work for Confessions of the trade by David Wallace, and Z.D.Z (Zombie destruction zone) Say goodbye to Hollywood by Philip Cuthbertson (Dragon groove writer). The interesting thing about Z.D.Z was me and Philip had actually done Z.D.Z two years earlier for a collection by our local comic book store, but this black and white so Philip coloured it for Unico Collections, I must admit at first I was unsure about including it in Collections as the art work was not the best but in the end it worked well so I went with it.
Richard: How would you describe your art on "Dragon Groove"?
Steven: In truth it was an experiment that did not really work in my eyes, let me explain, I drew it in a completely different style to the way I normally work, and I was trying to go for a more eastern, maybe manga style of art as I felt it would fit the story better. I wanted it to look bold and striking and each page jump out at you. I never really felt comfortable with it, the thick outlines were a bit too much but I think the colouring really works. I don’t regret doing it in the style I did as I learnt a lot doing it that I still use today in my work.
Richard: Why was the dad's face not shown in the first issue of "Dragon Groove"?
Steven: Ha ha well in all honesty I don’t really know, when I got the script through from Phil all it said was were not to see the face at anytime he was always to be hidden behind the paper, I don’t think you’ll ever get to see his face, there wont be some big reveal in a future issue as I’m sure there must be 1000’s of creative ways to hide his face.
Richard: What are a few of the comics you have worked on?
Steven: The first comic work I ever did was helping out at the UK comic Viz when I was younger I have a friend who works there and when they would find a dead line creeping up on them I would go in and help with colouring and other things.
Then there was ‘Libera Me’ by Stephane Crepeau which I helped ink though the title never took off which was sad as it was a great story.
Then I did the art work for Dragon Groove and Unico collections, and I've just finished a pin up that will be in Accent UK comics 2009 anthology ‘Westerns’
Richard: What are the tools of your trade?
Steven: I do all my penciling on Bristol Board using a blue 0.7mm Pentel mechanical pencil then it depends if I’m inking it or not I may to tighter pencils over the blue and not ink at all, or if I do ink I either use Winsor & Newton series 7 sable brush’s, Faber-Castell PITT artist pens or ill ink digitally using the scratch board pen in Painter. All my colouring is done in Photoshop using a Wacom intuos 3 graphic tablet.
Richard: What is the AGC?
Steven: When we stated Unico Comics back in 2005 we knew next to nothing about the Small Press Community in the UK. So we collected all the data we could of Printers, Publishers etc. We decided that we’d run a website of our findings just to help out all the other people out there, who like us needed a simple website to point us in the right direction.
Richard: What are you currently working on and do you have planned for the future?
Steven: I'm busy with ‘The Legend Known As...’ for Unico comics which were hoping this will be our flagship title in 2009 that should be out in January, I’m doing the covers for ‘Sword of the spirit St George’. Im also doing some work with Michael Burness for Accent UK’s 2010 anthology ‘Predators’ called ‘Luftwaffe 46’ and im also doing covers for the DC2 website which is just a fan site for DC comics. As for the future I'll be working on other Unico titles and see what else comes my way.
Richard: How do you find work in this field?
Steven: Strangely enough facebook has been really helpful in getting me work I've had a lot of offers I've had to turn down due to either work load or time constraints.
Richard: What comic book would you most like to work on?
Steven: Well for me it has to be Batman he’s been my favourite character for a very long time I remember getting the Knightfall series and seeing Graham Nolan’s art work in it and ever since then ive followed the comics.
Richard: What comics did you read as a child and do you read now?
Steven: My brother and I used to get the Beano and the Dandy, the old DC Thomson comics when we were little I also remember reading the old Dan Dare and Eagle comics in the barbers my dad used to take us too.
Nowadays I still read the Batman comics of course R.I.P has just finished so it’s going to be interesting to see what direction they take on the book. I've also just finished Secret Invasion which was great im a big fan of Leinil Yu’s art work. Other than that I read 2000 AD, All star Superman, All star Batman and Robin, Invincible and many others, sometimes if the art work grabs me ill buy the issue whether its one I normally get or not.
