Jason Badower/The Death of Hana Gitelman, Part 1
Jason Badower shares his comments and original art about his work on The Death of Hana Gitelman, Part 1.
Page 1
Normally, Jason does 3-4 pages of layout a day. However, for The Death of Hana Gitelman, Part 1, he "smashed out all 11 pages" during the 100-minute duration of Dawn of the Dead.
Jason used the opening logo of Heroes to create the Earth in the first panel.
NBC told Jason that the satellite looked "flat and cartoony", which he took as great art direction and as a compliment about his coloring.
He is "horrified" he sent this version through. He feels he was lazy on panel 3 because it was just a cut, paste, and blow up of panel 2. Though he wasn't asked to redraw it, he did anyway. "My artistic conscience just couldn't live with signing off on this horror."
Page 2
Jason feels this story is very significant in the Heroes universe. "If I was going to be remembered for any contribution to the Heroes universe, it would be this."
In the script, Aron Coleite asked for a recurring image of Hana. This is the image that Jason used throughout the story.
Page 3
"I do incredibly scratchy layouts. I like to discover things as I go on. If you figure everything out at this stage, drawing becomes more of a photocopying/blowing up exercise than actual creativity."
Originally, panel 3 was written to have a closeup of the two incisions on Hana's neck; the dialog read: "Have we all forgotten what you've done?" Jason prefers this original dialog, and thinks it makes more sense for her to show the marks on her neck. He doesn't know why Aron changed the text to "I'm getting a little sick of following your orders. I mean, how can we trust your endgame?"
Jason feels that panel 2 has one of two of his weakest likenesses of Hana. "I beg forgiveness that I was still trying to figure out what I was doing."
"My stomach fell out when I saw Ted clean shaven. They didn't tell me about that! I was really disappointed. Who the hell lets someone shave in a maximum security Guanatanamo bay-like cell? Wtf?!!"
Page 4
Frank Mastromauro of Aspen Comics noted that this story would be easy to draw. Jason feels that his layouts confirm that notion.
"Check out Mr. Bennet. He doesn't even look like him on the lineart! That's how big a contribution the painting makes. I can't even explain it, but something happens somewhere along the way."
"Another thing that people seemed to like is Ted's 'finger gun'. That was Aron's idea. I did have to do some research from the episode Company Man to figure out what the special effect looks like."
"I'd actually like to do a Parkman comic. I love Greg Grunberg's work. He's just so genuine."
Jason feels the likeness of Bennet was "pretty good".
"The bottom panel with Hana is one of my favourite Hanas. It just captures her, and I managed to put black on her face and still maintain a likeness."
Page 5
"So as the old joke goes, the easiest thing to draw is two polar bears in a snow storm. So while I was doing layouts, my friend Mitch... goes, "Why don't you just draw it all set in a snowstorm?" I turn to him and grin, "It's funny you mention that, [because] 2.5 pages are in a snowstorm."
"As a subtle background element, you can see the techno noise building up heavier and heavier as you get to the bottom of the page. I wanted to simulate the pressure that Hana was feeling."
Page 6
With the script calling for Hana to "puke" email address out, Jason aims the "vomit" downwards.
"But as I worked on the earlier pages, I thought, wouldn't it be cooler if she was upright and vomiting these things like a volcano? I mean, it's not like radio-transmissions conform to gravity in any direct sense."
"As you can see, there really isn't much on this page. It's all effects."
Jason adds various effects to make a stunning display of Hana's ability.
Page 7
Jason first outlines the basic concept.
"[You] can also see by the lineart on this page just how much the painting contributes to the likeness."
Jason discusses the difficulty of likenesses. "People's faces are defined by the light that we use to illuminate them. If you don't honour these curves, you lose a person's likeness."
"Do you know how hard it is to draw Jack Coleman (aka Mr. Noah Bennet) without his trademark glasses?"
Page 8
Jason notes panel transitions: "I get to create incredible visual effects without having to know all about lenses."
"It's not incredibly evident here on this page as this is more of a "vignette" page - a series of loosely related scenes."
"So the script says Hana is drinking with some guys. In the next panel, she kisses one of those guys. I was going to run a competition for the guys on the 9th Wonders [forum] getting them to compete to kiss Hana. Then I thought, 'Bugger that! I'm winning that!' Hell, it's the most action I've seen all year."
"The only logistical story to this page is that I lost the original 300dpi artwork. What you see is a recovered 150dpi version. Basically, while I've redrawn chunks it's lost about 20% of its quality. =("
With some help, Jason was able to feature various easter eggs, including a Nathan Petrelli ad, Corinthian Casino ad, and the RGS dance club.
Jason held an informal dress design contest on his blog and in a thread at 9thwonders.com for the dress Hana would wear to the nightclub.
Jason chose this design by Vanessa as the winning dress.
Runner-up entries were used to dress the other women in the club: the woman with her one arm up, the woman to Hana's right, the black woman on Hana's left, the woman who is turned away, and the blonde with both arms up. This neck strap design is also featured.
Page 9
"This was an incredibly fun page to draw, just because every panel was just so different."
"My main aim here was to make the lighting as different as possible between each of the scenes....I normally don't like moving characters right to left (the natural flow of the eye is left to right), but I felt this was needed"
"I like to think I captured the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong quite well for the little amount of time I spent here. I felt all the drama is in the lighting and the billboards. I wanted a harsh artificial light that speaks of the decay of over-crowded hyper-urbanized cities. On the layout it's the only one I deviated from. Instead of emphasizing harsh shadows...I actually wanted to draw the reader into the detail of the scene, if only for a second to contrast it against the softer beauty of panel 4."
"<nowiki>[This] is one of my favourite pictures of Hana. It's strong, stylistic lighting works well with the likeness."
Page 10
"This page was a lot of fun. It was one of those where I had such a bold vision of what I wanted. The problem with drawing on a computer is that you get caught up in the details and you lose sight of the big picture. If you look really closely, that gantry is kinda insane. I just got drawing and just kept drawing. I think I tranced out and went into some kinda meditative drawing state."
"In an act of (what I consider to be) incredible artistic bravery on my part, I blurred Hana (and the leaves) out to create a strong difference between the foreground and the background. Why is it so brave? Because I did all this work and subtle rendering, only to have it blurred out. But it had to be done."
Page 11
"The main thing I had to contend with on this page was justifying how 5 no-name guards could creep up on "super-soldier/spy" Hana. I guess she has a history of getting caught while on missions. =)"
"One of the things that I'm a huge pedant of is making sure that people of different races and backgrounds look like they should. While I'm half Asian myself I've mainly drawn white people. So a small amount of research was required to find some Asian gentlemen who could be my Chinese soldiers."
Notes about Jason's drawings are taken from his weblog.