Whether it be in comics, games or film, you can trace the art direction and influences back to some earlier, real-life historic period or artistic movement.
Back in the '30s, '40s and '50s, you had clear-cut heroes, clear-cut supervillains. Today, you have more of a blend, more of a gray area between the two. You have the rise of the sympathetic villain and the rise of the antihero.
The video game market is huge, and the ability to tell stories, and tell different kinds of stories in the gaming space is quickly evolving and changing for the better.
When you try to do something bigger and more grandiose, a lot of times it's more apt to fall apart. It's a lot easier to lay down a bunch of singles than it is to get a home run.
I try to do a lot of asymmetrical, triangular compositions - I find those work really well for comic book covers in that portrait mode, and I don't always see that in other artists.
Nick Cardy's work helped define some of the things we see in comics today and take for granted. He broke out of the mold in terms of covers and layout and created a truly interactive experience for the reader that directly points back to his time with the Eisner studio.
You can see how he changed on the surface. But at the core of it all, I think Superman has remained the same - a character with incredible powers but almost superhuman humility and restraint.
Superman is the hardest character to draw. There are a couple of things that make him difficult. He's got a very simple costume and doesn't have the long cape like Batman. He's not a character that is necessarily always in shadow, and he doesn't have a mask.
Jerry Robinson illustrated some of the defining images of pop culture's greatest icons. As an artist myself, it's impossible not to feel humbled by his body of work. Everyone who loves comics owes Jerry a debt of gratitude for the rich legacy that he leaves behind.
The downside to becoming a doctor, I think, is it's a very long process; four years of medical school, three years of internship, two years of residency, umpteen years of specialization, and then finally you get to be what you have trained almost all your life for.
As an artist, as I design and lay out a page, the less-important things, things I want you to spend less time looking at, I draw them very small, maybe even silhouette them. The more-important pivotal scenes, I draw them larger, maybe even a double-page spread.
