Saturday, December 25, 2010

The circle is now complete: an unexpected Christmas present

Now that I'm a parent, I'm starting to live Christmas vicariously through the children around us, and see the wonder and anticipation in their eyes as they open their gifts.

I was a Star Wars nut as a child, and when I was six, I got one of my most favourite Christmas gifts ever. It was a Dewback, a toy that combined two of my favourite things from that era: Star Wars, and Dinosaurs. Sadly, almost three decades later, I actually had to google the name of the toy, as any encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars universe I may have posessed evaporated when I became a man. But I still recall with photographic detail the fun I had pulling the toy out of the box, getting bundled up to head outside, and making it crawl in the snow drifts off the side of the front steps of our Davidson Avenue house.

A few days ago, while scouring the toy aisles looking for last minute Christmas gifts for my daughter, I stumbled across this.
The toys themselves didn't really pique my interest, but the book packaged with these two action figures did! It's a copy of Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars Rebellion #3.

I helped colour that issue!

My good friend, Wil Glass, was the colourist for this series. And anyone who knows the workflow involved in producing a comic book will tell you that us colourists, being the last stage in the artistic process, frequently have to make up for the deadlines missed by the writers, pencilers and inkers that need to do their work before we get it. Most professional colourists today have someone assisting them during deadline pinches, and I was honoured to be asked by Wil to follow his lead and lend a hand.

Little did I imagine that almost a half decade after I worked on this comic, I'd be staring at the book's cover sitting behind two Star Wars action figures, packaged up and ready to be wrapped and opened on Christmas morning by some other 6 year old kid the same way I opened up my Dewback in 1981.

The circle is now complete.

I can imagine the smile I'd see on the face of the six-year-old Donovan if I could go back in time and tell him that one day he'd not only be getting paid to colour comic books, but that they would be packaged with Star Wars action figures and sold in toy stores across the continent.

It would probably be very similar to the smile that the thirty-five-year-old Donovan is wearing right now.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Currently playing: absolutely nothing...
Currently colouring: The Chronicles of Conan Volume 21: Blood of the Titan and Other Stories
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!