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Avengers Assemble Animator Turns To Kickstarter For Art Book

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Interview with myself. Here goes.

ME: Who are you?

ME (me): Hello, my name is Christopher Copeland, and I am a storyboard artist at Marvel Animation, as well as a character designer for various other projects, I also do comic books.

c2ME: That's cool, can you tell us more about yourself and what you are here to sell to us, cause we know you are selling something:

ME (me): Okay…well, I was born and raised in Chicago Illinois and have been living in LA for the past 4 years with my wife and 3 children…

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ME: Not to cut you off or anything, but this is Bleeding Cool, emphasis on COOL not the "internet version" of Family Ties, family stuff is all good, but get to the GOODS!

ME (me): Right, today I want to talk about my new sketchbook, "Comic Relief: The art of Chris Copeland". It's a collection of my artwork from behind the scenes of my day-to-day artwork. I have been working in Animation for the past 4 years, and in that time, I have worked on "Batman: Under The Red Hood", "Superman: Apocalypse", "Green Lantern", Transformers Prime, Ben10, and Ultimate Spiderman, I'm currently doing storyboards on the new Avengers Assemble. All of that involves a lot of drawing and warm-up drawings and sketches, and this book is a collection of all of that stuff.

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ME: Good, there we go, that's a cool line-up, MORE ABOUT THE BOOK!

ME (me): Glad you like it, as cool as working on those titles are and have been, the reality is that at the end of the day, its work, there are NDA's (non-disclosure agreements), and contracts and not much of me just expressing myself artistically, or something demonstrating growth and expansion as an artist, and that is where my new sketchbook "Comic Relief: The art of Chris Copeland" comes into play. It allows me to share as much of what I do with you as I can.

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ME: Wow, nice, well what more can you tell us about the book and the content therein?

ME (me): I would love to! This book is a collection of my mental meanderings, and ideas. Again, as a storyboard artist in action animation, a lot of time is spent putting together cartoons for bigger companies, but rarely do I get time to catalog my growth as an artist and really just express myself in a way that doesn't involve notes or adjustments. One of the bigger factors to that growth is just raw pure drawing, and that's what my sketchbook is comprised of. Its 8.5 x 11, hard cover, fully colored, over 100 pages of my art and thoughts on the things that I have learned about the industry and getting in, and staying in.

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ME: So when you say "your drawings" what exactly does that include?

Me (me): Good question, the content ranges from random sketches and thumbnails, to finished sketches and thumbnail drawings, to finished pin-ups and splash pages, I also have some examples of my storyboards in the book, as well as a 5 pages preview of my new graphic novel titled "HIM". I'm really proud of the materials and the book overall, it was awesome for me to go back and gather a lot of the works that I had even forgotten that I had done.

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ME: That sounds cool actually, "HIM" sounds vague, can you elaborate more on that?

ME (me): Thanks…me? Hmm, anyway, HIM is a character that I created almost 10 years ago, and he is a samurai that essentially suffers from identity crisis. He has a history that he doesn't know much about, a present that he doesn't want to be involved in, all setting up a future that he doesn't want to be a part of. We find him being tracked by local law enforcement, that has a devious interest in the only thing that "HIM" holds near and dear the "7 scrolls" of his people. The book is a journey with "HIM" as he protects the only thing that can illuminate his past, and help him gain a better understanding of his purpose. It's a fun book, it really is, I wanted to get a lot of cool characters in there and really wanted to make something that could speak to a vast audience, and I think the question of identity, is one of those topics, I think when people see the pages and get a feel of the story through the direction of my art, they will love this character as much as I do.

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ME: Well this all sounds pretty cool, but how do we get our hands on it?

ME (me):Thank you, as far as getting your hands on it, I am currently running a Kickstarter that ends VERY SOON, you can find that here. Your support of the book means the world to me, and I am SO excited to share it with you guys. PLEASE SUPPORT IT!

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ME: Well, there you go folks, I hope you enjoyed this interview, done by me…of me. I really hope you like what you have seen, and I hope you stick around to see more of what is to come. Stop by the Kickstarter page and SUPPORT!

For more of my work, you can visit any one of my sites:

www.chriscopelandart.tumblr.com

www.chriscopeland.deviantart.com

or

www.ianspirational.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading, PEACE!

Chris Copeland


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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