A Little More Background

Have you ever seen one of those evolution diagrams where they show the transition from the monkey to the upright man?

Well, when I was developing Drifter, by comparison, my drawing skills were at the amoeba stage. I was able to handle some basic concept designs but quickly came to the realization that my drawing skills were not up to par.

And unlike other artists who were the “art kid” in school or drew mini-comics featuring Superman fighting Spiderman, I’d simply never developed that muscle. No practice makes perfect. No sketchbook sessions. No late-night drawing frenzies under a blanket with a flashlight. If I was going to work on the project, I knew I’d have to put forth some serious effort and work to become something resembling an artist.

This is the part of the movie where the “Five Years Later” caption would appear. We’re talking early 2006.

After some stylistic changes and a few false starts, Drifter was still on the indefinite wait list. By now, I’d developed over a dozen comic projects and filled a handful of portfolios with artwork. But I still hadn’t worked on my own book. There was nothing out there that was 100% me.

More than ever, I wanted to take on a book that I could write, design, storyboard, illustrate, color, and letter all on my own. So I started looking at my old drawings for inspiration and found some of the early Drifter designs. Among them, I found four drawings that got the wheels turning.





The style was simple…but it worked. Thing is, I didn’t want to do a Western. I didn’t want to do Drifter. In those five years, I’d taken the Drifter concept to another level and it had become something completely different. But these four drawings got me thinking.

I had this idea called ONE that was never really fleshed out beyond the main concept. It would be a challenge but I felt I could handle it.

One world. One main character. One bad guy. One journey. One spoken word. One climax. One panel per page. One book. One creator.

One.

Bernie