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by Weezul on 12.11.10

Andie Tong is no stranger to comic books. Even as a European transplant by way of the Land of Oz, Andie has been longtime fan and avid reader about as long as he's been an artist. Having been on both sides of the table, he can easily relate to the excitement of seeing the creative process come to life through pencil to paper as well as be swept away into a land of mystery, intrigue (or in Tron's case, the inside of a computer) as much as the next fan.  

Andie was gracious enough to take some time out of his way crazy schedule, pause from updating his website or his deviantArt page, and Twitter to answer what had to be one of the longest Q&A's in comicdom!  So sit back, get comfy and get ready to go inside the mind of the amazing Andie Tong!  

Editor's Note: Be sure to check out Part One of Weezul's interview with Andie here on Nfamous.

Hey, Andie. Thanks for enduring another round of questions. So let's start off with how you ended up in London, and how long have you been there?

There were two main reasons that really pushed me making the move to London. First and foremost, it was travel and to see the world. Everywhere from Australia was so far away, especially from quiet Perth. You could travel six or so hours and still only be within Australia or Asia. I desperately wanted to see more of the other side of the world. London was the perfect central point. 

Secondly, it was the career opportunities. But I wasn't even thinking of pursuing a career as a comic artist when I moved to London; it was more for my design career. London, so I've been told at that time, was the design hub of the world. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself working in comics full time. But within two months of living in London, I started getting opportunities to work in comics and slowly but surely, on a more regular basis. So overall, the move has been a real blessing.

As of 2010, I would have been here five years and still love every minute of it. 

Nice. London is definitely on my "places to visit" list. How often do you get to the United States?

For U.S. convention purposes, I try to go twice a year — for holiday and fun, maybe more.

I think it's important to make appearances and show appreciation to the people and fans buying my books, also that I'm still out there promoting my work and working hard. A lot of people don't know my work because I worked mainly for the UK market on Spider-Man UK. So by being at the U.S. conventions, it makes people aware that there is a thriving comic base outside the U.S. market and hopefully encourages them to go investigate. 

Conventions also give me an opportunity to keep in touch and find out from the general public on how my work is perceived and how I can further improve it. This keeps me on my toes and also keeps me forever evolving and striving. I think it's quite important for an artist to continue to expand his horizons stylistically and creatively. I always fear falling stagnant.

Luckily for me, I like sketching; it gives me the opportunity to sketch for my fans and interact with them as it gives me a sense of satisfaction to be able to give something to them. One of the best things about conventions is having the opportunity to be with peers and to be able to feed off each other. The convention is the best place for this as there is massive energy of creativity. I cannot count the amount of times I have picked up and learn new techniques from other creators while just hanging out with them during and after conventions. 

Conventions also give me the opportunity to catch up with my editors and to remind them, "Hey, I'm still alive and willing to work!" This also goes hand-in-hand with meeting new contacts, networking with people who you may work with way down the line. The editors I work with currently, it took me about two years from first meeting them before getting my first gig. So I guess, everything is building a foundation and networking. Everything takes time, so for any aspiring comic artists out there, please be patient, and things may not necessarily happen overnight, so persevere. 

The one main convention I'll always try to go to is the New York Comic Con. It's a fantastic convention, and you get to see New York City to boot. I can never get enough of NYC. To me, it's second to San Diego Comic Con and coming up fast. Although I love SDCC, the journey is gruelling compared to NYCC and takes me about a week to recover from jetlag, which my work suffers for.

The second U.S. convention of the year depends. I sift through recommendations from my artist mates to try and check out the best show to attend. Thus far, I've been to Charlotte Heroes Con twice and San Diego Comic Con once. I'm planning to go to the new-ish C2E2 in Chicago in the coming years. I've heard only good things about the show.

We know you've been drawing since youth. What are some of your favorite things to draw?

I love drawing people, and I love fashion. Either designing new forms of clothing or simply just drawing what I see inspired by everyday people. I'm sure it's nothing unique, but outside of my deadlines, I would go sit at a café, pub, park, or any area where there's plenty of people around and sketch people walking by. It's my little way of relaxing. I love people-watching and find the human form fascinating as people are so diverse and come in all forms, shapes, and sizes.

It's fun drawing young people, but equally as intriguing drawing the elderly where their faces, their wrinkles, their eyes, their stance, their stature, their manner, tell a story. Or you can at least imagine what their story might be.

Outside of that, I do like being able to do fan art for popular games, TV shows, movies, etc. I love the '80s. I grew up in the '80s, so anything from Thundercats, G.I. Joe to A-Team, Battlestar Galactica, or Automan takes my fancy. I just wish there was more time for me to dabble with stuff like this.

I would love to see some of those drawings at some point. Maybe you create an Andie Tong All-'80s Sketchbook. Do you do other types of art, such as painting?

I used to. A very long time ago, I used to work with charcoal, paints, mainly gouache and water color, but this was all before Photoshop and digital painting came into play. I'm not a "classical" artist, more of a lazy artist. One of the main reasons I don't traditionally paint anymore is because I hated washing my palettes and brushes. Also, I didn't have a studio. I would usually paint at home, which was a hassle to prep for, as I had to line the floors to make sure paint wouldn't splatter on the floors and walls. It became a chore, so when Photoshop came along, I welcomed it with open arms and have gone digital ever since. 

I dabbled in the art of animation for a bit back when I was still working in design. I would animate and design motion graphics to appear as screen presentations in websites, CD-ROMS, and TV. I also did traditional 2-D animation and Flash animation during my nine-year stint as a designer. For about six months I was contracted into a team of animators that worked on the second season of the Canadian cartoon, John Callahan's Quads. It was a fun gig, an interesting experience, but ultimately I didn't find it fulfilling enough. I wasn't drawing as much I'd like to and, unfortunately for me, did not feel I was able to be creative enough, too, so I didn't pursue this path.

I also like cooking! Isn't that an art form also? Heh. 

Yes, I'm told it is. I make a mean peanut butter and jelly! So you've been to a good deal of cons during the summer. What's the craziest con or fan moment you've had?

Not much actually. I do have the occasional, "Ooo, that's Andie Tong!" when I'm at my table sketching. But then the conversation quickly dwindles down to, "Oh, I thought you were someone else." Lol. So no, not too many crazy fan moments. Heh.

On the flipside, however, I'm a fanboy at heart as well. So I definitely know what it's like to be on the other side of the table. I still enjoy that feeling every time I'm at a convention just perusing the artist alleys and checking out each artist working hard at their tables. I loved comics even before I pursued comics as a career path. So I was very much into the fandom of comics when artists such as the late Michael Turner and Mike Wieringo, Chris Bachalo, Joe Madureira, Adam Hughes, John Romita Jr., just to name a few, were my idols and still are to this day as a matter of fact. So when I'm on the other side of the table, I still get giddy sometimes when I get to see an artist I've aspired to all my life, seeing them working and sketching live at the cons. Seeing how they work their magic.

Ah, the classics! Well, at least these days. What are the most common characters people ask you to sketch at shows?

I thought it would be Spider-Man since I drew him for nearly five years. But he hasn't come up as much as the Turtles (TMNT)! Mainly Raphael, as he is quite a fan favorite. I think it was just this NYCC 2010 gone by that I sketched at least five Raphael commissions.

A lot of people liked the way I interpreted the Turtles because whenever I draw them, I try to pay homage to the days when Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman were in reign. The grittiness of the original Turtles is what drew me to them in the first place. That's what a lot of convention goers seem to want when they request a TMNT sketch and one of the hugest compliments when they tell me my Turtles reminded them of the heydays.

Other common fan favorites include Deadpool, Ryu from Streetfighter, Nightcrawler, and of course, Wolverine or Logan from X-Men.

What's the one piece of work you are most proud of? The one you wish you could scrap and redo?

Ummm, a tough one. I think there are always work where I think I can improve on but everything is a learning curve. When I did The Architect with Mike Baron, I was proud of it at the time, but in terms of artistic style, I have changed so much from that. When I look back at the earlier work, I can see how different my style was and how much I have progressed. I think my work will constantly change. I just wish that I could go back and give the Architect the justice it deserves.

To date, being part of Tron is my proudest moment. No doubt, I will likely look back at it in six months time and wished I could do this or do that differently. After working on the Architect and then almost five years on Spider-Man UK, I was aching to do another graphic novel, and Tron: Betrayal came about at the right time. Tron has got such a strong fan base and heritage, I feel so lucky and privileged to be part of it, especially since I'm a fan myself.

Speaking of Tron: Betrayal, was there any particular artistic influence that you infused into the comic?

My normal art style is a very clean outlined illustration form, hardly any shadows, almost animated in nature. For the Tron project, I really wanted to pay special attention to having more shadows in my art approach than I normally do, because the design of the Grid (the Tron world) is quite a dark environment. So whenever the story shifts scenes and takes place in the Grid, the atmosphere would get considerably darker than it would in the normal world scenes.

Besides studying real-world and everyday life, paying attention to how shadows fall on things, I also did a lot of research on artists that played heavily with shadows in their artwork. It was interesting and important to me to see how these artists tackled their sequential pages from panel to panel. I looked up some current influential artists like Mike Mignola, Sean Phillips, Jock, Laurence Campbell, just to name a few, and although these artists all have varied styles in their art, their use of shadowing is amazing and probably very second nature to them. It was a real eye-opener for someone like me, though.

I really enjoyed the book. It's a great setup for the upcoming film. The book has a lot of dynamic action scenes. What were some of your favorite scenes to draw?

It was a big learning curve when working on this project. Vehicles were not one of my strong suits when it came to drawing. I learned pretty quickly how to be comfortable in drawing vehicles since essentially the lightcycles were a big part of the Tron universe. So at the end of it, my worse thing to draw became one of my favorite things to draw. The first six pages especially when the book was introducing Flynn and Tron riding away from the Gridbugs, that was a real fun sequence to work on. 

The fight scenes and the derezzing sequences were also very fulfilling for me. Writer Jai can vouch for this, that although I was whining a bit on Twitter while I was working on the derezzing sequences, in retrospect, the process was actually quite therapeutic. I almost went into a catatonic Zen-like mode, illustrating those thousands, maybe even millions of cubes! Haha. It's a pretty great feeling to sit back after and look at the end result and wonder how I even achieved that in the first place.

What are some of the things that attract you to the Tron universe?

As a kid, when I first watched Tron, I liked the idea of being sucked into another universe/dimension and playing computer games like you're in it. It's very virtual reality/in-your-face, so to speak. Once you're in this new fantasy realm, you get all these free cool gizmos to play with, throw at, and ride on. Why not? I think it's a kid's dream come true.

For me, to own a lightcycle would be the ultimate prize. Who wouldn't want a lightcycle to zip around town in? 

I know I would, but given how I drive, probably not a good idea. So were you aware of the film prior to working on the adaptation?

By December 2009, when the OGN was offered to me, I had already seen the test teaser trailer that was originally shown at the San Diego Comic Con in 2008 and by then, circulating on YouTube. There was already a huge buzz and anticipation about the film's release, so I already knew something was in the works but had not seen any official concept art or trailer footage. 

In making the artistic transition from being inside a computer-generated world, then back to the real world, what were some of the things you had to take into consideration?

By the time I came on to the Tron project, the writers and concept artists for the prequel game, Tron: Evolution, and the movie itself, Tron: Legacy, had already established the look for the Tron: Betrayal timeline. Betrayal was meant to fit in just before the Evolution game prior to the events of the Legacy movie. So I couldn't deviate much from the look that had already been set to give the whole Tron universe its continuity.

On a plus side, I did get the opportunity to design characters that were integral to the storyline of Betrayal. I was given plenty of resources, including concept art from the game and the film, to base my designs on, to visualize earlier versions of Clu's black guards that appear in the Tron: Legacy movie.

Oh, and I got to design an earlier model vehicle base on the Solar Sailer. It appeared in all of two panels before it crashed and burned. :)

When moving the book out of the Grid and into the real world, one of the main things I had to keep in mind was that it was set in the '80s. So I looked up a lot of movies base around that period and researched the Internet to remind myself what the '80s fashion looked like. Lots of high waist jeans and pants! I found several university sites that had old alumni photos throughout the years that made '80s referencing just that little bit faster and easier.

That's a classic look itching to make another comeback. If this book were being made into a feature film, what are some of the scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor?

None that I can think of! I think all the scenes were crucial to tell the story. The storyline was already quite compact as it was. It would have been nice to have extra pages to flesh out and give some scenes more breathing room. Ideally, I would have liked to have expanded and added more fighting and derezzing scenes, but that's only because it would have been fun to draw!

I think Jai had to tell a lot in the limited number of pages we had. He did an exceptional job to fit everything in. I thought the pace of the storytelling flowed well and was balanced throughout.   

Let's switch up a bit and talk art. Artistically speaking, who do you cite as your influences?

Around the '90s, before I was even thinking of pursuing comic as a career, when I was just reading tons of comics, I started taking note of all these comic artists' names that I really liked their art for. John Romita Jr., Arthur Adams, Jim Lee, Joe Madureira, Chris Bachalo, Travis Charest, Mike Wieringo, Marc Silvestri, Michael Turner, Adam Hughes, Humberto Ramos are just some of the awesome creators out of the top of my head who influenced me.

Huge credit has to be given, of course, to Todd McFarlane, who really started me off in paying closer attention and to research names of artists that I liked. He was the very first artist that piqued my interest and got me trying to pick up every book that an artist did just to see what he was up to. I really enjoyed his run on Spider-Man and the unique way he interpreted the web-slinger, so much so that when I was still learning to refine my drawing skills, I would emulate the way he drew. In fact, I found myself, at different artistic stages of my life, imitating various artists that influenced me. Of course over time, I grew out of it. Although still influenced by artists in general, I am now, I'd like to think, developing a style of my own.

For me, being an artist myself, I usually buy comics for the art first. The interest in the artists of the '90s got me researching deeper into some old comic books that I liked visually way back when but never paid much attention to author credits and the likes before. Artists like John Romita Sr. and Jack Kirby definitely impacted me artistically, too, got me hooked onto comics and possibly started me drawing in the first place.

The dynamic works of manga and anime especially from Masamune Shirow also influences me heavily. I have been a fan of his work for the longest time since the early days of Black Magic, Appleseed right up to Ghost in the Shell. Besides his awesome art in general, I love the detailing he puts into each panel, with the backgrounds and especially the mechanics of a weapon or vehicle he's designed.

Those are some big, big names, legends really. Your style is pretty diverse based upon some of the projects you've worked on. But in your own words, how would you describe your style?

I feel my style is a bit of an amalgamation of manga and American comics. I grew up with American comics, so I've definitely got a strong influence there. As a kid, my parents would buy me comics upon comics of Spider-Man. All the different titles that were available. That's probably one of the main reasons why Spider-Man is also one of my favorite superheroes even to this day. Back then, for fun, I would then try and copy/trace as many of the Spider-Man poses shown from the comics as possible.

Around the early '90s, with anime being introduced to the West and becoming more mainstream, I grew to love the way the Japanese used anime and manga to convey speed and dynamism. For a while, I experimented with the manga style of art but ultimately found myself constantly shifting back to mainstream American style.

So over time as I've been cultivating my style, I've adopted and try to merge the best aspects of both styles.

Well I'm definitely a fan and can't wait to see more.  

Thanks so much for your time, Andie. We totally appreciate it. For more on Andie and his work, check out his website, deviantArt  page, or just follow him on Twitter. He's a fun follow!