Three Minute Max is a new web comic by father/son team Bob and Max Forward. The series is about a man who can stop his heart for three minutes, and what happens when fate connects him with a magnanimous group of geniuses and scientists that have cracked the code on teleportation. Doing this interview was a true honor for me as I have been a fan of Bob Forward's previous work on shows like Beast Wars (which has been mentioned on Great Work Review before) as well as the fact that I think Three Minute Max is, hands down, one of the most exiting web comic offerings out there today.
Three Minute Max is primarily an action comic, but it has enough humor and sci-fi depth to keep it from ever feeling shallow. In preparation for this post I re-read the two issues that are currently out, and I was struck again by how polished the art and dialogue are. The way the premise is laid out is fascinating, starting with seemingly unrelated events that come together to form a complete vision. If you have not already done so, I recommend reading at least the first issue (which should only take a few minutes) before continuing on to the interview below, where Max and Bob give some fascinating insight into the comic and the creative process in general. Happy reading!
-MA 3.25.13
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GWR: How would you like to be introduced?
MAX: You probably don't need to say much to
introduce me, other than that I'm Bob's son. I have a blog I do to
discuss my storyboarding day job, and that's at digitalstoryboards.com. It
includes a useful bio. This is my first real comic book project.
BOB: I've had a lot of jobs, primarily in
animation. Started as a storyboard
artist (though never close to Max’s skill) and moved into writing because I
discovered it was a lot easier writing
things like: "Ten thousand warriors come
charging over the horizon on horseback waving weapons as flames rise behind
them and a tidal wave approaches from the east" than it was to have to draw it. Then, during a period when I was writing on a
series called Beast Wars, I wheedled
the production company into letting me direct [an episode]. I liked the experience so
much that I started trying to do short movies (ed. note, such as the surprisingly entertaining Agent 12 films), which led to the creation of
Detonation Films. It started as a hobby,
then eventually became an actual job. It’s primarily pyrotechnic effects, but I try to keep focused on
creative projects. When Max suggested
doing a comic book, it was like he was speaking to my soul.
GWR: When/How
did you originally get the idea for Three Minute Max?
MAX: To my memory, Bob conceived of it during one
of our Sunday Breakfasts, our weekly get-together, where the topic of
discussion is usually centered on how much the world has changed since the week
before. It was in late '06 or early '07,
we had just finished Kabumei, and were brainstorming new ideas for our next
video project. Bob produces these
projects through Detonation Films and they basically serve as fun showcases for
the special effects that he sells. So
the projects are kind of built around the need for action and special
effects. And it’s a lot of fun to make
movies together.
BOB:
Since action is kind of my thing, the idea was to come up with a concept that
would allow us to jump right into the cool battles, but it had to be something
we could pull off on a limited budget. I also wanted to give our protagonist
some heavy limitations on time and weaponry, since overcoming obstacles is part
of what makes a hero. And I wanted to throw in some weirdness, because
weirdness.
MAX: So Bob was staring
off into space and listing off criteria- "Gotta be real hard hitting
action. Boom, guy shows up, kills
everyone in hand to hand combat, then gone. Brutal. Violent. Gotta be short too. About three minutes, max." Pause. "Actually, I like the sound of
that. Three Minute Max.' And there you have it, the moment of
conception. The fact that my name is Max
is a funny coincidence, but at the time, it fit, since we were trying to think
of an action project that I could star in.
The next week, Google bought YouTube, Hulu was invented, and Netflix started
streaming movies, and it became clear that short-form video projects were not
going to be dominating the Internet, as we were thinking they would. So 3MM got shelved, and we moved onto other
things. About a year later, I had established myself in the field of commercial
storyboarding and was doing well, but found I had a lot of downtime and wanted
a project I could work on when things were slow. I emailed Bob and asked if he would mind if I
developed 3MM into a comic book project. He responded the next morning with the screenplay for what is now
episode one. I liked it and told him so,
but I had pictured another approach, and asked if I could do a different story.
He responded almost instantly with the script for episode two. Which I loved. We’ve been working on it ever since.
BOB: That's basically it. And
when we realized that we could add real effects to the artwork, the
cross-promotional aspect became with Detonation Films became obvious. Three
Minute Max was underway.
GWR: What
made you decide to make this series as a web comic as opposed to going through
a comic publisher?
MAX: I don't have a great answer- I mean Bob
pretty much handles what happens to the comic once I draw it. I would love to see it on store shelves but
is that realistic, especially today? It
just seems so inefficient compared to the web options. In 2009, I attended the San Diego Comic Con,
and I had the first issue/episode of 3MM all nicely printed up in a big
portfolio and I was convinced that we would be able to get somebody to see it
and say "Awesome! Here's a check for a
million dollars." But I went to the
review panels and was disappointed with the whole setup. Sitting around waiting for somebody to call
your number, and turn you down. The body
language in that place was depressing. So
I didn't stick around. It reminded me of
when I was trying to get into storyboarding animation- I would drop my
portfolio off at a studio, and watch as the receptionist tossed it into a huge
bin so full that mine would slide off
the top and fall onto another pile
that had accumulated around the base. So we've concentrated our efforts online
instead, and it's worked out well. We both have experience in developing
web-based businesses, and so it's kind of natural for us to find our own way
around the hurdles.
BOB: Heh. If a publisher
becomes interested, they know where to find us. In the meantime, there was no reason to wait around. I'm going to be blunt here – if Detonation
Films taught me anything, it's that if you want to do something, just face the
fact that you're mostly going to be doing it yourself. Yes, you're going to have to learn new
things. And it will probably cost money,
so keep your day job. But the technology
exists now to do a lot of things on your desktop that would have taken a whole
studio a few years ago. So you really
can follow your dreams. Max and I both
love the various projects we do for other people, but we also wanted to have
something we could point to and say: “See
that? That's ours.”
GWR: The
art is realistic in many ways, but it is also very stylized, both in how the
faces are drawn and how the pages are colored. How did you develop that style?
What do you like most about the style you’ve achieved here?
MAX: My style is cobbled
together from various artistic influences that I admire, mostly from, believe
it or not, American manga artists, and a splash of Will Eisner. I like to keep my faces pretty simple and
concentrate on expression and acting. I'm primarily a freelance commercial storyboard artist, and have
been for almost 10 years. That work
experience has molded my style to concentrate on rapidly executed, powerful,
simple visual statements. I talk about
that extensively in my digitalstoryboards blog. For now, lets just say that I
use the exact same drawing techniques for storyboarding and comics. There's a lot of overlap between the two
fields, so that shouldn't be surprising.
But I was delighted to see that I didn't have to reinvent my style for
this new medium- it actually looks like a cool, fresh comic book style, and I'm
glad I went for it, instead of directly mimicking the look of other comic book
artists I admire, like Ryan Ottley (Invincible). And it's interesting that I've been able to
take some things I've learned from the comic, and apply that back to
storyboarding. Both have benefitted-
that's what I like most.
GWR: What
is the hardest part about illustrating/coloring the comic? What would you like
to improve on the most as an artist for the series?
MAX: The hardest part is
in the panel-by-panel storytelling, and making that worth reading. That's the real art of comics, and
unfortunately I think even amazing artists struggle with this. Sitting down
with the script and really seeing the story unfold, capturing it, and telling
that story visually in the allotted time frame (or page allotment) is mentally
taxing. It's the same in storyboarding…
once you have your roughs plotted out, the rest is a real breeze, assuming you
know how to draw/render. Rendering is
monkey work, it really is. It won't
impress anybody to know that I'm usually drinking or worse when I'm drawing
this comic, but it's true. You don't
need to be cognizant render. But those
first couple days, thinking about the story, finding powerful visuals, and
balancing it all is what takes the most mental and emotional effort. As far as the illustrating/coloring, I have a very efficient
system that I use, all digital. It's a
lot like a one-man assembly line, and it's scalable to whatever project I apply
it to, and I can pause it and pick it up whenever it suits me. I admit my color theory is very weak and I'm
looking to strengthen that as we go on. I don't have much formal artistic training so I kind of just wing it and
experiment a great deal. Hopefully as
things progress and I get more practice in, I will get a little more committed
to certain design elements- for instance, I currently draw Max's armor a little
differently every time, as well as the Strike Gate. Those designs are still a little nebulous and
I'd love for them to reach a definitive state.
GWR: So
far you have filled your story with a variety of characters, geeks,
ex-military, serious scientists, and corporate spies among others, where do you
get the ideas for these characters, and how do you decide which ones go in the
story? What do you like most about the writing you’ve achieved here?
BOB: I was never in the military, but while trying to learn more
about pyrotechnics for effects purposes, I spent some time working for a
company that did hyper-real training for the Army. While living and working on
base, staging realistic war games for real soldiers, I learned to appreciate how
impressive a well-trained professional soldier can be in a battle
situation. The new recruits we could "kill" in droves. But when we took on
Rangers, they would mop the floor with us. Maxwell Harcourt Reaper is basically a conglomeration of several staff
sergeants I encountered during that period, with some of our namesake artist's
personality added on top. As for the other characters, my father was a
scientist and I'm actually a board member on a space technology firm (Tethers
Unlimited) he helped found. Madison is
derived from a person or two I know, both there and elsewhere. Marissa also. Toy companies (with whom I
dealt heavily during animation projects) are extremely security-conscious. They are constantly worried about competitors
bringing out something that undercuts their market in a certain product
line. Industrial espionage is quite
common, and it wasn't unknown for companies to actually create and develop
entire lines of toys they had no intention of ever marketing, just so they
could mislead the competition into spending vast sums in the wrong area. So when they found a mole on staff, it was
occasionally more useful to keep them around, even buy them off as doubles,
than it was to get rid of them. So
that’s Dr. Sharma – though I confess his actual personality is based heavily on
John Nobel’s Dr. Bishop and Iron Man’s
Dr. Yinsen. Now, Cicerone – he’s a decent guy, but obsessed and a touch
Machiavellian. All my favorites traits to play with.
GWR: What is the hardest part about writing the comic? What would you like to
improve on the most as a writer for the series?
BOB:
There's a definite learning curve. I
quickly found out it wasn't like writing for animation. You can have several conversations going on
at once; you can have a certain amount of exposition without slowing the pace,
and things that you've never dealt with before – like word balloon size and
placement – suddenly become extremely important. Now I'll do all the rough lettering and word
balloons myself, on the rough artwork, just because Max will have drawn
something that I didn't anticipate in the script, and I want to play it up with
new dialogue interchanges. Also, this
lets him know where NOT to spend time drawing elaborate background machinery,
since it will just have a word balloon covering it anyway. As far as improvements go – I just hope we
keep having fun!
GWR: Describe
your process when making an issue of 3MM. Are there benefits to working as a
father/son team? Drawbacks?
MAX: I have very little direct input into the
script writing, basically none, and that’s fine with me. Bob (Dad) conceived of the concept,
characters, and all plots and dialogue. He
writes the scripts in screenplay format, which works well for both of us,
although I might guess that is uncommon in the comic book industry. As I read the script, I see it in my
head. Then I re-read and go through it
slowly, and think of all the angles that might help tell the story. I draw very tiny thumbnails directly in the
margins of the script. This is where the
magic happens. Then I re-sketch the good
thumbnails and edit them down to what can fit on a comic book page, and that’s
like putting puzzle together. Then I
reference that as I start drawing on my Cintiq, using a program called Corel
Painter to make roughs, at which point I show Bob for approval, and he’s been
very nice about approving pretty much everything. So then I ink them, and color them, and then
submit them to Bob, who approves, and then he adds Detonation Films brand
Special FX, and maybe tweaks the dialogue using the artwork as
inspiration. Then he passes it back to
me, and I give everything a final unifying pass, final touches, tightening up
word balloons, etc. Then it's ready for
Comicpress. That's the production process. As far as what it's like to work with my Dad,
it's really a blast. We have a lot in
common, creatively. Growing up, most of
the comic books I read were titles that he introduced me to. We watched a lot of 80's action flicks
together and I really think that comes through in the comic. I watched all the cartoons he wrote for, and
many of those where adaptations from comic or video games. When I was thirteen/fourteen I was crazy
about Image Comics and coincidentally Dad was writing on the cartoon series
WildCATs, and we had stacks of every
single WildCATS comic and spinoff series, and that's mind-blowing for a kid,
and so I just read and drew comics nonstop. I remember touring WildStorm
Studios and meeting Jim Lee when I was 14; going to SDCC and watching my Dad
talk in panels, it was awesome. My
friends were insanely jealous growing up. And so now, working together as we are, it's really a blast,
because it flows so easily. We don't
have a lot of “fixes” or disagreements. Basically no notes as we pass it back and forth. That's really efficient and probably not
possible for most partnerships. But we make it work, and father/son stuff
aside, that's very likely due to my respect for his writing and his respect for
my artwork.
BOB:
For me, the great thing about all this is being able to work with Max. During his formative years, I mainly had an
office job, and we couldn't do much together other than those things he
mentions. His younger brother John was
born seven years later, so there was something of a gap between them. During John's formative years I had made the
transition to freelancing so my schedule was more flexible, and John and I got
to spend a lot of time doing things together, including the eventual creation
of Detonation Films. Max was in his
early twenties at that point, and working as a video editor when he wasn't,
say, passed out face down in an alley during a rainstorm, as is typical of that
age. (See
all this gray hair I have?) But he
managed to survive, and so did I, and now I finally get a chance to have fun
working on a creative project with him.
So that's my real blessing. I will add that when I have co-story-edited
on animated series with writers such as Larry DiTillio or Greg Johnson, we had
a mutual understanding that you could "veto, but not change." If they were thinking of doing an episode
which would entirely ruin something you were doing in another episode, you
could ask them not to do it, but you couldn’t piss in their pool. We kept track of each other's work, and we'd
take each other's ideas and run with them, but there was mutual respect for the
boundaries. Working that way actually forced us to be more creative. We'd constantly be blindsided by something
the other was doing, but it kept us nimble, figuring out how to make it work
with our own plans. I now actually
prefer working that way. Max may draw
something I didn't expect, but I know he had a reason for it, and if it looks
cool, I'd rather figure out how to capitalize on it rather than just demand he
change it. The comic is ultimately
better for it.
GWR: 3MM
belongs to a company called Detonation Films, is that correct? What exactly is
DF, and what is your involvement with it?
MAX: The money to produce 3MM comes from DetFilms
(I actually get paid to draw this, which is awesome). I have worked on other DetFilms projects as
editor and storyboard artist, and occasionally acted. As far as owning it, I’m not too sure. I believe we are partners, with Bob having a
controlling interest. It's in writing
somewhere.
BOB: Detonation Films started
on July 4, 2001, when John and I made a short film involving a mechanical dinosaur and fireworks and toys being set on fire. We had such fun we decided to do more. They got increasingly elaborate, and it
quickly became apparent that fireworks were not the way to go. They were loud and dangerous and didn’t
photograph well. I needed to learn how
to do my own effects. Well, you can learn
anything on the internet these
days. Before long, I started making
better, safer effects, but I was still working with kids. It was then that Max, who was working for a
wedding video place at the time, showed me how you could shoot an explosion
against a colored backdrop and add it into a shot later via computer. We began doing this, and people turned out to
be interested in using those effects shots in their own films. They wanted us to do more. And better. Detonation Films (and its subsidiary DetFilmsHD) actually became an
official company in 2006, and while it has never been large (we call it the
“donut shop” because it’s open 24 hours, we make all the product ourselves, and
it makes donut shop money) it gets by, and it has allowed us to explore a lot
of new venues, including 3MM. On the advice of a friend, Max and I (over one of
our Sunday breakfasts) drew up a simple, one-page contract spelling out page
rates, who owns what, and what percentages. You don't have to get complicated about these
things, but it is important that each party know what they are responsible for
and what their rights are as regards the project. That way no one feels taken advantage of.
GWR: How
much of the story/characters did you both have planned before beginning 3MM? Do
things ever change from what you had planned?
MAX: I can't speak for Bob, but I don't know
what’s coming any more than the readers. I take it a script at a time.
BOB: Right now, we have scripted and roughed out
the drawings for the next two years of story.
I don’t want to get further ahead than that because for all I know
people will all be wearing Google Glass or something by that time and we'll
just have to change everything. But I
have plans beyond that; they'll just be adjusted as regards the world in 2015.
GWR: Is
this meant to be an on-going series for sometime, or do you already know how
and when everything will end? Or would you prefer not to say?
MAX: I personally hate it when comic books series
stop abruptly, or worse, carry on well past their prime. So I think we can carry on for a few more
episodes before we wrap it up. I think
we had discussed doing at least 6 episodes, but who knows.
BOB: I'm a writer. Stories from now until doomsday are no problem, but I also have an
ending planned if and when we decide we need it. It's important to have an exit strategy; just
keep it flexible.
GWR: What
would you like to see happen with 3MM in the future?
MAX: It's sounds sappy, but I'm already very happy
with what we've achieved, so whatever good happens from here on out is just
icing on the cake. I do want to
eventually have the episodes available for purchase online, maybe via Comixology
or some such service. The original comic
pages are insanely high resolution and detailed, and I've made a version to
view on an iPad 4, and it's stunning. So
I want to see that available for purchase someday. I know fans of the series will see the worth
in that. And I definitely want to have
some printed versions available, even if it’s just a limited run. Movies, TV shows, video games, toys- those
would be nice I’m sure, but that's up to Bob.
BOB: One step at a time. As
Max said, we wanted to do this just because we wanted to see if we could, and
we did, so we're already good there as far as personal satisfaction. There's no question that there will be a
print version of the first three episodes in graphic novel form – I've already
resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to now have to learn Pagemaker, and
I'm looking into the best options for printing. So yes, that will be happening, because we can do that ourselves. Certainly open to other options as they may
come up, but that one at least I can say is coming!
GWR: Closing
remarks?
MAX: With episodes 1 and 2, we've setup the
premise and introduced all the main characters.
Now we are on episode 3, which is probably the most action-packed comic
you will read anywhere, and I guarantee you will be riveted. If you like the series, or have fan mail or questions, we're
trying to do all that through the Facebook page and "likes," so I encourage
everyone to "like" us and spread the word.
It's still a pretty new comic and we are really trying to build
readership to ensure that we can continue with this awesome project. So tell all your friends to check it out and tune
in for our weekly updates! And thank
you for the interview!
BOB: I'm just really happy
that we're doing this at all, and I'm absolutely giddy about what we have
planned for the future. Thanks so much
for having us!
PS. Last night I went to check on Super Mega Comics to see if a new one had been posted, and look which comic was being advertized in the side bar:
Three Minute Max! Spooky, right?
