Arts and Warcraft

I met Hank [Kanalz] at last year's New York Comic Con and showed him some of my work. A few months later he asked me if I wanted to work on a project, but didn't tell me what it was. I said of course; I was trying to get as much work as I could.

When they told me it was World of Warcraft I almost fell over. I was a huge, huge fan of WOW, and of Blizzard in general - I've played everything they've ever put out. So it was a huge thrill for me.

When I first met Jon, he showed me some sample pages he'd done for Hulk. I was flipping through his portfolio and he had left in a dwarf he'd drawn, I think by accident. He was just doodling but it was really well done. When I called him up I was remembering the dwarf picture, thinking, 'If this guy can draw the Hulk like he does and dwarves like he does, obviously he can draw orcs...'

Just shave the Hulk and you've got an orc, right? [Laughs]

I didn't know he was a hardcore player till I called him. Then his enthusiasm for WOW and for the project really came out.

I played the game for a long time. Then I realised I wanted to get into comics, so I probably needed to quit playing and get some work done, get samples made. So I stopped. Sure enough, when I got they job they were like, 'Hey, we're going to get you an account, we need to get you playing.' And I was like, 'Nooooo!'

But it works out. Sometimes when you're drawing for ten, 12 hours a day, you need a break. I'll jump on and play for a little bit and it's like a refresher. It reminds me that the world is so vast, the aesthetic and so beautiful, and that's why I'm having a good time drawing.

There's pressure every single day you pick up a pencil, with every line you put down. When I do an armour set I try to make sure it's exactly like it should be in the game, because if it's not, I know that as a gamer I'd be like, 'That's not the Warbringer armour set! That horn shouldn't point that way!'

It's really nerve-wracking; even more so because I'm a big fan, I think, and I want to see everything perfectly laid out. It's very stressful in that regard. But it's also rewarding when you put a page down and it looks like it's supposed to.

The writers, Walter and Louise Simonson, put together an issue-by-issue outline. Actually they just turned in outlines to take us through issue 25. We review that with Blizzard, and they might say, 'We really love this direction, we like this other aspect over here, we'd like to introduce a new character there...' It's a very collaborative process.