TECHNICAL NOTE: Click any of the pics to see them LARGER!!!
Interview: Martin Whitmore – Artist and Webcomic dude for Tasty Flesh!
Greetings Shamblers,
So a little while back I featured one of my new favorite web comics ‘Tasty Flesh’ which features TWO of my favorite things… Strippers AND Zombies… so how could I NOT love it? Anyway, so I do up a little post and pop it up on the site- and much to my surprise I get a reply on my standard ‘I am posting your stuff on zombieinfo.com’ note I always send out. Not ONLY is Marty a zombie aficionado (and digging the site), after digging a bit I find out he’s multi-fucking-talented! He has a few artistic irons in the fire, from these AMAZING zombie sculptures (with his friend and sculptor Phil Hynes – he sculpts, Martin Paints) to TONS of different projects ranging from Pinups, to zombies…to …Flowers?!?!? Yeah, that’s right, for the first time in zombieinfo.com history, I am featuring fucking FLOWERS on the site! Don’t be hatin’ or I’ll rip your face off…
So, let’s get started!
ZI: Hi Marty, thanks for taking the time and all that- now tell us a bit about yourself and your art history!
MW: My pleasure! Thanks for talking with me. As far as art, I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil – and I just kept going from there. Studied Art & Technology at Youngstown State in Ohio, and worked odd jobs and freelance illustration for a couple years before moving to Austin, Texas. A little over a year ago, I quit my day job and started working for myself full-time as a cartoonist & illustrator.
ZI: How have horror/zombies influenced your artwork? Do you have any favorite films/books/shows that pulled you in the direction of doing a zombie comic?
MW: From a very young age, I was always into weird things. I’ve always loved chainsaws – started drawing them in the 6th or 7th grade. For the first 4 or 5 months after I was born, my parents lived next to a drive-in theater that was playing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre day and night. That could’ve had something to do with it. …but I think it was the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness trilogy that really turned me on to the idea of zombies – that you could take a chainsaw to these living dead things and still be the *good* guy? How fucking cool is that? Chainsaw dismemberment: my zombie gateway drug!
ZI: Ok, so I nearly shat myself when I saw the Dead Ringers sculptures… Tell me how that came about…and how can people get one?
MW: My friend Phil (the sculptor for the project) and I both belong to a forum online devoted to sculpting and painting miniatures – the kinds you’d use to play D&D and other tabletop games. One day I saw a post Phil made showing a zombie surfer he’d sculpted, and I lost my shit – I thought it was the coolest thing! Phil saw that I liked it, and came to me with the idea of doing one-off zombie sculptures for people like us. We decided Phil would sculpt them, I would paint them, and we’d sell them on my website. If you want to get yourself one, you can visit the site here:
http://meatmarket.martinwhitmore.com/products/custom-miniature-zombie-bust
…and read more about them here:
http://martinwhitmore.com/dead-ringers-custom-zombie-sculpture/
ZI: The zombieinfo.com standard question: Fast or Slow zombies…and why?
MW: Really, why can’t we just have both? Fresh zombies *should* be much faster than their older, rotten counterparts. Then, as the body breaks down and rigor mortis sets in, zombies should have the decency to slow to a shambling crawl. …but there’s no reason they can’t come out of the gate sprinting, is there?
ZI: Do YOU have a ‘Z-Day’ plan, and if so what is it?
MW: You’ve got to be fast and strong if you want to survive Z-Day, so I’ve been doing CrossFit. I’ve been going to the local CrossFit gym for about 6 months now, and I’m in the best shape of my life. Also, keeping a stockpile of weapons never hurts!
ZI: Dude… Flowers? Really!?!?!
MW: Ha! Yes. As a freelance illustrator, you end up taking on a lot of projects you never saw yourself doing. Someone needed 40 or so flower illustrations to go on her custom soaps, and I needed to eat that month. Flowers pay the bills – zombies are a passion. Hopefully soon zombies will pay the bills!
ZI: Ok, ok… they are actually pretty cool, and I DO like me some soap… anyway, what is next for you?
MW: Well, I’ll be continuing Tasty Flesh – and hopefully putting out a hard copy collection of the first 100 strips (with bonus material, of course!) in the near future. Also, another friend of mine and I have been working on a d20 roleplaying game called “Against the Dead,” which revolves around the zombie apocalypse! I’ve created upwards of 70 illustrations for the book (and I’m not done yet!), and we’ve created a unique gameplay system based on the d20 Modern rules that I think zombie fans are really going to appreciate. You can stay updated on the progress of that project (and find out when we’re ready to publish it) on my blog:
http://www.martinwhitmore.com/
CAPTION: The man’s gotta eat! So go buy some stuff from his site! (Marty did the art for this seafood restaurant)
ZI: Thanks for taking the time- and thanks for doing up this custom sketch of yours truly as a toon/zombie! (see below- or get a walpaper version HERE) Do us a favor and keep us in the loop with all the Martin Whitmore happenings- and we’ll be reading Tasty Flesh!
MW: You keep reading it, I’ll keep writing/drawing it, and hopefully when the apocalypse comes a few less people will be turned into screaming Happy Meals!
And there you have it…I have to say I’m DIGGING THE FUCK out of the pic of me Martin did for the site… I decided that when I started this thing that I’d only appear ‘zombified’ on the site (although we all know that I’m gonna be a full on survivor due to my foolproof zompocalypse plan…right?) and Martin certainly took that one to the next level. Get the WALLPAPER VERSION here! Thanks again Marty!
I’m the Zombieking… and this topic is now DEAD to me…
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October 30th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
[...] by the Zombie King over at http://www.zombieinfo.com today, and you can head over to the site to read the interview! We cover all kinds of interesting topics: from zombie survival plans, to Dead Ringers, to secret [...]