5 Questions with Stephen from Specimen B-28

We’ve seen Stephen and Specimen B-28 around the Toronto conventions circuit a few times now. We recently caught up with Stephen at Toronto ComiCon when he kindly jumped in to assist us while were attempting to locate our next stop in the artist alley that was seriously lacking in signage. Lucky for us we were able to figure out what row number we were in and snag an interview with a fun webcomic creator.

GEEKPR0N: Describe your style in 140 characters or less
(Stephen is new to twitter so we let him get away with 140 words instead. Welcome him to twitter @StephenDaymond)

Stephen Daymond: Back in 2007 I started working on an animated short film called Specimen B-28. The film was about a guy who gets abducted by aliens only to discover that it’s his 100^thabduction surprise party.  Three years later, when I eventually decided to turn the story into a webcomic, I wanted to carry on in the same animated look I used in the film.

The other reason Specimen B-28 has such an animatorly feel is that I do all the artwork entirely in Flash.  Everybody thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to do the comic in Flash. After all there are way easier programs I could work in, like Photoshop or Sketch Book Pro, but I’m a big believer in art though adversity.  Doing things the hard way has a funny way of forcing artists into being more creative, experimental and adaptive.

If you could have any superpower what would it be and what would you do with it?

SD: If I could only have one super power I think it would probably be to conjure and weave karma into existence. I would be able to make bad things happen to anyone who willfully hurts other humans and help the good people who can’t catch a break.

Star Wars, Star Trek or Firefly. GO!
(Specimen B-28 is heavily influenced by all three, we thought it would be fun to put Stephen to the test with this one)

SD: I’m like a lot of people, I have a love-hate relationship with Star Wars. The original trilogy had so many memorable scenes, almost too many to name.  The characters were relatable and interesting, you really felt like you knew them, which in turn made you care about them.  When you care about a character everything about them becomes awesome by extension.  This is storytelling at its most powerful.  If you like Han then you love his blaster and the Millennium Falcon, if you like Luke then his lightsaber is amazing and so is the force.  In the new movies everything is completely backwards. It feels like George thought we would like these new characters because they were using Star Wars props and flying around in Star Wars ships, but I can’t think of a single relatable character in any of the new movies.  They were all so boring and uninteresting. I still love the original trilogy, but now I wear a Browncoat.

You’ve built Specimen B-28 into multi-faceted beast. The story of “Specimen B-28” exists as a television show, then you’ve created a sort of meta-comic around the cast, crew and filming of the show including interviews with the cast. What inspired this layered format?

SD: When I was a kid I loved reading the letters to the author in the back of my comic books, but when you decide to make a webcomic there is no back of the comic. I thought about doing a formal Q & A on the B-28 website, but in the end I thought it would be way more interesting if the answers came from the characters in the story instead of from me and would allow for some unique advantages.  For instance, it stops me from giving away too much information, it helps show another point of view and because the characters are flawed it also means that sometimes the answers are wrong or bias.  Doing it that way just seems more interesting to me.

I also do a segment where I take the characters in the story out of their make-up and get the actor to answer questions. I do this for a lot of reasons, but the short answer is that I created Specimen B-28 to feel like a movie or a television show.  I try to push the visual storytelling and don’t use thought bubbles.  So taking the characters out of make-up helps to reinforce this concept. I even do director commentaries to that end.

What can we look forward to coming up from Specimen B-28?

I think that people can look forward to something new and different if they read Specimen B-28.  It doesn’t really fit in anywhere and although that’s really been a huge problem for me as I try to find ways to generate interest.  I think it will be a refreshing change of pace for those who want something new.

Check out the gallery below for a taste of Specimen B-28. Visit the Specimen B-28 website to get the whole story.