Photo Issue #3, Page 3

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Lighting is important, kids. This photo has some things out of focus because I shot this during normal bar hours. I knew there wouldn't be anyone there, had permission, started taking shots (of both varieties). This was the best of them. I don't think it's bad, but part of me wishes I could come back during off hours, have them turn on all the lights, and I could go from there. Unfortunately, I don't believe I could get that type of access anymore. Also, I'm never fully pleased with any of my photos. I always better.

Also, the words are used to censor what bar this is 3 times in this photo.

Photo Issue #3, Page 2

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When I initially switched from a drawn comic to a photo comic, I kept in a lot of the drawn art for characters throughout the pages. Such as, originally I used Lisa Flowers drawn face from issue #2 in a future page, and you'll see that it is now a real person with a blurred out face.

The same is not true of Dameon Strykes. For him, I kept his drawn face. As talked about earlier, I don't want an actor who I have to rely on for his photos. Also though, I think using a drawn or artistic representation of Dameon separates him from the other characters. It makes him stand out as one of the few characters who has a face, but it's not of the physical world.

As for the report, I did some research and I believe this isn't a bad representation of what a report should look like. Feel free to call me out on it. This report also has a bunch of information that is important for background information, but not necessarily important for the story.

Photo Issue #3, Page 1

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Ironically, while multiple establishments didn't let me take pictures of the signs for the bathrooms, many others were 100% okay with my taking pictures of their actual bathrooms.

Unfortunately, taking pictures inside a stall is actually really difficult. Bathrooms have really bad lighting,  they are very cramped so getting the right angle / shot is infuriating, and while the business may have given me permission, it doesn't stop people from coming in and asking me what I'm doing. Despite now having a plethora of local bar bathrooms, I used none of them. This picture is from a place I lived. It gave me the advantage of changing the lighting as needed, as well as controlling the graffiti. 

Photo Issue #3, Cover Page

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And we're back on.

I originally wanted a unisex bathroom sign, but they were harder to find than I thought they'd be. Well, I found a few, and when I asked the store if I could take a picture, they thought I was weird. This photo actually was taken the night before it was supposed to be released. I just said fuck it, went to a local grocery store, didn't ask, snapped the shot, and walked out. Considering what happens next page, I thought this was fitting.

I am not oblivious, and I do not condemn the stores who did not give me permission. Having an unknown male hang around your bathrooms with a camera taking pictures does seem odd. I made sure when I went in that there were almost no customers in the store, and that I was quick with it. I didn't want anyone feeling uncomfortable.

Photo Issue #2, Page 16

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And so the last page of issue #2 is here.  The name "Dameon Strykes" is finally given.
As this is the of an issue, I'll be taking a month off to make sure all the new pages are ready to go. 

We'll return back to issue #3. Issue #3 had been previously released as a photo comic already, but I've made some minor changes throughout as well as some major changes on a few pages. My audience has also greatly grown since the original release of issue #3, so we'll be releasing it again much like we did this one with a page a week.

Photo Issue #2, Page 15

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I love taking pictures of pool tables. They provide so many options for focus, lighting, and arrangement.  If you're a beginning photographer, I highly recommend playing around with your camera and pool table. The hardest part is going to be generally pool tables are found in bars and other low light situations, and that causes some limitations.Use that as a challenge or a way to focus on just the arrangement and focus.

Not to mention, but you get the pleasure of playing pool, which I absolutely love.

Photo Issue #2, Page 14

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When I went hunting for this picture, I had clearly pictured a different bar. Went to the other bar, and unfortunately its sign was massive. The bar has a unique name, so I'd have to find a way to not show the sign, but the bar proudly announces its name to all, making it hard for me to get a picture of the bar without the sign. The only angle I could get of the bar without its sign was from an angle that not only hid the bar sign, but any semblance of it looking like a bar. I was disappointed that after 20 clicks, I found nothing usable.

On the positive side, I live in a town of many bars. While this bar's sign is visible, I know I've drank at many bars named "The Ship."

Photo Issue #2, Page 13

With no offense intended, for me churches are creepy.  It's where I learned about sin, about judgment, and the place I namely visited for funerals. I've never been religious myself, and so church has stolen multiple friends from me because I wasn't religious enough. I don't have any real positive associations with churches, but plenty of negative ones. I could do an entire comic book with churches as the image, and I'm sure I could make it creepy through the whole thing.

Photo Issue #2, Page 12

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Whenever I go on trips, I always make sure I have my camera with me. I never know what kind of interesting things I’ll run into. I have a whole folder of “potential photos” The folder grew so much that I made sub-folders like “Buildings,” “Vehicles,” “Nature,” “WTF?” and the like. Then some of those folders needed to grow further and now I have sub-sub-folders like “Livable Buildings,” “Demolished Buildings,” “Creepy Nature” and so on so forth. I have each file named, and I have an idea of where they are. Whenever I need a specific type of building, I peruse the folders.

I’ve had many for a long time that I don’t know where they were taken. I can make some guesses what city this is from, but nothing exact. I also made sure to remove any identifying marks, such as address #s or things like that. I’d hate for someone to get harassed because of my art. I do love these buildings though. So much character.

This picture is not of an asylum or a psychiatric ward or anything like that. I’m pretty sure it’s just someone house.

Photo Issue #2, Page 11

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Writing these pages is a pain in my wrist. It requires a lot of focus, and a lot of pressure. I like how they turn out through.

I also took a picture of the pages with the similar letters circled. Unfortunately, it made both letters hard to read, and just looked cluttered. So I used the clean pages instead. Soon though, the pages will transform into something else, and I look forward to that.

In the original drawn comic book, this and the next few pages were not included. It jumped from Hones being told about the other killer, to him just talking about some similarities. I actually had an entirely separate comic written of him exploring what happens here. While I've yet to return to that full comic, this and the next couple of pages explore this previous killer.

Updating the pages

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After preparing Issue #3 and #4 for release, I realized a problem. Between when I initially released #3 and #4 and now, I made some pretty significant changes to how I was doing the photo issues. With those changes, it made reading between #1 and #2 a bit difficult. Specifically, Detective Thomas Hones' font and background changed between the two sets. I like the current font I'm using, but was displeased with the size of the white backgrounds. I've gone through every single page with Detective Hones' speech, and made adjustments. On some pages, the change is just a few pixels, and others free up a lot of space.

While this change was made to make the transition between Issue #3 and #4 easier, I hope it also helps the pages. It makes Hones' lines feel more succinct, and should allow the page to be more visible.

An example of the differences. 
Original: 

New:

Photo Issue #2, Page 10

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My problem with using actors and taking pictures of someones face is that once I have established that "This is Agent Wu's face," I have to use that same actor every time. What happens when I need a page, but the actor isn't available? Maybe they are out of town for the week, month, year? Maybe they died? O maybe they're just dead to me because we had a falling out? Do I now awkwardly tip-toe around not taking this one specific character's face? Or do I try to establish a new face of the same character? Whatever happens, once I have a picture of someones face, they are now that character, and changing it won't be easy and it's risky. I don't want to use actors for that reason.

But shadow play on the wall? Not only will it go well with what happens in the future of this comic, it looks interesting, it can convey emotion, and I don't have to worry about re-using a face. I'm really happy with this page, and I hope my readers are, too.

But story line wise... in my drawn comic of this, what just occurred took a couple more pages, and was pretty damn clear. I understand what's going, so do my test readers... but I know what was supposed to happen, and my test readers know the story as well. How about you, internet readers, did you follow what happened over the last couple of pages with Detective White?

Photo Issue #2, Page 9

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Sometimes my pages are not photos, but stolen from the internet and edited. For this page, I simply googled "White Female News Anchor." I was overjoyed when I found an individual whose name was easily converted into Lisa Flowers. The only letter that the original photo did not give me was the letter "u" for my fake conservative news station, which I just stole from the w in news. Perfect? No, but I'm pleased with it. This is also the easiest page to find the skull in. Maybe...too easy. Hrm, I'll have to consider that.

I do not use Photoshop, but a similar program named GIMP. If you are an artist who cannot afford a full version of Photoshop, GIMP is an amazing substitute. I haven't used a full version of Photoshop in years, but when I converted over to GIMP it had many similar features and a very similar feel. It is free software made by free developers, so it won't have all the flashy support that Photoshop or other professional photo-editing software does... but you can still make beautiful work with it. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Photo Issue #2, Page 8

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News vans, just like cop cars, is always a thing I find when I can't take a picture. Maybe I don't have my camera on me, maybe I'm rushing to work, but I could never get the picture I wanted. I wanted a news van parked on the side of a street. I went down to a local rally that I knew the local news stations would be covering, but every van I could find was surrounded by people. This photo is supposed to feel like there was no-one around, and so as opposed to a picture of a news surrounded with people I went to wheres news vans are always parked: news stations.

At this time I'd like to apologize for my absence in pages.  I am currently suffering from a knee injury. At the time of this writing, I'm attempting to go on short term disability and potentially get surgery. Putting any weight on my leg causes me an extreme amount of pain. Seeing as my photographs involve a lot of footwork, its been harder to continue my comic book.  I do love doing this though, and I really hope I can continue.

Photo Issue #2, Page 7

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I'll be honest, I feel this is one of poorest efforts of a page.  I wanted to buy a police badge for Detective White. I couldn't find good ones from the fun and cheap local all year round Halloween store, and purchasing good replicas on line was more than I could afford (both the Cover photo and page 6 were relatively cheap investments which I might use in my daily life... a fake police badge is not). So I decided to just go with the hand cuffs... which broke while I was using them. On top of that, as mentioned in the Page 6 blog, I was a little disheartened how the two pictures were coming out, and I was running into a deadline.

Lesson is, sometimes art doesn't turn out how you want it to, and you gotta use what you got. In this case, I feel like the less interesting page lets the reader focus more on the story. What happens, story wise, in this page is pretty heartbreaking. By now it should be obvious that this issue, if not this entire collection, asks the question of "What is justice?" I think this page lets that idea start really sinking in.

Photo Issue #2, Page 6

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When originally written, this page and the following were supposed to be very similar. I bought the crowbar and staged it in the way you'll see in page 7.  When it came to take this picture and the following page, I was displeased with the similarity between them.  While pacing, trying to think of what to do with either of the pages, I passed the glove on the ground behind my residence and noticed the thumb was bent over, like holding something.  If I was using actors, I would have had an actor with a black glove holding the crowbar while wearing a black hooding. I'm not using actors though. Creepy dirty gloves that already look like they want to hold a crowbar on the other hand? Definitely.

Photo Issue #2, Page 5

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This was my parents old backyard, before they moved, and one of the first picture's for this issue I took. I knew I would be needing something like this, and took a huge series of similar photos. Some with shadows, some with shadows against the fence, some from around different corners, others darker and others lighter. If I  have the chance, I want to play with my camera and my photos. Having options is important.

Photo Issue #2, Page 4

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I love walking. Just grabbing my camera and going. I find a great deal of good pictures that way. The one bad thing about doing a story line comic book is that I am hunting pictures instead of finding them. This picture is a found one. The original page was to be binoculars, then I found a van just parked right by my place and decided that looked a lot better.

I'd love to find a way to do just single pages occasionally.  Right now though, I'm to focused on finishing the issues I do have!

Photo Issue #2, Page 3

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The original idea of Dameon Strykes came to me when I lived in Boston. I was a poor college student (as opposed to a now poor man with a degree), and I slept on the floor of a crummy apartment complex. The walls of my apartment were red and it overlooked an alley. I slept on an air mattress on the floor, and near where I laid my head was a hand print in the red paint. While it was most likely just a kids print that was trying to "help" their parent as they painted the room, I took a picture of it. I wrote the story of Jared Blaine, a man who saw a horrible crime in the alley his apartment faced, did nothing so the criminals got away, and then was tortured by someone that knew he let them get away.


This led to me taking a series of pictures like this about some kind of Lovecraftian beast, which over time evolved into Dameon Strykes and the Soulscourger. While I lost the original photo, along with a lot of the other things I did back then, this image always stuck in my head, and Jared Blaine has stayed as a Dameon Strykes story,

Photo Issue #2, Page 2

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When I originally went looking for locked doors, I wanted a door with the chain. I didn't think my camera could pick up that the door was locked Unfortunately I couldn't find any with the chain lock, so I decided to just hope that my readers would get that it was locked. This is a picture of my own front door, which has a slightly larger than normal gap between the door and the frame, and when I went to take the picture I noticed with the flash on, the locking mechanism could actually be seen! I rejoiced.

Photo Issue #2, Page 1

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In the drawn issues, I wanted every letter to be different from the letter before, and did sentences different. For the first issue, the letters written by the Soulscourger were re-written by my hand to look as close to that page as possible. This page, I allowed it to differ more. As we go on, the transition will continue until each letter is unique as it was, and will be again, for issues #3 and #4.

Which is a total and complete pain in my ass! I can see why my artist in the drawn issues didn't do every letter. When I finish this series (planned 6 comics), and if I move on to another series, I'll probably go to back to entire sentences. 

Photo Issue #2, Cover Photo

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And so the new re-issue begins!

I was surprised how hard it was to find a sickle. Easy to find saw blades, or curved saw blades, but sickles are apparently a thing that don't exist anymore.

Photo Issue #1, Page 18

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The last page of photo issue #1. I love book ending stories. When Hones first steps in (page 11), Hones states every day he hates his job a little more. Now that he's dealing with a serial killer, he just out right hates it.

Photo Issue #2 will be following Detective Hones as he tries to hunt down this new vicious Serial Killer, much like he did in the drawn comics. While the 1st photo issue followed pretty faithfully to the drawn issue, the 2nd comic is going to have some additional content that did not make it into the drawn comic. While the 2nd issue won't start next week, I won't have you all waiting until next fall either. I'm hoping just a week or two off will get me situated.

Dameon Strykes Issue #1, Page 17

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I create 4 layers for every page. The first layer is the image itself. The second layer is my copyright. The third layer is labeled as whomever is speaking, so this page would be listed as "Hones." The fourth layer is labeled as "Skull." In nearly every page, I have hidden a skull into the image. The skull has generally had its opacity greatly decreased, but its been in every image. As an example, in this page, its hidden in the carpet in the lower right hand side.

Dameon Strykes Issue #1, Page 16

This was directly behind a building I used to live in. I thought it was a great shot. Again, I’m not going to show you the gruesome, I’m going to let your mind go there. Only one of my shots has ever showed actual death:

That’s actual roadkill. I was hunting for roadkill for months. I was not going to kill something with my car to get this shot, so I had to hunt. I spent weekends driving through country roads. On my way to a wedding, I came across a dead raccoon. I decided that was not the time to take a picture of it, because it was in the middle of the day and the lighting was just all wrong. After the wedding, I went to the same location and apparently people cleaned up the kill.

I was getting so desperate that I actually asked friends that if they found roadkill in my area to let me know so I could get a picture of it.  I love my friends, because more than one responded. One even sent me a picture of their find, and I was about to use that photo.

Week that the cover is supposed to be released, I’m driving home from a camping trip. It’s dark, like using my brights dark, and I notice this dead deer.  This is a long highway with no nearby exits or turn-arounds. I need this shot though, so I take a U-turn in the middle of the highway, drive beyond the deer, and take another. I park behind it. My cameras battery is flashing low. I quickly get out of my car, and take as many pictures as I can, with my headlights, with my brights, without, with my brake lights every way I can until my camera is dead. I don’t review the photos or anything, and my camera dies. I just cross my fingers and hope that it works.

Two shots turned out, and so we get the double cover.

Dameon Strykes Issue #1, Page 15

For the full comic, go to Iron Fist Regime.

Some of my photos make me feel like I’m doing something illegal. Strangely, it is not the photographs where I’m actually doing something illegal, but a photo like this. I simply walked into an area that had a jewelry shop that was locked up, and took photographs of the jewelry from behind the bars.  There was nothing illegal about my actions, but at the same time I was worried someone would think I was staking out the place and call the cops on me.
Doesn’t help that I walked in and out of the stores three times that night with my camera just waiting for them to lock up. Yeah, not suspicious at all.

Dameon Strykes Issue #1, Page 14

The full comic can be viewed at: www.IronFistRegime.com

I have an aversion to using real people's faces. One of the big reasons is if I do it once, it might be more and more expected. Then I need "actors," and actors are people who are not nor on my time schedule. It is frequently difficult for me  to find the right shot I want, but then to have people rush out to be in the photo would make this project impossible to do.

Sometimes a face is needed though. Luckily, Sheppard Douglas' artwork for the drawn comic book gets to be resurrected at those times. So now we get to meet Agent Constance Wu.

Dameon Strykes Issue #1, Page #13

The full comic can be viewed at: Ironfistregime.com

My longer term readers might remember this page from the drawn comic:'

While I may not being using any of the originally drawn pages, I am still following that story line. So, for this staged photograph, I pulled up the old and tried to replicate it. It took me a few pages to get the writing to look proper. When my artist drew this, the page looked like it had been folded up and placed neatly in the back of the Night Rider's throat, like you'd expect Buffalo Bill to do with a moth. Soulscourger is not that concerned with protecting either letter nor his victim, and would've shoved it down his victim's throat. So... I ate the page. Omnomnom. I really should have added the ketchup before I tried to eat it, would've made it taste better.

Photo Issue #1, Page 12

Unlike the prior page where I had difficulty finding the subject, images of small animals are easy to obtain. The problem was sorting through them and choosing what image I wanted.

At one time, I was considering making something like a fake arm that would also have food on it so it would attract animals. I’ll be honest, it would make the picture significantly more gruesome; but, more than a few of my readers have commented that they really enjoyed the simplicity of my pictures. That I take a simple thing, such as a picture of an empty culvert, and the language I use  leaves the violence up to the reader’s imagination. 

With the concept of simplicity in mind, I went through all my pictures again.  I decided that this image was the least complex, and allowed for the most mind wandering.

Dameon Strykes Issue #1 Page 11

New page has been added ( www.ironfistregime.com ), and we’re finally going to meet Detective Thomas Hones.

It was suggested to me I start a blog about the pages. I don’t intend on adding anymore to the story in this blog as I feel it would distract from the actual pages themselves. I want them to tell the story; if I wanted this to be entirely written word I would have tried writing a novelization of Dameon Strykes.  No, the intent of these blogs is to talk about how the page was made.  Where I took the photographs, changes I made, and what not. Very few of the pages are staged, and some of them having interesting stories behind them. Hopefully this area further enlightens as well as entertains any of my readers.

Often times I find myself looking for things that one would think it would be easy to find; until you hunt for it. Police vehicles might always be lurking around that corner you’re speeding around, but finding one parked (and not currently conducting business) is a bit more difficult. Add in the number of times I found one without my camera, ran home, only to return to the vehicle gone and this one took quite some time. While I could use my phone, I find myself having to do a lot more post-work to get a lesser quality image. There’s also a lot of things I do while taking the picture that my Canon Rebel can do that my phone simply cannot. I found this vehicle just waiting for me while  I was hunting down next week’s page.  I took my time getting this from various angles without appearing too suspect. Sometimes I go weeks without finding an adequate picture, but this day I shot two of them. The other will be next week’s page.

2016: A year in review

2015 ended with the death of Lemmy Kilminster, and 2016 decided to greatly increase the number of famous artists I love dying. Starting with David Bowie and ending with Carrie Fisher, people who were influential to my life passed on.

While the world is a poorer place for having so many amazing people no longer in it, their deaths impacted my life minimally. Their deaths might have changed the conversations I had with my friends, but it didn’t change who my friends were, who my family was, nor what job I held.

Over-all for me, as an individual, 2016 was a good year. Early in the year I received a promotion at UPS. I went from a loader to supervisor. While the stress increased, I’m infinitely happier with this job than I was with Enterprise. I have new challenges every day, and I can see the impact I have on the work place. Lorena and I grew closer this year. So much so that we decided to move in together. There have been plenty of new friends, and I don’t feel like I lost contact with any of my old friends.

Only thing I’ve really lost this year was the house I grew up in. My parents decided to move closer to my brother, who lives in Vegas. I got a chance to visit the home of my youth one last time, and I was surprised how much emotion it caused me to say goodbye to that place. But it’s also a place I only saw occasionally. Saying goodbye was hard due to its symbolic nature, but its impact on my actual life is minimal. It gave me a good reason to visit my brother and family in Vegas, and hopefully something I’ll do more of in the upcoming years as well.

I also suffered a knee injury. Out of nowhere, I found myself limping one day. I learned I had microfractures in one of my kneecaps. I had to start going to physical therapy to work on it. Losing the ability to run, at least temporarily, was outright heartbreaking. One of my resolutions for 2016 was to run more, and the injury simply squashed my ability to do that.

Two of my resolutions for this year were about writing. I definitely continued writing, spending much of the year editing the novel I’m hoping to find a publisher for. I also worked on other projects, including continuing Dameon Strykes #1 and a fantasy book. I, unfortunately, did not find an agent. This wasn’t due to my lack of effort, and as such I won’t count it as me failing. I am just going to need to approach this goal in a new manner.

Another goal of mine was to do something for myself. I feel like I accomplished that with things like letting myself have some frivolous pleasures, like Everquest, as well as taking one of my vacation weeks to just do the bare minimum.

Outside of my injury, artists that I enjoyed dying, and election results I don’t even want to talk about, 2016 was a great year for me. I’m hoping I can continue to grow in 2017, and some ways I plan on doing that are:

1. I need to find a professional editor for my book. The major problem I ran into with trying to find an agent was my lack of having it professionally edited. I tried to cut corners and find others to help me edit, but that wasn’t enough. So, after my tax returns, I plan on investing in myself and my dreams.

2. Work on my physical health, specifically my knee. I want to get running again. I want to be active again. I need to watch what I do and do it in moderation, but it's something I can, and will, overcome.

3. Reconnect with friends. This is really something I need to do early on in the year, but every job I’ve had, come mid-November work becomes busier and I close up. There’s a bunch of people out there that I love that I haven’t gotten to see for awhile because of that. I’m already starting to make plans to reconnect.

4. I’d like to find a new place to live. I’d like to find a place I want to call home, even if just temporarily. I moved twice last year, and I’m ready to feel at least a little settled.

5. Be a force of good in the world. With the recent election results, a lot of bad shit is going to happen. While I might not be able to stop the potential nuclear devastation this world may suffer, I can at least stand up for fellow Americans against hate and bigoted laws that, while they may not impact my directly, impact friends, family members, and just other human beings who deserve respect.