An Artist’s Perspective of Final Gamble
Final Gamble hit it’s funding goal on August 15th! Two weeks ago we brought you the writer’s perspective from Bobby Singer. This week we’re featuring the artist’s perspective from Jorge Santiago Jr. –
Working on Final Gamble is an interesting comics challenge but one that I enjoy quite a bit. It’s not often that a comic like this gets greenlit, where the conflicts aren’t resolved with energy blasts or gunfights, but with quiet moments of tension built around the luck of the draw or the skill of an adept gambler. This makes expressions and mood more important than in other comics: the close up on the face of the stone calm dealer, the beads of sweat on the brow of the gambler at the edge of his limits, the exhale of smoke from a player trying to calm their nerves, etc. Paying attention to these kinds of details and knowing how to ratchet up the tension with panels is exactly what made me fall in love with comics to begin with.
I earned my Master’s degree in Sequential Art from the Savannah College of Art & Design, and my thesis was on the language and storytelling of panelling. I believe that my study and research in that field will really help me visualize Bobby’s dramatic story and compose each moment into a nail biting experience for our readers! Final Gamble also feels like an expansion of my previous works like Spencer & Locke and Curse of the Eel, so I feel like I can bring all of my best tools to the drafting table. It also helps that I have amazing collaborators like Harry and George who are bringing their own strengths to make this comic a very well crafted piece of crime fiction.
Being a creator that was influenced by manga, I think this is a great project to be a part of. In Japan, their comics industry covers an enviable variety of different genres and stories, and gambling is a very popular genre of storytelling there. One of the works that has influenced my approach to Final Gamble is Akagi, and especially the Akagi anime by Madhouse. The design of Danny is actually patterned after Kanata Hongou, who plays Akagi in the live action adaptation of Akagi. I’ve seen Hongou-san in a number of great roles, and I wanted to pay homage to his great performances by basing a design after him. Most people would be able to tell that manga is a huge influence on my comics, but I hope to demonstrate my own sense of storytelling so that I can acknowledge my influences while standing on my own.
This may seem like a tangent, but I’m actually a huge fan of magicians and magic shows. I especially love card tricks, and with Final Gamble issue one, I got to spend a lot of time analyzing card magicians performances to properly convey the flick of the wrist that comes with an experienced card player. One of the most impressive card mechanics is a man named Richard Turner, a man who has lost his eyesight, but has such incredible senses and dexterity that he can still stack the deck and deal any card in the deck that he wants. He also was known to associate with criminal types for gambling purposes, so it felt right on the money to study his movements for the card dealing scenes in issue one.
Overall, I feel like Final Gamble is a comic that fits too many of my interests for me not to draw it! It combines an interesting manga-inspired premise, with storytelling tension that I love to create, and has characters with abilities that are a blast to study and right up my alley! I look forward to working on more and I hope everyone enjoys issue 1!
— Jorge Santiago Jr., Artist, Pencils & Inks