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craigtaillefer.comThe Official Blog of Craig A. Taillefer: News, Art, Comics, Music, Ramblings, and more!

ChesterQuest Semi-Finals!

Since making the decision to get back into doing comics two years ago, it had always been my intention to start pursuing mainstream work once WAHOO MORRIS was back on track. While many opportunities have come up in that time that have kept WAHOO MORRIS from getting to where I want it to be, I started working on some mainstream samples back in September (those samples are still in the unfinished stages because of the increased workload I’ve been under lately, but that’s another story!).

But, back in late October, in anticipation of having those new samples to show, I emailed a link to my existing portfolio to every editor I could find an address for, and got a number of positive responses. So when Mark Paniccia at Marvel Comics emailed me in late February, asking me to do some sample sketches for their new MARY JANE series, I was pleasantly surprised but I didn’t put two and two together.

See, on January 31st, the cut-off date for email entries for Marvel Comic’s talent search ChesterQuest, I sent CQ a link to my on-line portfolio as well. I’d actually forgotten about it, but about 15 minutes after receiving the email from Mark Paniccia, I received an email from C.B. Cebulski himself letting me know that I had made it into the semi-finals of ChesterQuest. Needless to say, I was thrilled!

So, I ran out and got some reference for Mary Jane, did some sketches and sent them in.

mj_peter_sketch_cat mj_spidey_sketch_cat mj_maryjane_sketch_cat mj_liz_sketch_cat

And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

Two days before I was leaving on vacation, the suspense got the better of me and I emailed to ask if they were close to a decision. Unfortunately, the reason I can now talk about this whole experience is that the decision was not in my favour. They chose to go with one of the other artists under consideration. You win some, you lose some.

I will admit that I was second guessing myself from the moment I sent the sketches in that I shouldn’t have drawn the characters so “on model” of the original artist’s style, and instead drawn them more in my style. Who knows… I’ll be very interested to see what the art looks like when the book comes out.

Obviously I’m disappointed that I didn’t land the job. I think it would have been a fun gig, but, there will be other opportunities. I’m still pretty excited that I made it as far as I did. I believe there were something like 1200 entries world wide, so it’s pretty encouraging that I made it into the top 30 and was being seriously considered for an assignment.

Anyway, I’ve been bursting at the seams since February 25th wanting to tell the world the news!

Lastly, a big “Thank you!” goes out to C.B. Cebulski, Mark Paniccia, and Marvel Comics for the opportunity!

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