George Romero

George Romero is considered to be the grandfather of Zombies in modern culture starting with Night of the Living Dead which brought zombies into our culture, but the boom really started with Dawn of the Dead. there has been multiple sequels to the of the Dead series. A game has even taken to using of the Dead in the game name. Though he has been shown to have distaste in newer zombie renditions, especially in the TV series of the Walking Dead, since it doesn't have the same undertone his movies do.

Zambies in games

Zombies are a common element to horror games though not all are alien like Dead Space, one well known franchise Resident Evil basically brought Zombies into the mainstream of horror games. The series actually started out as the traditional zombies in games the slow shuffling Romero style, but to incorporate a new market they changed how the Zombies moved and acted. They became more like slaves akin to the Haitian folklore, but also act like regular people as well. The reason I'm going into this is to show that game zombies are adapting to keep people interested where as most programmes or films tend to stick with traditional zombies.

That's not to say that there aren't games with traditional zombies, one game is basically Dawn of the Dead. Known as Dead Rising it's a game where you survive against zombies in a mall, sound familiar? Though you can use anything in the mall as a weapon and in later instalments they introduced weapon combinations.

Dead space

Necromorphs in Dead Space is a new take on zombies in that it is an Alien infection as apposed to an earthily one. It's has all the same concepts that we know but just a new spin, as well as taking inspiration from old horror movies.

Dead Space in itself is a game based in space with deadness. The clue is in the name really but, through looking at how they made the designs it turns out they looked at car crash victims, as horrific as that sounds. They wanted to give the Necromorphs a realistic touch by recreating how some victims looked for the game.

Zombies in Comics

Zombies have been used quite a bit in comics such as The Walking Dead and Marvel Zombies. George Romero even has his own comic called George Romero's Empire of the dead.

These comics have all been released to critical and commercial acclaim, as many fans of comics also like the idea of comics. It could be seen as pandering to a crowd but it sells so mwhy not?

Zombies in animation

This is an animation of zombies in how it is portrayed by people of a similar age to me.

Where do zombies come from?

• Zombies are from Haitian folklore, called zonbi they are an animated corpse raised by magical means.
• Though associated with voodou religion it has no part in the faiths formal practices.
• the first English used word zombie was in an 1838 short story 'The Unknown Painter' as zombi
• The E was not added until the 1900's
• Zombies were widely used in Haitian folklore as the dead revived by the art of necromancy of a Bokor sorcerer
• Zombies remain under the control of the Bokor sorcerer as they have no will of their own
• Zombie astral is an incorporeal type of zombie
• Zombie astral is captured by a Bokor to enhance their spiritual power
• Bokors produce and sell decorated bottles with a zombie astral inside to give luck, healing or financial success
• It is believed after a time God will take the soul back and the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity
• It is believed that zombies represent soul dualism in Haitian voodou
• Each type of legendary zombie is missing one half of it's soul (flesh or spirit)
• Zombie belief has its roots brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the new world
• It was thought the voodou deity 'Baron Samedi' would gather them from the grave to bring them to a heavenly after life in Africa unless they offended him in someway, in which case they would be a slave after death as a zombie
• A zombie could be saved by feeding them salt
• Scholars have pointed out the significance of zombie as a metaphor for the history of slavery in haiti

How Comics and Manga Artists work

A traditional western comic is generally handled by a team of people doing different jobs but solely that job, for example Scott Snyder writes the comic/script and Greg Capullo pencils it. Pencilling is where the comic is initially drawn, the penciller determines how everything looks in the comic as long as it fits in the script. Then the pencilled pages are passed on to inkers and colourers where they will add colours, believe it or not. When all this is done it is sent to the publisher. There are certain exceptions to this rule such as Frank Miller or especially Andy Kubert, they tend to do scripts, pencilling and even colour, Kubert more than most.

An eastern comic is released weekly as opposed to monthly so there aren't many colours if any. Most traditionally it's in black and white. Depending on the success of the manga depends on how it's made the more successful one have a bigger team as opposed to smaller manga which have a much smaller team if a team at all. Looking at manga like Naruto or Bleach they have the team of a well selling book, where there is a main artist Misashi Kishimoto for Naruto and Tite Kubo for Bleach, who decides what's in the book what everything looks like and acts very similarly to Andy Kubert of Frank Miller. After they have decided what is in and how things will look there is specific people just for backgrounds shading and characters. Each person only works on a handful of main characters except for the main artist who does it all, before the others refine it.

How to draw the Marvel way

This is a tutorial on how to draw comics in the Marvel style. Specifically the people themselves, even though this isn't quite how it is done now I found it useful to have as reference.