2021 - 11/2021 Meeting

Page Created: 07/17/21. Last Updated: 11/15/21.

DENNIS CALERO, ARTIST / AUTHOR

Meeting Date: November 13, 2021.

Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Attendance: 21 + 4.

Meeting Program: Slideshow / Talk / Q & A with Comic Book - Movie Artist / Writer.

Notes:

This was particularly challenging meeting to pull off. The Church changed its internet provider and password without telling us, so we were unable to connect with their WiFi. Speaker Dennis Calero and club members Moshe Yuda, James Phillips, and Kathy Cannarozzi put their heads together and we came up with work-arounds to display our speaker's art and zoom stream the meeting. Thanks also to Pamela Webber, Claire Fisher, Roberto Lopez, and John Upton for their help with the set-up and tear-down.

Six of us made it to the Stateline Diner after the meeting.

Newsletter Account:

The Saturday, November 13, 2021 General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Our speaker was artist and author Dennis Calero who gave a terrific talk and slide show.

There were considerable technical difficulties with this meeting resulting from the Church's change in internet provider. Our thanks to Moshe Yuda and James Phillips for their resourcefulness i coming up with work-arounds, to Kathy Cannarozi for handling our zoom broadcast, to Clair Fisher, Steve Herr, Roberto Lopez, John Upton (and apologies to anyone I missed) for help with the set-up and clean-up. Special thanks to Pamela Webber for her kitchen set-up and clean-up and for running our first Ice Nine pre-meeting discussion since we returned to in-person meetings.

Speaker Denis Calero is a first-generation Cuban-American. The family did not have much money when he was growing up, but paper and pencils were cheap. His mother has drawings from him when Dennis was three and trying to sketch Mickey Mouse. He read his first comic book, an issue of Batman, while he was in a hospital's waiting room to see his sick brother and was smitten with the idea of a career in art.

Our guest attended the New School of Arts high school in Miami. The objective of the school was to prepare its students to obtain scholarships at art schools. The institution allocated five hours of class time towards standard high school courses and the other three to art classes. Mr Calero qualified for a half-scholarship to Pratt, a feat made difficult to his missreading of the art project due date and having to create it in one day.

By this time Dennis had changed career plans, intending to work a sensible job as an architect. A summer internship at an architectural firm convinced him to look for a different line of work, so he fell back on his love of comic books. He honed his portfolio, showed it to Marvel's James DeSimone, and was soon freelancing at Marvel Comics.

It was a good time to enter the field. The industry was booming at the time, but it crashed a few years later. He moved into commercial and advertising art where he discovered that it was often easier to deal with the Account Managers of a product than the company Art Director. Our speaker had some interesting times but grew nostalgic for comic book illustration. Dennis created a one-page demo that he wrote, lettered, penciled, inked, and colored and sent it out as a calling card.

His timing was spot-on. The industry was in another upswing and Marvel had become disenchanted with 22-year-olds who could not be trusted to hit their deadlines. He was hired to assist a talented but slow-working artist and wound up taking over the title when Marvel changed its frequency from bi-monthly to monthly. Dennis said that being meticulous was the difference between being a good artist and a great artist. Coninuted at 2021-11/2021 on the club website, sfabc.org.

Notes from talk:

The title was X-Force.

Our speaker made an unsuccessful pitch for an alternate-world Captain America story in which Cap was not frozen in suspended animation but instead served to the end of the war and was discharged. He then became a Private Investigator in a noir Los Angeles.

That pitch was not successful, but it led to a variant project, X-Men Noir, a limited series in which the characters of the X-Men were not mutants but operating in a noir LA. He later drew Weapon-X Noir and another short series in the Marvel Noir Universe.

He later went to the Skywalker Ranch where Steven Spielberg assembled a team to create a series of movie adaptations of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

Did three different versions of the script, one for each of the main characters, to make sure everyone had a sufficient character arc, etc.

Worked on a campaign which used used astronaut Buzz Aldrin. He employed special paper so allow him to do one area as a traditional illustrator and a different area as a computer artist.

Showed images of X-Men and of goddess, Athena.

Frazetta quote: I'm here for the final effect. I don't need to prove I know how to paint.

Used a 3 D model for his Batman: Tales of the Dark Knight to maintain the architectural continuity from room to room.

Talked about artist Wally Wood's: The Nine Panels That Always Work.

Did a fun internal campaign for a Document Storage company to sell it's workforce on how good the upcoming changes and relocation were going to me.

In advertising you deal with an Art Director and an Account Director. Surprisingly, it is often easier to work with the Account Director than the Art Director.

Currently working on graphics for the film, Driver, with the Rock and Bill Bob Thorton.

Working for Titan Books on an Assassins' Creed project.

Drawing the first completely faithful adaptation of Casino Royale set in the 1950s.

Did cover of Sandman / Locke and Key crossover.

Adapted The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe.

Science fiction and Dungeons & Dragons don't pay enough for him to do more than occasionally dabble.

Computer allows him to be more innovative and try things out quickly. If an idea doesn't work he can go back to the previous version and try something different.

Spoke about how covid & telecommunication had effected him.

Explored kickstarter and may do one down the road.

Sorta bi-lingual in Spanish.

Finds Things 3 to be a good Project Management App for one person.

Japanese Manga is an assembly-line process in which one person draws all the cars, someone else the buildings, etc.

Spiderman and Doctor Strange are two of his favorite characters.

Art is a magic trick The artist works in two dimensions. The viewer translates it into a separate reality.

He talked about the difference between comic book illustration and storyboarding. In a comic book, you are a co-creator of a finished. Storyboarding is there to help the director with play with his ideas and guide him. Dennis did some storyboards for The Eternals, but those scenes were cut in the developmental process and never shot.

Has done storyboards for several projects which are still in development that he cannot talk about.