From the Vault - HeavenFall 1999/2001

Back when I worked a regular 9-5 job I used to take naps in the afternoon. I'd get off of work at around 4pm, go home, and crash until around 7pm. Then I'd get up, eat some dinner, and do art all night long. I'd end up going to bed around 2am and getting back up at 7am to start the day again. In essence, I split my day into two work days, waking up for both "days" at 7am and 7pm. One day for the job type job and one day for my art. It seemed to work for me.

A lot of "regular" people said I was messing up my sleep cycle and probably wasn't getting the REM sleep I needed. How did I go into a deep sleep in such short spurts of sleep? How did I dream?

How did I dream?

I actually dreamed quite well, thank you.

The concept of Heavenfall came to me one afternoon in a dream, almost fully formed and ready to go. The dream had a gateway to Heaven, angels and demons, and Heaven's chosen champion, a kid with nothing left to lose, as the main character.

I woke up and wrote the whole thing down. In the months that followed, I fleshed out the story, did research into angels and demons, did character sketches, and wrote out a full story. I did sample art for the project and a few pages. I sent the project proposal out to every comic company I thought of to see if anyone might be interested in publishing it.

And I was rejected by every single one of them.

This is one of the pieces I did in 1999 as a sample for the proposal. It sat in my portfolio for two years before I dusted it off and scanned it into my computer to play with Photoshop. It was the first image I fully colored in Photoshop and I think it took me three days to complete. I figured, as a final touch, I'd make it into a movie poster. At that time the project seemed dead and I had nothing left to lose so why not?

I still really love the story of HeavenFall and would love to revisit it someday. After having so much fun writing an OilCan Drive film script last year I always thought, if I write another script, it will be a HeavenFall script. So, yeah, someday something more will be done with this idea.

And, the dream...I still have fond memories of that dream. One of my favorite parts was near the end. Like most of my dreams my perception shifted from watching the story, like a viewer watching a movie, to me actually inhabiting the main character. Near the end of the dream the main character, or I, was standing on a scorched desert-like landscape. The sky was covered with beautiful, fire colored red and orange clouds. It was like the end of a movie. Above me, a group of angels alit and flew into the sky.

As I looked up at them, they whispered to me from the sky...

"Just remember, we love you...we always have..."