Rappin Robot

Rappin Robot

In 2013, I moved back to Northern California and was painting a mural for a friend of mine. He said, ‘ I gotta introduce you to someone…’. So I went with him to his friend’s studio. Smoov-E was recording his new album “Breakdance” and I showed him my portfolio. I was very fascinated with all of his equipment, in particular an old 80’s Boom-box.

“What if that thing just got up and started dancing around, busting moves.”, I said. He looked at me for a minute and said that he would pay me to draw him a comic book, so that we could use it as a music video. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time; it sounded like a exciting challenge. I wasn’t sure if I could even do it, since I had not yet done a whole book before (aside from my own amateur projects) having only worked on a few professional side jobs, but he seemed for real, and I needed the extra work after college.

The next day I walked in there with my sketchbook and my pencil and started drawing the main character, he silently walked up to me and put some headphones around my ears as I diligently scratched away on paper. What played next was the song ‘Rappin’ Robot’, minus the words of course, which he added later, inventing a robot-like voice device or micro-chip that would simulate the electronic vocals. Like two comic-book geeks, we talked for hours, sharing insights, experiences and love for Hip-Hop culture. Soon we came up with a story-line for a script. At first I was like, ‘we can do it all with black and white xerox’s and prisma-color markers.’ He was certain it wouldn’t come out right, so we learned how to do digital colors on photoshop and worked together. I eventually finished the hand-drawn pencils and inked all 36 pages total with front & back covers.

Working side by side, scanning and spending endless nights in the studio coloring, after a few months we had our comic fully illustrated, colored and with words! Now all we needed was a film crew and some actors. We went to a local breakdance competition one night at The Live Musicians Co-Op and saw a seven-year old kid named ‘J-Fresh’ win first prize. We both knew he had to be in the video, then Static John (a Friend of Smoov’s) came on to shoot and edit. With permission from Outer Planes Comics & Games, we wrapped the filming in one day and spent many nights piecing together the finishing touches. In my mind it was great to finally have a solid piece of work in more ways than one; a comic book and music Video, in one project. Plus getting to work with many talented people and to see it all come together was an truly an honor, not to mention I had been going to that same comic book store since I was twelve, it was just surreal. Later that year we had a booth and took it to APE Con in San Francisco. We had a blast and everyone loved it, but like any job, it was only the beginning. In this a case, it led me towards an even larger underground world of SF comics that I was destined to be a part of. I always refer to this as, ‘the one that started it all.’