Meet the Creators
Todd Livingston ~ Robert Tinnell ~ Neil Vokes ~ Anthony Schiavino
In his early teens, Todd was bitten by the show biz bug (this was
before there were vaccinations) by regularly appearing on “Dr.
Madblood’s Movie,” a Virginia late-night TV show. As soon as he could
drive (not safely, but legally), he was hired for the midnight to six
a.m. shift at the number one rock station in town, making Todd the
youngest DJ to ever say “Q-FM is the HOT FM!” Todd split as soon as the
station was overtaken by an evil corporate entity and at 19, joined the
comedy group OPEN SEASON while still performing in area art/punk bands.
Seeing no future in anarchy, he left music to focus on writing and
performing comedy, but used his skills to produce a single of Open
Season’s signature bit, “The Shakespeare Rap,” which became a top ten
hit on the DR. DEMENTO radio show. The group began touring the U.S. and
Canada, headlining clubs and colleges and becoming regulars at New
York’s The Comic Strip and Improv and L.A’s Comedy Store, where they
would often share the stage with Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler and Chris
Rock.
During the slim non-touring time, Todd took gigs acting for network TV and movies, including UNSOLVED MYSTERIES and Umberto Lenzi’s cult horror favorite HITCHER IN THE DARK. The comedy boom ended in the mid 90’s and Todd eased into the world of network television production, where he has worked closely with Jennifer Lopez (a great dancer, by the way), Stevie Wonder, Martin Sheen, Carmen Electra, Samuel L. Jackon and did I mention Carmen Electra? Hubba-Hubba!
The supernatural comedy film SO, YOU’VE DOWNLOADED A DEMON, which Todd directed and co-wrote with former Open Season partner Nicholas Capetanakis, premiered in May 2004 at the Cannes Film Festival. The French heaped praise on him. They also heaped wine, cheese and pasta on him. Now, he has to heap his ass to the gym.
In the midst of all this, THE BLACK FOREST, the graphic novel he wrote with Bob Tinnell received rave reviews and sold out in 44 days, proving that America loves monsters. In the coming months, Todd’s story BELLE DORADO, which is illustrated by Eric J., will appear in the horror western anthology “Western Tales of Terror.”
He hates quicksand and bees. Not a casual hate, mind you, but an all-out, balls-to-the-wall hatred that sometimes cannot be controlled.
Raised by wolves, Robert Tinnell gave up life as a feral child to enter the motion picture business, which he unwittingly assumed was more civilized than the wild. Armed with a talent of immense proportions (or extraordinary good luck – the predominant theory among former classmates, business associates, and wives), he has managed to work in the film industry for twenty years as a writer, producer, and director (how he first gained employment at the tender age of eight is another story). Starting as a production assistant for legendary genre filmmaker George Romero, Tinnell used his on-set experience to gain valuable insight into the world of feature filmmaking. Perhaps even more importantly, he was able to effectively lower his moral standards considerably. Starting at the age of twenty-three, Tinnell produced a variety of independent feature films including SOUTH OF RENO and the notorious SURF NAZIS MUST DIE. At the same time, he contributed to the coarsening of American culture by working extensively in the burgeoning music video industry.
Despite these triumphs, Tinnell’s dream of becoming a working writer/director eluded him. Having burned most of his colleagues in his single-minded pursuit of this obsession, he turned to the one segment of the industry he had heretofore avoided: television commercials. Things went well, with work for clients like Farah, Clearasil, and Kawasaki. Critical recognition followed. His work made the cover of Adweek. Another spot received a nomination for the prestigious Belding Award. There was only one noticeable hitch: Tinnell despised the advertising business. He faked his own death in order to escape. It was during this period, hiding out in abandoned adobe south of Mexicali, subsiding on rice, beans, and warm Tecate beer, that Tinnell began to write spec scripts. This proved a turning point. That and the realization that his disappearance had gone completely unnoticed by his friends and colleagues in advertising.
In 1995, Tinnell traveled to Canada where he was able to obtain compromising photos of a leading Quebecois producer. A deal was struck and Tinnell was allowed to write and direct the ACE-nominated film KIDS OF THE ROUND TABLE. A Disney Channel-favorite, KIDS… led Robert on a six-year-run for Montreal-based Melenny Productions. Over this period Tinnell directed cult favorite FRANKENSTEIN AND ME with Burt Reynolds and Louise Fletcher (also running on Disney), AIRSPEED with Joe Mantegna, and BELIEVE (starring Ben Gazzara and Elisha Cuthbert) for Lions Gate. Critical acclaim followed, as all of the films have done well on the festival scene, including the Berlin Film Festival. Things have gone well enough for Tinnell to acquire a trophy wife as well as a couple of kids.
Other projects have included a screenwriting assignment adapting the French language hockey comedy LES BOYS as well as an original horror screenplay entitled SACRIFICE that has been optioned by Raw Entertainment. More recently Tinnell was hired to adapt the Anthony Bourdain novel THE BOBBY GOLD STORIES as a screenplay.
In the meantime, a whole new world has opened up for the filmmaker – that of comic books and graphic novels. Tinnell’s debut graphic novel, THE BLACK FOREST, debuted in the spring of 2004 to rave reviews and sold out in 44 days. He is currently teamed up with TBF partners Todd Livingston and Neil Vokes on a new graphic novel, the horror/western THE WICKED WEST. In the fall of 2004, Tinnell will debut two online strips on several websites, including www.sunnyfundays .com. The first, FEAST OF THE SEVEN FISHES, is a romantic comedy drawn by artist Ed Piskor. The second, SHADOWDANCE: A TERRY SHARP STORY, is best described as “THE SAINT meets CURSE OF THE DEMON” and British artist Adrian Salmon is handling the artwork. A graphic novel, THE FACELESS: A TERRY SHARP STORY, will follow in late spring of 2005.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Tinnell is currently exploring the lucrative possibilities of combining foreign tax credits with extortion in the hopes of financing more personal films. I've been telling stories in comic books professionally now for 20 years, thanks to my wife,Siri, convincing me to give the comics biz a try. I started at Comico Comics in 1984, with friend and inking partner Rich Rankin who has long since left the business for a "real job".
Comico hired me to pencil the Japanese cartoon based Robotech Masters for my first regular gig. This eventually led to Rich and myself co-creating EAGLE, which we self-published for several years through Crystal Comics (our own label) until the b& w comics boom, fizzled. I then dove back into the work for hire pool again.
There was SUPERMAN ADVENTURES with the legendary Terry Austin; TARZAN THE WARRIOR with old friends Wheatley and Hempel; FRIGHT NIGHT; Douglas Adams' LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING; ADVENTURES OF THE MASK with that demi-god of inkers, Jay Geldhof; UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, where I got to fulfill a childhood dream of drawing two of my favorite Steve Ditko characters, Spidey and Doc Strange, with writers Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern (and Jay again on inks); JONNY DEMON with Kurt (we'll be returning to Jonny again in the next CBLDF book MORE FUND COMICS 2 ,due out in September ‘04); CONGORILLA (yes, I said Congorilla) with Steve Engleheart and Jay (you seeing a pattern here?);NINJAK with Kurt; JURASSIC PARK with Engleheart; the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and recently Jeff Amano's GENE-FUSION and most recently PARLIAMENT OF JUSTICE with my little bro, Mike Oeming. I've left quite a few out due to space and humility...well, ok, just space.
During the period I was working on Parly, I had been talking with fellow horror film fans and filmmakers Robert Tinnell and Todd Livingston about adapting a story treatment they had done called THE WICKED WEST into graphic novel form. For the longest time it looked like we were going to be doing that next, but fate intervened and set us on the path to the WW1/monster rally/adventure THE BLACK FOREST.
The success of THE BLACK FOREST made the decision as to what to do next very easy. Toddy, Bob and I jumped back onto the WICKED WEST horse and are having a helluva ride. This book promises to be even more satisfying than FOREST.
I have several more projects coming up, right after, THE WICKED WEST in 2004 and beyond. First I’ll be teaming up with hot young writer Miles Gunter on something called ZOMBEE,which will finally give me an opportunity to draw samurai in a story best described as THE SEVEN SAMURAI meet THE EVIL DEAD! Then a return to JONNY DEMON; MARC OF THE VAMPIRES; EAGLE and many, many more!
It has been an honor and a privilege and a pure, unbridled joy to be a storyteller/artist all these years. I hope that I've been able to share a little of that joy with all of you.
That's all there is to it, Neil Vokes 7.8.04 "To truly innovate the future of design, it’s my philosophy, that one must start out by learning from the past, as well as being aware of the current trends or otherwise. A designer can only be versatile if they are aware of the world around them, be it within cultures, news, or nature, in order to bring something new to the creative future. A design can be simplistic yet, at the same time, realize a complex, layered meaning. Toning of a photo can give a thousand different stories to the same subject. Texture and atmosphere can give the plain everyday a new genre or mood. The right typestyle, if one knows the taste of the audience, can attract more customers. A campaign for a film is only as powerful as the knowledge one puts behind it, and sometimes the campaign itself can be even more powerful than the moving image. A solid designer is aware of all of this, learns it, absorbs it, and makes it happen seamlessly. Design, in any sense of the word, is an evolving quest for knowledge and, like with anything else in life, you can never learn enough." -- Anthony Schiavino 2003
My part of The Black Forest stems from this such mentality.
During the slim non-touring time, Todd took gigs acting for network TV and movies, including UNSOLVED MYSTERIES and Umberto Lenzi’s cult horror favorite HITCHER IN THE DARK. The comedy boom ended in the mid 90’s and Todd eased into the world of network television production, where he has worked closely with Jennifer Lopez (a great dancer, by the way), Stevie Wonder, Martin Sheen, Carmen Electra, Samuel L. Jackon and did I mention Carmen Electra? Hubba-Hubba!
The supernatural comedy film SO, YOU’VE DOWNLOADED A DEMON, which Todd directed and co-wrote with former Open Season partner Nicholas Capetanakis, premiered in May 2004 at the Cannes Film Festival. The French heaped praise on him. They also heaped wine, cheese and pasta on him. Now, he has to heap his ass to the gym.
In the midst of all this, THE BLACK FOREST, the graphic novel he wrote with Bob Tinnell received rave reviews and sold out in 44 days, proving that America loves monsters. In the coming months, Todd’s story BELLE DORADO, which is illustrated by Eric J., will appear in the horror western anthology “Western Tales of Terror.”
He hates quicksand and bees. Not a casual hate, mind you, but an all-out, balls-to-the-wall hatred that sometimes cannot be controlled.
Raised by wolves, Robert Tinnell gave up life as a feral child to enter the motion picture business, which he unwittingly assumed was more civilized than the wild. Armed with a talent of immense proportions (or extraordinary good luck – the predominant theory among former classmates, business associates, and wives), he has managed to work in the film industry for twenty years as a writer, producer, and director (how he first gained employment at the tender age of eight is another story). Starting as a production assistant for legendary genre filmmaker George Romero, Tinnell used his on-set experience to gain valuable insight into the world of feature filmmaking. Perhaps even more importantly, he was able to effectively lower his moral standards considerably. Starting at the age of twenty-three, Tinnell produced a variety of independent feature films including SOUTH OF RENO and the notorious SURF NAZIS MUST DIE. At the same time, he contributed to the coarsening of American culture by working extensively in the burgeoning music video industry.
Despite these triumphs, Tinnell’s dream of becoming a working writer/director eluded him. Having burned most of his colleagues in his single-minded pursuit of this obsession, he turned to the one segment of the industry he had heretofore avoided: television commercials. Things went well, with work for clients like Farah, Clearasil, and Kawasaki. Critical recognition followed. His work made the cover of Adweek. Another spot received a nomination for the prestigious Belding Award. There was only one noticeable hitch: Tinnell despised the advertising business. He faked his own death in order to escape. It was during this period, hiding out in abandoned adobe south of Mexicali, subsiding on rice, beans, and warm Tecate beer, that Tinnell began to write spec scripts. This proved a turning point. That and the realization that his disappearance had gone completely unnoticed by his friends and colleagues in advertising.
In 1995, Tinnell traveled to Canada where he was able to obtain compromising photos of a leading Quebecois producer. A deal was struck and Tinnell was allowed to write and direct the ACE-nominated film KIDS OF THE ROUND TABLE. A Disney Channel-favorite, KIDS… led Robert on a six-year-run for Montreal-based Melenny Productions. Over this period Tinnell directed cult favorite FRANKENSTEIN AND ME with Burt Reynolds and Louise Fletcher (also running on Disney), AIRSPEED with Joe Mantegna, and BELIEVE (starring Ben Gazzara and Elisha Cuthbert) for Lions Gate. Critical acclaim followed, as all of the films have done well on the festival scene, including the Berlin Film Festival. Things have gone well enough for Tinnell to acquire a trophy wife as well as a couple of kids.
Other projects have included a screenwriting assignment adapting the French language hockey comedy LES BOYS as well as an original horror screenplay entitled SACRIFICE that has been optioned by Raw Entertainment. More recently Tinnell was hired to adapt the Anthony Bourdain novel THE BOBBY GOLD STORIES as a screenplay.
In the meantime, a whole new world has opened up for the filmmaker – that of comic books and graphic novels. Tinnell’s debut graphic novel, THE BLACK FOREST, debuted in the spring of 2004 to rave reviews and sold out in 44 days. He is currently teamed up with TBF partners Todd Livingston and Neil Vokes on a new graphic novel, the horror/western THE WICKED WEST. In the fall of 2004, Tinnell will debut two online strips on several websites, including www.sunnyfundays .com. The first, FEAST OF THE SEVEN FISHES, is a romantic comedy drawn by artist Ed Piskor. The second, SHADOWDANCE: A TERRY SHARP STORY, is best described as “THE SAINT meets CURSE OF THE DEMON” and British artist Adrian Salmon is handling the artwork. A graphic novel, THE FACELESS: A TERRY SHARP STORY, will follow in late spring of 2005.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Tinnell is currently exploring the lucrative possibilities of combining foreign tax credits with extortion in the hopes of financing more personal films. I've been telling stories in comic books professionally now for 20 years, thanks to my wife,Siri, convincing me to give the comics biz a try. I started at Comico Comics in 1984, with friend and inking partner Rich Rankin who has long since left the business for a "real job".
Comico hired me to pencil the Japanese cartoon based Robotech Masters for my first regular gig. This eventually led to Rich and myself co-creating EAGLE, which we self-published for several years through Crystal Comics (our own label) until the b& w comics boom, fizzled. I then dove back into the work for hire pool again.
There was SUPERMAN ADVENTURES with the legendary Terry Austin; TARZAN THE WARRIOR with old friends Wheatley and Hempel; FRIGHT NIGHT; Douglas Adams' LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING; ADVENTURES OF THE MASK with that demi-god of inkers, Jay Geldhof; UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, where I got to fulfill a childhood dream of drawing two of my favorite Steve Ditko characters, Spidey and Doc Strange, with writers Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern (and Jay again on inks); JONNY DEMON with Kurt (we'll be returning to Jonny again in the next CBLDF book MORE FUND COMICS 2 ,due out in September ‘04); CONGORILLA (yes, I said Congorilla) with Steve Engleheart and Jay (you seeing a pattern here?);NINJAK with Kurt; JURASSIC PARK with Engleheart; the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and recently Jeff Amano's GENE-FUSION and most recently PARLIAMENT OF JUSTICE with my little bro, Mike Oeming. I've left quite a few out due to space and humility...well, ok, just space.
During the period I was working on Parly, I had been talking with fellow horror film fans and filmmakers Robert Tinnell and Todd Livingston about adapting a story treatment they had done called THE WICKED WEST into graphic novel form. For the longest time it looked like we were going to be doing that next, but fate intervened and set us on the path to the WW1/monster rally/adventure THE BLACK FOREST.
The success of THE BLACK FOREST made the decision as to what to do next very easy. Toddy, Bob and I jumped back onto the WICKED WEST horse and are having a helluva ride. This book promises to be even more satisfying than FOREST.
I have several more projects coming up, right after, THE WICKED WEST in 2004 and beyond. First I’ll be teaming up with hot young writer Miles Gunter on something called ZOMBEE,which will finally give me an opportunity to draw samurai in a story best described as THE SEVEN SAMURAI meet THE EVIL DEAD! Then a return to JONNY DEMON; MARC OF THE VAMPIRES; EAGLE and many, many more!
It has been an honor and a privilege and a pure, unbridled joy to be a storyteller/artist all these years. I hope that I've been able to share a little of that joy with all of you.
That's all there is to it, Neil Vokes 7.8.04 "To truly innovate the future of design, it’s my philosophy, that one must start out by learning from the past, as well as being aware of the current trends or otherwise. A designer can only be versatile if they are aware of the world around them, be it within cultures, news, or nature, in order to bring something new to the creative future. A design can be simplistic yet, at the same time, realize a complex, layered meaning. Toning of a photo can give a thousand different stories to the same subject. Texture and atmosphere can give the plain everyday a new genre or mood. The right typestyle, if one knows the taste of the audience, can attract more customers. A campaign for a film is only as powerful as the knowledge one puts behind it, and sometimes the campaign itself can be even more powerful than the moving image. A solid designer is aware of all of this, learns it, absorbs it, and makes it happen seamlessly. Design, in any sense of the word, is an evolving quest for knowledge and, like with anything else in life, you can never learn enough." -- Anthony Schiavino 2003
My part of The Black Forest stems from this such mentality.