Subtitles of the Movie

My name is Jason Maranto, as I'm sure you've figured out by the many times that you've seen my name or heard me say it in the course of this video training but it's important to note why you would listen to me in the first place. Why does my opinion or my thoughts or my knowledge matter at all and, of course, the short answer for that is that I have often, in the course of my career, been in a position to hire and fire and I have done so. So, I could potentially be the guy who's going to hire you or fire you in the future so, obviously it's a good idea to get inside the head of somebody who's in that position or who has been in that position or who might be in that position. The other thing that's important to know about me is that I'm a pretty decent artist in my own right and while I do spend a lot of time teaching my primary thing that I like to do is wildlife and landscape painting. I really consider myself to be a fine artist at heart, although the bulk of my work has been done in the comic book industry. I was lucky enough to be able to bring those two things together in this current project that I'm working on right now called Code of the Wild and this is a project that's been a long time in coming. Luckily the publisher has been very, very understanding with me because this is a labor of love. This is something that's very, very unusual. What it is, is it's a wildlife comic book that teaches children about the role of predators in the wild and how valuable they are and how important it is to protect them and the first book is about wolves and wolverines and how they work within the ecosystem, what their function is and what happens when they compete for territory and, of course, what happens when they don't have the territory that they need to compete. This is a subject that's very near and dear to my heart and the publisher's name is Sean Jordan and he has previously worked for companies like Marvel Comics. He wrote the story and he's publishing the book so it's very much a small time labor of love type thing but it'll be out most likely around the same time that this video is hitting the stands. So, I really, really hope that you check it out. It's codeofthewild.com and it really, more than anything, would express why I think, artistically speaking, you might want to listen to me as I think it's a pretty good finished product. I mean, it's watercolor. It's painted in the real world so it's not digital, but I was responsible for everything on Code of the Wild, all the way from the, as you would imagine, the breakdowns the thumbnails, all the up to, you know, the finished lettering and I had Rob work with me on some of this because of the fact that there were some things in there that I needed some assistance on and he needed a job at that particular moment in time because we were working on something that required him to be less employed than he had previously been. And that is the nature of the comic book business, by the way, in case I didn't mention it elsewhere, is that being a freelancer means that there are times when in order to improve your craft you may be unemployed for a stretch of time and if you are constantly employed it may be difficult to improve your craft. So, being unemployed isn't necessarily always a bad thing when you're a comic book artist, it just means that you have an opportunity to get better. And being employed isn't always necessarily a great thing because it means that you may not have that opportunity to get better. What I would say about myself other than that is that I've done just about everything that I've taught you in this training series on a professional level. I've done them at a pretty high level, not just professionally but good for the profession. What I would say about all of the disciplines that are involved in here is that none of these are an end. The industry is changing and I'm of the opinion that if you don't adapt to the changing tides of technology and the taste of the potential reader base then you're really going to find yourself on the outside looking in and this training, for me, was more about getting that out there than anything else. I really, really honestly believe deep down inside that the next generation of people coming in need to be the innovators and if they're not then the industry is going to go through some very, very tough times.