How TV's coolest show, "Heroes" jumped off the page
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THE hit NBC drama "Heroes" has introduced characters with extraordinary
abilities that have made the show the most popular new series of the
season. But the real hero behind this incredibly creative and fresh
drama is the show's artist, Tim Sale.
Sale, 50, not only produces the giant paintings done by artist and
"precog" Isaac Mendez (played by Santiago Cabrera), he also creates
the all-important "9th Wonders!" comic book, also drawn by Mendez,
that's followed religiously by Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka).
The comic book is the show's bible and shows viewers - and the
characters - where the plot is headed.
Sale's vibrantly colored art work makes "Heroes" a two-dimensional
success story, feeding hungry fans clues each week. How Sale came to be
the show's unlikely hero is fascinating. The 20-year industry veteran
has worked for Marvel on The Hulk and Spider-Man. While with his
present employer, DC Comics, he took on Catwoman and Superman, and was
asked by "Heroes"creator Tim Kring to illustrate the pilot script. At
the time, Sale had no idea how integral his artwork would end up being
to the show's future. When "Heroes" was picked up by NBC, Sale was
brought on as the show's "artistic consultant."
He likens his job to the function police personnel once served on the
crime drama "NYPD Blue." Says Sale, "It's the same as when they hired
ex-cops to teach Dennis Franz how to handle a gun."
Virtually every episode of the show features a scene where Hiro
exclaims over the comic book or a contemplative Peter Petrelli (Milo
Ventimiglia) ponders the meaning behind a painting. "The art drives the
narrative much more than I thought it would have," says Sale from his
studio/garage in Pasadena, California.
"I knew Isaac would be a character, but didn't know how big his role
would be. He could have been killed off. In fact, when I saw him with
his head cut open [in an early episode], I thought, 'I guess I just
lost a job,' and yet it's been more since then," says Sale. To keep up
with production demands, he gets scripts well in advance, but he
prefers not to read them.
That way, Sale says, "I get to see the art in the show the way
everybody else sees it. There are script updates almost every day, so
if I've started preliminary drawings on something, it could completely
change by the next day - it's easier and more efficient to say, 'Tell
me what you want me to draw.'"
While illustrating the panels for the "9th Wonders!" comic book are a
snap for Sale - they're executed in the traditional style, with pen and
ink, then colored in later - the paintings proved to be trickier.
Because he's colorblind, Sale draws in black ink and dilutes his work
for gray tones. To make his drawings look as if they were done with a
paintbrush, the image is scanned into a computer. A colorist adds
color, variations in tone and texture, and then the finished product is
blown up and printed on canvas. (In a notable exception, the
technicolor mushroom cloud on the floor of Isaac Mendez's studio was
printed on moveable rubber mats.)
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that the dramatic figures in the
paintings sometimes don't look quite like the actors in the cast. Sale
explains: "I'm not very good at likenesses, so if they really want it
to look like someone's face, they have to get me a picture."
Most of the paintings that Sale creates are based on scenes that
haven't been filmed, which explains why one painting of cheerleader
Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), in which she's looking at the camera
over her shoulder, doesn't quite look like her.
Fortunately, when he draws the comics, he works from photos of already
filmed scenes.
Some cast members, though, are easy to draw because their features lend
themselves to the form, he says. "You put a quarter on a page, draw a
circle and that's Masi Oka's round face. I'm exaggerating, but I can
easily make something that's identifiably him," he says.
Ultimately, though, Sale's work is close enough to reality that you
immediately recognize the images.
"The point of the artwork is for it to be eerily familiar to the viewer
- 'Where have I seen that before?'" he says. With all the heroes'
storylines beginning to converge, there'll be more opportunities for
viewers to say just that.
HEROES, Monday, 9 p.m., NBC