Street Team: Video Game and Origins

I have a video game.

The Street Team package with the James Mason's Urban Shogun

Well me and 6 other creators, have a video game out called Street Team: Reign of The Iron Dragon, that's available for sale this very moment. Wow!
You can get it as a digital copy here: http://streetteam.bigcartel.com/
or you can get the hard copy (along with some other great products) here: http://www.urbanshogun.com/streetteam/

And to think, it all started about 2 and a half years ago with a really bad sketch(cue that tinkle-ly flashback music)

From the back to the front: Blackbird, Stalker, Bear(the dog), Dodger, Aaron

Actually, it started a little bit before that, but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say, somewhere along the line someone mentioned a forum called "BlackSuperhero Talk" to me (www.blacksuperhero.com [BSH for short]) and I became a member. There, I meet tons of other independent artists and creators like myself who were trying to put out their own comics and creations, and at some point I became cool with a lot of these guys. Flash forward to an average day of really bad artist block, when I took it upon myself to sketch some of the other member's creations as a team. Hence the bad sketch you see above.

But the idea behind the sketch is what took root in the minds of the viewers AND the creators. Demand came in for an official poster. I've always considered myself a giver, so I went for it. I recruited a fellow BSH member by the name of Mase to do the colors, in exchange for bringing his character into the poster, and voila. The poster was a hit.

Clockwise from top: Blackbird-created by Charlie Fab; Stalker and Bear- created by Stanley Weaver; Tiger-created by James Mason; Aaron-created by Shawn Alleyne and Koran Curtis; Dodger-created by Joe Currie.

And remains so to this day.
But once again, I think it was what the poster symbolized more so than the art that was what took root in many people's minds. Why is that?

There are many reasons.
-Black people don't feel as though they have a voice in comics. Besides being a minority in life, the numbers become infinitesimal in the comic book industry, both in front of the camera and behind it.
-We don't have a lot of characters to call our own, and a lot of the ones we do have don't give us much to be proud of. (Bishop becoming the bad guy with a robotic arm and being stuck 1 million years in the future? C'mon!)
-There aren't that many black people working professionally  in the industry and of those that are, only a select few are super-stars. People don't even know some of their favorite artists on a book might actually be black, and if you saw them in real life you would probably confuse them with any other black person.
-Then, in the independent market, some of the books you find with black characters produced by black people(sometimes not), aren't the greatest literary works of art.
-And finally, there's this preconceived notion in comics(and most things) that black people don't look out for our own and can't work together. Which is ridiculous!

So here I come with a poster featuring an all black cast of characters (that were created by black people); that looks pretty decent; and was drawn and colored by 2 black guys. The very idea of it made BSH explode. And that's when I got the call.

But more on that next blog.
For now, don't forget to pick up the game and/or comic for a loved one; and "like" me on facebook to be entered into a year-end raffle. Share my raffle link and be entered into a special V.I.P drawing. Be sure to let me know you did though..otherwise I won't have any way of knowing if you did or didn't.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/PyroglyphicsStudio

Thanks for reading peeps.
S


"Waiting patiently, no..patiently faking/Anciently aching, anticipating the act so internally pacing..." - Geist