Interview: Jaysin Osterkamp

Aug 11, 2009 | 3 Comments

Jayson Osterkamp

While at the WizardCon over the weekend of Aug 6-9 2009 I had the excellent opportunity to interview a self published comic illustrator, Jaysin Osterkamp.  Jaysin illustrated the comic “Lost”, written by Derek Glascock, and is currently involved with several ongoing projects with Film Munkey.

Q: I was reading on your website that “Lost” was originally planned as a film.  How did it evolve into a comic book?

A: Derek, our writer, wrote it as a film and approached us saying, “I really want to make a film with you guys, but it has to be really low budget because we really don’t have a lot of money.”  Our goal was to shoot the entire film on $200, you know, tapes, everything.  All the money went to catering.  We loved the script, we all thought it was hillarious so we got a bunch of actors together, shot the film, it took like an entire summer to shoot it.   We weren’t smart enough to realize that you have to watch the tapes after you shoot them, and we watched them after everything was shot and it was absolute garbage.  We decided that it would never see the light of day.  So, years go by, I get in a car accident, I break my chest, I can’t get out of bed and my girlfriend walks in with a pad of paper and she said “just do something.”  I was really depresssed, and I had just finished reading the script and it still made me laugh.  I can’t belive five years later the script is making me laugh that hard.  I thought, maybe I’ll do a comic book about it.  So low and behold, it started out as a really small comic online, and people loved it.  I was like “Ah! I think we might have something.” So I finished the whole series.  The cool thing about Derek is that he let me have creative reign.  I would ask, “Can I make this character look like this?” and he would say “I don’t care, just do it.”

Q: What got you going, and how did this turn out the way you hoped?

A: This was written to be a film script, and I am of the belief that if you are going to remake something, even for a different medium, stay true to the original piece.  That’s why I think a lot of remade films are so goddamn horrible.  So, I cut the film script into four issues.  I didn’t add anything extra, and originally we didn’t wanna do anything more than just four books.  There is talk about doing a sequel, but we’re actually going to another area right now.

Q: What inspired you to do this?

A: What inspired me to do this?    I had just gotten back into comics, like with the “Civil War” Marvel books.  And I was like, “Okay, comics are starting to get good again!” That’s where I got into indie books, and I was really happy because I was like, “Oh man, I can happily do this in a medium that I can control.”  Instead of spending $200,000 to make a film.

Q: So you’re not planning a giant, mega-million dollar crossover series then?

A: Not yet, not until Brian Bendis and Alex Ross want to come in and do covers for us.  Not for a while.

Q: Did you ever think this would lead you to being at WizardCon?

A: No!  No, I did it because, I wanted something new, and I wanted Derek to laugh.  Like, my goal, if Derek gave me something to read and I could turn it around and make him laugh, my job would absolutely be complete.  He sent me an e-mail about how it made him laugh hard, and how he liked the facial features.  I was like “I am awesome.”  I made this for my friends, I wanted my friends to read it.  The first like 20 of my books I just handed out.  I just wanted people to read.  Then as it grew I was like, “Oh, shit, I can probably sell these!”

Q: Give us a brief synopsis of what “Lost” is, and what it’s all about.

A: Well it starts way back in the dawn of history when, an obelisk comes down from the sky, and the monkeys throw up a bone.  No, really, it’s a guys romantic comedy, the anti-romantic comedy.  It’s a relationship from a guys point of view, and his two best friends that belittle him all the way though.  Guy falls in love with girl,  guy gets girl, girl goes psycho.

Q: Sounds sort of like my life.

A: We get that a lot actually.

Q: Do you think you got lots of hits to your book just from people searching for the TV show “Lost”?

A: Yes!  We’ve got one lady who keeps writing to us, and I love her to death she’s one of the only people who writes to us.  She’s like “We love your book, we love your book, we love what you stand for…where’s Jack?”

Q: What advice do you have for anyone who is looking to get into illustration, or comics?

A: Do what you love.  I think the worst thing you can possibly do is follow trends, like do something that you actually have a love for and the fans will follow.  Like I follow a lot of books and a lot of film directors that the world sees as, “Oh, I don’t like them because they aren’t popular.”  But they have a heavy fan base because they actually have passion for what they are doing.  I think the biggest medium right now is web comics.  Web comics is a free medium, but if you like it enough, you’re going to buy it for sure.  You’re going to buy the book, the fans will be there, but do what you love.

Q: You also have some things going on on the side of “Lost” and Darth Jayder…Flim Munkey, whats all that about?

A: Film Munkey spawned off a blog.  I love destroying films, because I think most of them deserve to be destroyed.  I’m very openly opinionated about it.  So we started a web show pretty much to voice our opinion of it.  Even if we love it, hate it, we’ll let people know.  I just want to educate people.  I eventually want to become a professor, and through that, I want to slowly mold minds to make them not like crap.

Q: So you want to prevent more films like “G.I. Joe, Rise of Cobra”?

A: Absolutely!  If you’re making shit in your backyard, and it’s fun..awesome, you know what that Lord of the Rings fan film that came out a few months ago, I suggest people watch, download it, pay for it, whatever.  It’s amazing.  I don’t wanna see more G.I Joe or Thundercats, or whatever Brett Ratner is doing this year.

Q: Let’s let the fan’s know where they can go to read ep.1 of “Lost” for free, if they are curious.

A: The comic can be found at www.darthjayder.com and www.filmmunkey.net.

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3 Comments to “Interview: Jaysin Osterkamp”

  1. Andrew Marcec

    Aug 17th, 2009

    [...] Interview: Jaysin Osterkamp [...]

  2. PJF

    Aug 23rd, 2009

    I love this kid!

  3. DJO

    Jan 12th, 2010

    Awesome interview, keep up the good work…sucess is what you make it

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