The Zombified’s Hallowhaus: Q & A with Artist Krystal Fancey Beck

By Less Lee Moore

Hallowhaus tells the tale “of a newly undead girl, risen from the grave on one Halloween midnight, soon to discover she’s not quite as alone as she’d first assumed.” In this issue of Popshifter, we chat with artist and creator Krystal Fancey Beck about the comic as well as The Zombified website.

Hallowhaus, Issue One
© 2008 TheZombified

What inspired The Zombified comic, Hallowhaus?
I basically just decided I wanted to do a comic, then came up with the name first and started working around that. I knew I wanted something very Halloween-themed so I could include a lot of horror monsters.

What is The Zombified website all about?
It is, above all, an online store featuring my own artwork in a variety of incarnations: T-shirts, pins, the Hallowhaus comics of course, greeting cards, etc. I’m hoping to include a decent “free stuff” section as well, with graphics for icons, desktop backgrounds, as well as an e-card system.

What do you think is the enduring appeal of the undead and zombies?
I’ve decided I’m not going to attempt to wax philosophical on this one. . . I think zombies are one of the less pretentious horror monsters, and therefore quite often have a certain level of humor associated to them. Simply: Zombies are fun!

How long have you been creating comics?
Hallowhaus is my first comic, and I originally started on the first (awful!) version of it in mid-to-late 2005, before doing some minor story tweaks and completely redrawing the first issue more recently for the re-launch of The Zombified website.

What is your art background, i.e., painting, sketching, computer graphics, etc?
I’ve been drawing since I was physically able to. Thus far I’ve been pretty much entirely self taught, and I’ve experimented with most mediums (you could call me a “serial artist”)—and will probably continue to do so—but I usually tend to gravitate back to pen and ink. On the technical side of things, I’ve been into website design for about ten years, most of those in just HTML, though I’ve been exploring CSS a lot more recently, especially with redesigning The Zombified website, and I’ve been messing around in Photoshop for about half that time.

Hallowhaus, Issue Two
© 2008 TheZombified

What has been the response to the series?
I’ve been so buried in completing the first two issues of my comic, getting everything ready to be printed, and working on the website that I haven’t been putting enough energy into getting a lot of outside feedback yet, though what I have gotten so far has been inspiringly positive.

What artists inspire you?
This is always an awkward question to answer because I do try my best not to take too much influence from my favorite artists in fear of being too unoriginal, and because I like a lot of artists whose styles are fairly different from my own, leaving any direct “inspiration” subtle, if that. That said, I love art—especially darker styled art—in all forms, and in terms of visual and graphic artists I’m a big fan of people like Gris Grimly, Chad Savage, RK Post, Keith Thompson, etc.

What comics inspire you?
Same applies, of course, but I really like Hellboy, Sandman, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, The Walking Dead, 30 Days of Night, etc.

What movies inspire you?
I (quite obviously) am really into horror—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) being my absolute favorite movie—though in terms of direct artistic inspiration, I tend to look toward classic old atmospheric black and white horror movies, as well as silent films.

What is next for The Zombified, and for you as an artist?
Right now I’m in the midst of getting TheZombified.com online, which I’m hoping will be fully operational by mid-September. I’m going to be a vendor for the first time at the Fear Fest 3 horror convention in Dallas, TX which is February 20 – 23, 2009, and once that’s out of the way I’ll be working on finishing the third issue of Hallowhaus and developing new designs and new products.

Additional Resources:

For more information on Krystal’s work and to order copies of Hallowhaus, please visit TheZombified website, MySpace page, or LiveJournal.

You can see more of Krystal’s artwork and merchandise at her deviantART page and on Flickr.