Treadwater Interview with Morgan Rosenblum, Mingchen Shen
By Nir Regev
One of our very own, The Walking Dead’s Chad Coleman (Tyreese) has branched out into a new world. Part graphic novel, part augmented reality mobile app, and all parts dystopian. Meet Treadwater.
Treadwater is leading the way on a whole new kind of graphic novel universe. Best described as a reality “just 5 minutes from now”. It’s a whole new multimedia beast aimed at a mature audience. One starved for honesty and a crumb of genuineness. In other words, the same crowd that demands the unfiltered reality we’ve come to expect from The Walking Dead.
A new graphic novel revolution in storytelling is upon us. From the gritty narrative to being able to interact with its very pages. All through the magic of an augmented reality app that picks up illustrations then brings them to life on our phones.
I had an opportunity to talk with CEO, Founder & Creator of Treadwater, Morgan Rosenblum and Lead Artist Mingchen Shen during this past New York Comic Con.
Treadwater CEO, Founder & Creator: Morgan Rosenblum
UndeadWalking.com – Nir Regev: We’re here with Morgan from Treadwater, he’s going to tell us about this brand new franchise. Its dystopian universe. What drives it?
Morgan Rosenblum: It’s called Treadwater, it’s a darkened mature take on the superhero genre. Similar to The Dark Knight, Homeland, and the flashbacks from Lost. It’s a pre-apocalyptic story, it takes place only a few years from now. Where a global economic crisis has splintered political alliances leaving the world on the verge of chaos. But it hasn’t completely gone to crap yet. So, with the rising tides of anarchy beginning to wash over the world, six misfit anti-heroes are recruited into a privately funded special-operative program known as Treadwater. Imagine Bruce Wayne and Batman were two different people. Our Bruce Wayne is a 65-year old genius scientist who’s also the CEO of what’s become the world’s largest medical and technology conglomerate named Unicore.
*Morgan shows an illustration of Unicore in the Treadwater Graphic Novel*
Rosenblum: Allen has his own motivations for wanting to take matters into his own hands, similar to Batman himself. He knows he must recruit his operatives. So he begins profiling a very unique set of candidates and he looks for people with skill sets obviously. However, more importantly, he looks for a conflicted or broken element to them, that he can somehow repair them or bring them back from that.
UD: What is it about you that draws you to this kind of world?
Rosenblum: Well, I wanted something that felt real, that felt believable. The thing that I always loved about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Batman is that he made Batman feel believable. In that setting why does Batman wear a mask? Well he explains it in the movie, it’s because its a symbol. It puts fear into bad guys I remember there’s a very great line in Batman, “You either die the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” That really resonated with me because it felt real. People always want to do good in the world, and at some point if they try so much and they fail, they either give up or things change. We wanted to create a story that had a very fine line between good and bad and morality and necessity. What happens throughout the series is that line eventually disappears. Characters switch sides, that line is no longer even there anymore.
UD: You mentioned your brother Owen met actor Chad Coleman (Tyreese) in a restaurant and that started your whole business venture and partnership.
Rosenblum: Yeah, you talk about right place at the right time. Some people call it luck. We like to call it opportunity meets preparation. We had built this universe and been working on our pitch, not for Chad but just in general. Owen ran into Chad in a restaurant, went up to him, “Hey I’m a big fan of you. I love your show. I follow you on social media, I know that you’re very active in philanthropy and what not”. Chad responded well because Owen was being genuine. So Chad says “Hey, so what do you do?” Owen started to tell him about “Hey, I have this graphic novel series with my brother that’s branched into this whole multimedia universe”. One thing lead to another, we had a few meetings, and Owen calls up Chad and now he’s a partner in the company. He is a character in the series, and great marketing for us too because of his fandom and following.
UD: You mention the word genuine, and you talk about this realistic kind of gritty universe. I think a lot of the appeal and the reason it maybe drew Chad as well was the reality of it all. The genuine truth.
Rosenblum: Exactly, there’s a lot of parallels to what’s going on now, right now, in the world to what’s going on 5 minutes from now in Treadwater. When my partner Nat (@natprinzi) and I were writing the story, we said let’s turn everything into its worse case scenario. What if the EU fully crashes and more countries pull out of the European Union? And then the UN disbands, what effects will that have? If government and world organizations lose their ability to police the world like they’ve been known to, who will do it? Treadwater.
*Morgan shows us the augmented reality (Virtual Reality) like features of the Treadwater app, where Chad Coleman’s Mr. Osi character pops into life in front of our eyes. The app is fully free. One of the augmented reality actions feels reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid, who Morgan says was one of the inspirations for Treadwater.
Treadwater Lead Artist: Mingchen Shen
After a tour of the impressive Treadwater mobile app, Morgan introduces us to Treadwater’s lead artist Mingchen Shen. Treadwater is Mingchen Shen’s first ever graphic novel and Morgan flips through his superb artwork in the pages of the project. Morgan speaks about Shen as an amazing concept artist who they asked to do a few test pages only to ask Shen if he wanted to do the whole graphic novel. The rest as they say, is history.
UD: What goes into making the art of Treadwater, what inspires you?
Mingchen Shen: Well I work off a script, we have a lot of back and forth on our ideas. We plan out each stage with sketches, then I bring it into greyscale values and add the color on top of it. Then after it we have an iteration stage where we show the details and fix what we think doesn’t work and what does work. Based on how it tells the story.
UD: Do you ever find yourself going off-script? Maybe you find something that really moves you about a certain piece of artwork and have it added into the script later. Or does it always work the other way?
Shen: There are sometimes where I feel like some situations could be better if we change maybe the dialogue or he’s in the scene or taking what action. There are definitely changes within the script. The majority of it, the overall story is still pretty much the same and works pretty well I think.
UD: How long have you been doing art for?
Shen: I started taking (drawing) it seriously in 8th grade. I would always love drawing in elementary school. In middle school, it got to the point where I don’t know really what else I would do. I don’t think I can be an engineer even though my parents wanted me to study it. I’ve been drawing throughout high school and then throughout college. Mostly self study.
UD: What was your first professional break? When you really felt, Hey, I made it!
Shen: I would actually call this (Treadwater) my first professional break. Before that I was a graphic designer for a credit card company but that wasn’t as fulfilling as doing comic book art, or that I thought was very interesting. It was mostly design work, and kind of drawing the same things over and over again. In this one (Treadwater), I get to actually design concepts. I get cool references, look up other artists and tell a story.
It’s more fulfilling creatively.
Related Story: Chad L. Coleman launches The Walking Dead clothing line
UD: What do you see for your future projects professionally? What do you want to make? Obviously, you want to make this project (Treadwater) huge.
Shen: Well, I’m definitely going to continue with Treadwater. I do feel like I’ve always wanted to work in video games a little bit, so that maybe a job I explore later on. However, I’ll definitely practice first. I really believe in educating yourself and always learning on the job and proving yourself.
UD: Thank you very much.
Get Treadwater and Keep Up with the Universe
Potential Treadwater fans who order Volume 2 of Treadwater will receive the entire first part’s digital copy absolutely free. Take a look at the offer Treadwater has for fans at this link: Treadwater Pre-Order.
Follow Treadwater on Facebook and Twitter and check out their ultra immersive website at Treadwater.tv.
Follow Morgan Rosenblum on Twitter: @MorganRosenblum
Check out more of Mingchen Shen’s Artwork on ArtStation.
Follow me on Twitter: @nirregev