Outcast comic artist Paul Azaceta & show production designer Mark White recently compared notes on how they created Outcast through their respective mediums. Catch the entire interview over at Cinemax’s Official Production Blog!

The Start

Paul Azaceta: When Robert Kirkman [the creator of the Outcast comic series and show] first came at me with the idea, he had the first pilot script written for the show, and the rest was an outline of an idea. All of the characters needed to be fleshed out. So my initial ideas were a collaboration between the both of us.

Mark White: I talked with Robert about the look of the show, for sure, and I had Paul’s visuals to go by.

The Creative Process

Paul Azaceta: I did a lot of research, between books that Kirkman gave me and online. I’ll go around streets on Google maps and just Frankenstein-it together. Kirkman will write “there’s a gas station,” so I’ll look up a gas station in West Virginia and see if I can pull some details from it that will make it feel like the area.

Mark White: What I normally do is start with the comic, and then I’d pull reference images of spaces and worlds and homes based on that character that I have in my head. And then we start pulling paint colors, fabrics—that kind of textural stuff—and have a board of that. Almost all of those boards have the comic images on them.

The Show Vs. Comic

Paul Azaceta: For them to be a good comic book and a good TV show, I think they both have to separately be able to do what they need to do. Because they are two different mediums—two different approaches to storytelling.

Mark White: In the show, it has to be a very real, alive world, with layers and texture, taking a 2D drawing, and then suddenly it has to be a 360-degree environment.

See what they had to say about set design, color palette, and more over at Cinemax’s Official Production Blog.