Mecha-Nation follows five young high school students who find that they have amazing new abilities and can transform into a new robotic fighing force for good. This team consists of Kevin (Stealth), Susie (Fahrenheit), Zahra (Charge), Ray (Tank) and Marcus (Blast).

This brand new series is distributed by Ape Entertainment and is a collaboration between Victor Cook, Greg Weisman and Greg Guler.

We had a chance to speak with Greg Guler about the project:

CO: What has been your main influence or inspiration for this series?

GG: Well, I think like Vic Cook and Greg Weisman, I was highly influenced by the superhero groups that I read about in the comics for years. Comics such as the Justice League and others really had a great impact about how group dynamics and diverse characters could create compelling stories with creative and edgy graphic appeal. I was greatly influenced as an artist by artists like Will Eisner, Neal Adams and Jack Kirby and I would have to say that all of these great artists came into the development of Mecha-Nation.  I think the combination of the cartoony and dramatic styles of Eisner and Kirby really had a lot to do with the ultimate look of Mecha-Nation. Vic and I agreed  that we wanted the look to be something that would easily be used in a number of medias with a simple and graphic look. I always thought the tone of the thing was a bit like X-Files, with it’s dark tone and intricate story line, and I wanted a style that could be one thing on the surface but could easily turn darker if necessary.

CO: Everyone had a group that they associated closely with while in high-school. Which of these characters do you think you associate with?

GG: I guess it would have to be Marcus, the comic book geek. I can’t really associate much with the new kid, the cheerleader, the goth or the rocker. Sadly, I wasn’t as smart as Marcus is, but I was, and still am interested in comics, science fiction and movies. It was my big ambition to draw comics professionally, which I eventually did for a number of companies.

CO: What has been your biggest challenge with developing these characters?

GG: The biggest challenge on a new project is to do your best to make it unique and as original as you can. You want to give the audience something that it has never seen before-something fresh and exciting, with a style all it’s own. As far as the look of Mecha-Nation goes, Vic and I tried to to do something that was innovative yet with a sense of the familiar so that the audience could get on board with the stories we wanted to tell. We tried to keep the characters simple, but stylized, making then easier to animate and draw but giving them a bold graphic look. It’s always a challenge not to be a me-too product and we thought that a unique look would help with that.  As development went on I came up with little bits of design that supported the concept of the project. One of the main plot points in Mecha-Nation is that out main characters are slowly being transformed against their will into unfeeling robots and so I used the idea that they should have an indication of circuits on their bodies when they have transformed into their “metaled out” forms. The idea that as they continue to transform the circuitry would become more pronounced until they have been completely changed into robots, a bit like a disease effecting them. Stealth being able to open like a Swiss Army knife was also an idea that I used to graphically show the audience the kind of being he was turning into and how dangerous he could truly be.. Each of the characters have these kind of elements to telegraph what may lead down the road for them, and that it might not be pretty. Each character needed their niche, and we wanted to insure their individuality in how they looked as well as how they how they are written. Greg Weisman really brought a lot to the table with the “freaks and geeks” concept which really helped in my thinking about these concepts. The biggest challenge for the comic version was to create designs for what we call the “First Wavers”, who are an earlier generation of Mecha-sapiens than our kids…Time, which always seen to be an issue in projects like these, was short and it was important to make the look of these new characters connect with out kids and still be unique. In a very short period of time I designed these “First wavers”, as well as almost all of the new incidental characters for the comic book version of Mecha-Nation.

CO: What has been your personal highlight on this project?

GG: Although Greg, Vic and I have worked together over the years on various animation projects, this is the first we have done together that was an original idea. It’s a lot of fun to brain storm on a project like this where you feel you can throw out any idea and have it considered. That kind of freedom really can lead to great things from a creative stand point. Thats not to say we don’t give each other a bit of grief if the idea is really bad, but even a bad idea can be worked around to a really great one. It’s fun to be involved from the ground up in developing an entire project- from early concepts to published work, and it’s satisfying to have something turn out the way you personally envision it and to have other people appreciate it.  I’m really looking forward to the comic book series coming out published by Ape Entertainment and what people will think of Mecha-Nation.

Mecha-Nation will be available in stores in July.

Stay tuned to ComicsOnline for more news on Mecha-Nation!