After finishing two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Dark Horse a few weeks ago, artist Georges Jeanty visited Sacramento this past weekend as part of Sac-Con, a small comic book convention. There, he talked to Whedonopolis about his long tenure as the illustrator for Buffy seasons eight and nine, and his upcoming new Whedon project.

“Funny enough, I was on the book for six years so almost the same amount of time as the series was coming out,” he said. “It was work, but it was work that I loved doing, so it didn’t feel like I was going to work every time I was going to work.”

He said the easiest thing about it was the stories, which he enjoyed, but the hardest was to maintain the likenesses.

“A lot of the likenesses I don’t feel I really was faithful towards,” he said, “but it was a trial and error thing. Some you’re really good at, some you really have to struggle with.”

He especially enjoyed the Faith arc from season eight and the end of season nine.

There will be a season ten of Buffy, but Jeanty will take on a new challenge: illustrating the next Serenity comic book series, set after the events of the movie.

“It almost seemed like a natural progression where the same people involved with Buffy are involved with Serenity over at Dark Horse,” he said.  “I know the people, the writers are very friendly with me, and they like my work,  and they like what I do. I know Joss likes the work. So, it seemed like a no-brainer to say, hey, let’s have them come over here.”

When he turns a story into drawings, he approaches it as if he were a director.

“I know a lot of the people coming to this series, whether it be Buffy or Serenity, aren’t necessarily comic book readers,” he explained. “So I try to make it as reader-friendly as I can, and keeping the scope and direction of the TV show in most cases I think helps a new reader come into the series without too much confusion, not that comics are confusing. I think it’s really funny when someone says ‘I don’t know how to read comic books’.  They’re the easiest medium to read, but I do try to keep it very reader-friendly.”

He also talked about motion comics, and how they may take away from the experience of reading a regular comic issue.

“It’s all right there in front of you,” he said. “You don’t have to read, and I think that’s where the joy certainly of a novel and a comic come in.”

Aside from the Serenity series, he just finished Joker’s Daughter for DC as the New 52 Villians series, and is also doing the cover for a new X-Files book.