Hometown Productions was established in 1995 by Robert Roach & his father, Thomas Roach. It was founded to produce & market Robert’s artwork, in comics, animation, & fine arts. Hometown Productions’ other goal was—& remains—to market other artists’ fine art works & prints. Especially the underserved market for minority artists. At the time of Hometown Productions’ opening in Marion, IN, it was one of few such outlets for art prints & the like in the state.      

     Since 2001, Robert & Yumi, his wife, have spearheaded Hometown Productions’ endeavors. A key component to better marketing the company’s commodities & raising its profile has been the launching of this website. In addition to creating much of the artistic content founded in this cyber-space, Robert also designed the pages & continuity of this site. The professional web designers’ at Dimolex Corp. mightily assisted him in polishing the content & producing an informative & graphically interesting website.

     Black Inc! Imprints is the division within Hometown Productions dedicated to creative commodities in the comics industry. Two comics, both 4-issue arcs, are the company’s current primary goals: Menthu & The Roach (no relationship, other than the name, to its creator). For more input, please check out the Comics area of this site—either in the HTML or Flash sections.

     However, this site is not an exercise in narcissism. We also hope to exchange art & artistic information with both domestic & overseas artists. We intend to stimulate each other’s artistic creativity via the Internet. And we hope that this leads to more commercial exchanges.

     Robert has worked professionally since 1992. He’s been an illustrator or a storyboard artist for many films, videos, animated projects & TV commercials. Also, Robert teaches storyboarding and marker rendering at L.A.’s Otis College of Art & Design. He’s been challenging—some may say “tormenting”—students at Otis since May 2000.