And here is the color final, done by jumping between MangaStudio and Photoshop. Unlike the previous posts, I don’t really have much to say as far as coloring– I’m not all that good at coloring, so it’s more like dumb luck when I get a decent result. Was pretty happy with the faces on the guys towards the bottom, but most likely I will keep picking away at this until I give up and get a real colorist like my friend Ashley Lanni to take a pass at touching it up.
Day 3- Inks! Heh, I wish it only took 3 days to get to this point. Because this project has no deadline and no timetable for release or anything, I only really get to work on this in between other projects with deadlines. It also helps when I don’t shoot myself in the foot after already having put in a lot of work…
Remember how yesterday I mentioned doing the pencils on a vellum finish board? Well, the vellum finish has its advantages for some things, and disadvantages for others. Pencil, for example, is great on a vellum board, as are pencil effects, like busting out a black color pencil to get some texture to things or a nice gradient with AD Markers (or Copics, the usual marker of choice for comic artists now, but I’ve got a set of AD Markers and by God I’m gonna use them!). Other things, like pen inking, not so much. Brush inking– Oh yeah, all day, every day, but for me pens just don’t work as well on a vellum board.
I came to this realization, which granted, I should have known beforehand, once I started inking and fighting with the paper. At that point I had two choices: Continue to fight with the board and still not get the results I want, or re-pencil the whole thing onto a smooth board.
I chose the latter.
So what you see here are my final inks over my second round of penciling. Mostly done with Microns, but also some brush and my new favorite weapon of choice, the Falcon fountain pen. I’ve known of this pen for quite some time– Brian Stelfreeze uses one, and even created brushes in IllustStudio and MangaStudio to mimic it for digital work, but could never afford one. But, seeing as how Jeff wants all the work on this project to be done on boards, it seemed a good investment.
Until tomorrow, where I share with you the color final!!!
Today’s update: Pencils.
Once I got the OK from Jeff that the rough was cool, I blew it up in Photoshop to 11×17 art size and printed it out. Jeff had asked that the originals not be over bluelines (we’re old school guys) so I did the pencils on a vellum finish comic board (this will be important for tomorrow’s update) over the rough on a lightbox.
So, changes:
First, I decided to switch Cleopatra form the left to the right and to not do the upshot I had roughed in on the left hand side. Figure for as small as it’s going to print it would be better to be clear, plus reading in the Western style of left to right, it implies she came after Hypatia on the left. Next, the main character having his arm out from his body made it tougher to fit in the characters Jeff wanted on the scroll, so I tucked it in a bit. And finally, we added in two more heads across the bottom on the right, and varied the sizes of them all.
Once I got them to this point I sent them off to Jeff to look over, and after he OKed them I moved on to inks!
Going to be a crazy week with deadlines, a commitment tomorrow night I hope to be able to “report” on on Wed, and a trip out of town with no internet for a couple days, so I’m going to do another process series this week on a recently completed project.
Well, not project. Beginning of a project. My friend Jeff O’Bryant has written a very cool story that actually runs a bit parallel to the on again, off again Perfect Storm: Alexander the Great storyline that Gary and I have been wanting to get back to (more on that soon!) called “The Last Alexandrian.”
The first thing I did for the project was come up with a logo. Not only cause we will eventually need a logo anyway, but also I think having the logo gives you a sense of direction. Maybe that’s why Perfect Storm has gone through so many incarnations– didn’t settle on a logo till the New Ride story! Anywho, for this one I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted right off the bat, and thankfully when I showed it to Jeff he liked it too!
Then Jeff sent me his idea for the cover. A George Perez inspired collage of elements from Alexandria and the main characters background. So with that in mind I sat down with my template, printed on an 8.5 x 11 piece of typing paper, and started doodling. At the rough stage I don’t worry about getting details correct or likenesses like the characters or anything, I just like to get a feel for what is going to go where. Tomorrow I’ll do a side-by-side of the rough and the pencils… Heh, progress-within-the-progress.
This is the scan I sent him to look over, and aside from a couple notes (Which I’ll show you tomorrow) I got the OK to go on to pencils!
And for the final Daredevil Sketch of the Day, here’s my third attempt at Elektra!
Yes, third attempt, and no, ya can’t see the others! As you artists know, somedays you just don’t have it, and today so far has been one of those days for me… Hopefully the afternoon is better because the deadlines don’t care.
Had planned on doing the Punisher for today’s Sketch of the Day, then remembered that I had a Punisher sketch cover, so I used that rather than do this one in the sketchbook.
Continuing the Daredevil theme, here’s a quick Karen Page for today’s Sketch of the Day!
Today’s Sketch of the Day: Foggy!
Like pretty much everyone else we started season 2 of Daredevil this weekend. And since this season has 5 main characters, seems a good subject for this week’s Sketches of the Dayses…
To end this week’s look at Strong Will, I wanted to post my favorite completed page, so far, with a side by side of the pencils by Wendell Cavaleanti! Pulling the curtain back a bit, you can see that the reason these pages look so good is because of all of the work Wendell put into them. My job is to not screw them up…