Tuesday, October 16, 2007

TPB #1 Cover process

Well the trade collecting the first 4 issues of Astounding Wolf-Man is soliceted for January (I think) make sure to buy lots! Here is some of the process we went through for the cover. It started with a conversation with Robert (the writer) where we talked about some of the design elements we though would be cool. This was my first sketch based on that. I liked it alright...

...but Robert wasn't down with Wolfman's pose. So I worked up some other ideas. We decided to go with number "B" below.

Here I tightened up the drawing a bit. I really wanted the logo and everything to fit together well. So I mocked it up in Photoshop with the logo to make sure I had enough room.

Then I enlarged this to fit standard comic board size and lightboxed it to the board with blue pencil, tightening up the details as I traced it. I dont have a scan of those, so you will have to use your imagination and picture it. While your at it also imagine a beach in the Carribean on a beautiful sunny day. Your laying there next to a gorgeous woman (or man) with no responsibilities just enjoying the moment. Nice isnt it? Well hopefully this final image of the inked and colored cover will bring you a small portion of that Carribean happiness. Or maybe it won't but its all I have for you.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Cover #5 Process

Here goes! Initally we tried some other design ideas for this cover but they were bad. In trying to come up with something cooler Robert suggested the newspaper approach, I instantly I had an idea for the image and this was my early sketch.I wanted Wolf-Mans hand to really pop out and as I messed with the design more it seemed to better use the space and tuck under the logo to flip the image. I liked the left to right movement of the sketch, but I just couldn't make it work. So I changed it. Thats the best part of being an artist, I do what I want and justify it as a "creative" decision :) These are the pencils.


Here are the inks. Pretty much a trace job, because my pencils were so tight. I really need to loosen up with the penciling. Sometimes I do better than others, but for some reason I got pretty tight with these. Although for me there is always a little more pressure with a cover to get the lines just right, that tends to result in my tightening up. I added the text on the computer (thank you Adobe Illustrator) and for some dumb reason I changed "killer" to "villian". I also spelled it wrong. Killer sounds cooler (and is eaiser to spell) so I changed it back on the final, don't know what I was thinking here.

And finally the colors with all the newspaper text added. Robert wrote most of it. There is some funny stuff in there. Also some nice story bits.