Saturday 29 December 2012

Lovely Chrimbo present

I had the Joe Kubert's "Tarzan of the Apes" artist edition for Chrimbo.
And bloody lovely it is too.
Got meself the start of a collection I think.
Wally Wood's EC Stories,
Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson's "Alien adaption"
and now this.
Jack Davis next I think...

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Making of a cover. Part 1.

Some thoughts and a bit of the process that goes into creating a cover.
I'd done about 5 sketches, different ideas, just getting a feel for it really
and sent them to Dave West (writer Extraordinaire) about his thoughts...
I got a favourite image but I wanted Dave's take on it...
It didn't take too long and we both pretty much settled on this one.





So I went back to the drawing board to do some figure sketches of the 4 characters: -


                                                        I really like the tentacles here.

                             To get Black to look like he was sinking was more difficult than I thought.

To get the proportions right and just to get the look of Black floating/sinking in the water (and believe me when I say it wasn't easy).
 Also, I wanted to nail the look of the mermaids and I really liked the look of them in the third image, with tentacles at the side of their mouths...
The better to grab on to Black's face but then I thought it might become a distraction, especially when the image is reduced to comic size...
Or worse becomes so indistinquishable as to what they were it would unbalance the picture.
Your eye would be drawn to their faces.
So finally, a bit of lightboxing and a lot of eraser use later and I get this image.
And I'm ready to ink.
I upload it in Manga Studio...create an inking layer and begin.
You can either reduce the transparency of the image or change it to another colour to make it easier.
Took it nice and slow and fourty minutes later...
 I like what I'm doing so carry on, if I hadn't I would have deleted it and started again.
And now I got this finished image of Black


Now I know I might have to alter the size later so I leave Black on a layer on his own and open a 2nd layer
for mermaid no 1...

Like so. Then opened another layer for mermaid no 2...

And finally a third layer for Mermaid no 3...

So that's the image finished (and the third mermaid is blue to help me see where she overlaps the other mermaids)..I can take out the blue anytime and turn it black again.
I need room for the title and credits, so I scale, twist and turn the three mermaids (each on their own layers) so everything will fit, like so...

For one final finished cover.
It now goes to Matt Soffe so he can work his colouring magic on it then to Andy Bloor who'll dazzle us with his design skills and add the title and credits.
And when I get those back I'll post 'em on this here blog.











Friday 14 December 2012

Book 2 review

We got our first review down at the Birmingham Mail "Speech Balloons" fer WESTERNoir book 2 y'all...
Paul H Birch WesterNoir Book Two review at Maill: http://blogs.birminghammail.co.uk/speechballoon/
Do ya self a favour and mosey on down to read what they gotta say about the book.
You ain't gonna be disappointed

Sunday 9 December 2012

A little something to while away the time.

Not that I've got much spare time of late...
Got graphic novels coming out of me ears and of course, there's WESTERNoir,
but doing a few shorts and this is a page from one of them.
It's called "The Job". Written by Mark Cowling for "Dead Roots"
a zombie anthology.
Issue 1 is out now and you can find all about it here.
http://www.deadroots.co.uk/



It's really is taking a bit too long to finish,but hopefully it will be done and dusted very very soon.

Sunday 2 December 2012

WESTERNoir Book 3 cover

So book 2 is done and dusted, printed and on sale at
http://www.accentukcomics.com. Which means it's time to
start on book 3.
Script is mostly done, needs a bit of tweaking on Dave's part but I've
worked out the pacing and such and decided to start on the cover.

Did some sketches and then showed them to Dave and we discussed the pros and cons of each image
and finally settled on this one: -
So it's pencilled and next I'll put into Manga Studio and start inking it..
It'll be tweaked here and there...I'll probably reduce the mermaids slightly
and when I'm happy with it, send it off to Matt Soffe, who'll colour it.
He did such a cracking job on Book 2 that we definitely wanted him to carry on with us
if'n he was up or it.
And I'm pleased to say he is...
So now the next step is inking it...Which hopefully will be next week.
Actually might do abit of a "How I work" posting...show the cover being inked at various stages
and why I choose a certain way to do things.
Until next time...

Saturday 1 December 2012

An Unlettered page 7

There's a lot of text that covers this page so I thought I'd show it
in all it's unlettered glory.