Making a comic is a long process, so join me as I show you the amount of effort that goes into the cover for my latest comic, In The New West.
Making a comic is a long process, so join me as I show you the amount of effort that goes into the cover for my latest comic, In The New West.
I grab a pencil, sheet of copy paper, and an idea. Then a realization that this was not going to work. Then another sheet of copy paper and another idea. Suffice to say I had a stack of bad designs:, but one was different than the others: This one was passable.
I had a cool tagline for the top, so I slapped that on there, and decided to depict a scene from near the ending (without spoiling too much). I put the title at the bottom and a big, exciting motorcycle shot on the front. This is not what the final will look like, but it provides important framework for the next step.
With a larger piece of paper, I scratch out a similar layout onto my paper and lay in some details. I put the author's name at the bottom. This is not too different from my first step, but it gives me an opportunity to make something to put inks over.
Note: This paper is so large that it takes two scans to complete, and I'm not editing it together for this step and the next.
For inking, I take a pen and ink bottle and lay in the details. I fix things, In this case the position of the rider, and finalize all of the aspects. You may notice large white splotches near the bottom of the 'N'- I had to bring in the Posca when I started to screw things up.
I take out some watercolors and color in the painting. I add an hombre sunset background and scratch in the finer details.
However, one thing I leave nearly empty is the cowboy- and his lasso. These will be colored digitally. The grays and browns will provide shading without the color showing through.
The Author's name at the bottom was cut off when I formatted the border- I'll fix that for the next step.
With a tablet and stylus, I color in out cowboy and fix up some of the surrounding detail. I darken most of the features and fix the author's name. There it is. Five steps later, I'm done.