How To Art

A long long time ago someone asked me about our comic-process and I’ve always felt bad about it because I was never able to answer. It was always changing, from the media we used to the style we were striving to achieve. It got hard, then easy, then harder still, but I think we’ve finally found that magic formula that works best for us. So I finally feel okay sharing how we do things.

1) We start with an extremely bad and generic thumbnail. This is just the basic idea of what we want on the page and it is extremely likely that some design elements will not make it to the final image. For this first cover I have a .psd of probably 18+ designs and tries for what I wanted the cover to be that can be recycled into (fingers crossed) future issues.

2) We get a feel for the light sources/color layout before expanding the thumb. This is important, at least for us, because if we ever skip this step it ends up biting us in the ass later. I mean it. When we complete this step in order, coloring the final inks is a matter of hours. When we skip it, it’s a matter of days.

3) After expanding the thumbnail to the final canvas size in photoshop (10x15), we refine the thumbnail into a tightened sketch. During this process we edit out unimportant lines and elements and add detail all around. Most of the rock details will be filled in during the inking stage after printing.

4) Convert the lines to a pale blue for final printing (this is Cyan set to 30, but for the final I set it to 10, just dark enough to see on the printed paper). This acts as my non-photo blue pencil.

5) After printing the 10x15 image onto a 11x17 bristol board, I ink it using a brush pen, faber-castle artist pens, and a large tip permanent marker for the large areas of black. Any mistakes are corrected using a white acrylic paint pen. These finished inks are then scanned in at 300 dpi and the black area is separated from the white bg. This way all the black will be it’s own solid line above the background and the color can be changed however we need it to without interfering too much with the bg lines (this will make more sense in a sec, I swear).

6) After the inks have been scanned, we color the background with watercolor and copic markers. We use the Toner series, primarily 1 and 2 to do most of the coloring. Texture effects were added with a small sponge brush with some thickened black watercolor. We keep note of light sources (the lantern and the crystals). You can also see how the original inks looked before editing the contrasts and values. We keep Aren himself free of any coloring or texture for style purposes, as he will be cell-shaded later. This is scanned in again and goes unedited underneath the ink layer. Any extra texture or discoloration from the scanning is kept as is.

7) Flat the whole image, keeping Aren’s colors on a separate layer from the background. His main color is always orange, which we complement with the warm/cool color scheme.

8) After flatting, we throw a blue-tone over the flats in an overlay layer to dim the colors and make him look more natural in the same environment.

9) In another overlay layer color has been added to the rocks. I will be completely honest with you. The coloring process has been the biggest reason we have switched from digital to traditional in regards to this comic. This cover also exists in complete digital format, and it took over a year to finish. Mostly because of finding time to work on it, but mostly due to how we weren’t getting what we wanted out of what we could do digitally and kept reworking it over and over. Out of frustration we tried recreating stones and rock-faces on a few scraps of bristol, and to our shock we were able to get exactly what we wanted out of that medium. It was enlightening, to be honest.

10) The crystals are colored in and a glow has been cast on some.

11) Aren’s colors have been darkened even more.

12) Focusing on the lantern as the closest light source, the first round of Aren’s shading are completed.

13) The second round of shading is complete.

14) The first round of highlights are added and the lantern is made brighter.

15) Aren’s colors get a tweak to make him more orange overall and allow him to pop more against the blue-toned cave.

16) Blue backlighting from the crystals is added to add more definition to his shape as well as bring more harmony to the overall picture.

17) Glows are added to the lantern and crystals as well as Aren’s eyes (for plot reasons :))

18) And last but not least, add the title (another rant/tutorial in and of itself, to be honest) and chapter title. Keeping with the warm/cool theme we make the logo a red-orange to recall Aren’s overall hue and the bright red scrap at his waist. The chapter title is also rendered with the lightest and darkest colors found in the logo.

And that, in a nutshell, is how we made this cover! Thank you so much for reading, we hope you enjoyed it :D