Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Superman & The Daily Planet

Today is a busy day so I wanted to get this posted early. I finished this up last night but didn't scan it until this morning. This commissioned by Royce. He has asked for various Superman Family characters over the years but I don't think I had drawn the big guy for him. So here it is. This was done using ink, color pencils and pastels on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes paper. Thanks to Royce for this commission!
Now for some process stuff I don't think I have shown before. Below is a screenshot of my desktop with Adobe Illustrator open. Once I had the Superman figure down, I worked on the Daily Planet building. After scanning my rough sketch into Photoshop, I placed the sketch in Illustrator. Using some perspective lines made with a pen tool, I began to draw out the building. I also built the Daily Planet globe and lettering. When I was happy with the results, the Superman sketch was laid over the building for placement. I sized the building up and printed that on 11" x 17" copy paper. Slap it on the light table, transfer the drawing, ink, color, and there you have it. All of this could have been done on paper, but this saves time for me. And all my perspective lines and buildings get saved for some future use.
Check back later this afternoon for an announcement. :)



5 comments:

John Beatty said...

I do this same type of thing, Gene! I actually did a "Mucha" style Modok piece this way...however, since I wanted the lettering and all other elements as I did them in Illustrator, I printed out my tight pencil sketch of Modok with the background elements on the canson paper. Then I inked and colored the Modok figure, and did some color work on the printed out design part.

It worked great, and I did let the commissioner know what I did to get the desired result! He was happy and I really liked the piece.

It's a "happy" meeting of traditional and digital working together!

I still do my commissions on small bond/copy paper, scan them and scale them...then print them out as bluelines on my boards. The blue line is light enough to no be intrusive and I clean up my sketch to just the needed lines before I print out the blueline to ink from!

Have a great and safe trip!!! Make a Million!

Royce Thrower said...

Wow, you do this to SAVE time? That sounds so complicated at first read. The process must be quicker for you guys familiar with the process, but I sure can't argue with the results! Very nice Kal-El Gene! The pose, the background, the colors, they are all perfect!! Can't wait to see it in person! Thanks ever so much!

Gene Gonzales said...

Hey John, I use that method a lot for commercial work. It's pretty handy. Now if I could just buy a Cintiq...ah hell, I just keep buying iPhones.

It sounds complicated but it really isn't Royce. And it's cleaner. No graphite to smear and erase either. Thanks, glad you like the final results.

Brian Jones said...

Great iconic image! Congrats Royce...

Gary M. Peiffer said...

That is a neat tool to save time...just my perspective :-)

Gart