Cleopatra In Spaaaace!

Cleopatra In Space © Mike Maihack

Mike Maihack has been posting guest strips of his wonderful web comic Cleopatra In Space. I had been totally digging all the different takes on these great characters. On Twitter I asked him if he was writing them and others drawing, or were the guest creators doing all of it themselves. Well, a few tweets later (also involving Spazzy) Mike extended a warm invitation to me to do my take on his strip. I did give him a chance to back out, but he wanted to see what I would do. Today he posted my finished strip. I had so much fun doing this, I really want to do my own even more. Thanks for the opportunity Mike, you have a big heart allowing me to play in your sandbox with your toys.

Before you look at the process steps below, you really should read the full strip here. I'll wait.

"Tall and tan and young and lovely

The girl from Ipanema goes walking

And when she passes, each one she passes 

Goes "A-a-a-h""

Wasn't that fun? Okay, on to the process. I did things a little different with this. I did a full script that I submitted to Mike. He said it wasn't necessary, but I felt better doing the work with his approval. Then I did a really rough layout as a guide. From there I set all the word balloons and borders in Illustrator and printed the page in black on a sheet of 11" x 17" Strathmore Bristol Board. I tightened up the roughs on copy paper, one panel at a time. Then light boxed my pencils on the board with the lettering. Inks were next and then I scanned the finished black and white pages back into Photoshop for coloring. 

The final original art has all the lettering in place and finished inked art. I think it just looks cooler when the letters and art are on the same page. Don't you? :)

And yeah, I really went with those titles. I've been around Royce too long. ;)

This is Post #1656