Cover Process -SEVEN

Today I thought I would show the process of putting together a cover. This is not some new ground breaking process but it is a chance to see the steps. The series is SEVEN, Jim Shooter is the writer, Cynthia Martin is the interior colorist. The cover concept was created by Jim. He emailed me the drawing he did (top left). I did complete pencils and after Jim took a look at it he felt there were a few things to change. Thus, the revised pencils (top right). I think you can make out the differences. Once the revised art was approved, I inked it. No changes needed so I did a color comp to let Jim know where I was going with the colors. I think he had some suggestions to the background color being purple. The characters wear specific colors too. The color comp was approved and I went to the final colors. There were three or four revisions in the color stage. I'm not going to post them because each change was minor.  They came about mostly because it is hard to define a color by name. If you ask 10 people to show you the color "Purple", you just might get 10 different hues. We has some trouble with red, purple, orange, green, you get the idea. But in the end the cover was finished and I think it came out pretty sharp. Now I gotta finish the last few pages of inks.

The Winds of Change - Finished

Well, sort of. There is always a chance there will be some minor alterations. This was done for a group of not-for-profit hospitals. There is a lot of text I added to this, labels, flying pieces of paper with info on them and logos, but left it off for this post. Maybe I will post it at another time with everything intact, or just put it on my site after the client uses it. This was fun to do. Very solid two days of work. This one and the Penguins is for the same client. I have one more much simpler piece to finish tomorrow and if all goes well, I will be done.

Work in progress...

This is a really large piece. It was penciled in sections, scanned, put together and some digital penciling being done right now. It will then be colored in Photoshop. Deadline: Monday. Wish me luck.

If I Only Had A Brain...

Okay, let the jokes and puns begin. Finished? Good.

Yes I know, this is not a very sexy post, but I am trying to show variety. With my work load what it is, it's hard to get time to do the fun and sexy stuff. Instead I'm sure I am boring all of you with the not-as-interesting-but-pays-really-well-stuff. I do find it interesting myself. Every project can have it's fun moments. And every project can have it dull hours. But I wouldn't change my career for a million dollars. Uh, okay, for a million dollars, I would. :) Which just made me think of this: Have you ever heard someone say that a million dollars isn't that much any more. That it can't buy what it used to. My feeling on that is, "Hey, give me the million dollars! I don't care what it used to be able to buy, I'm sure it will buy more than I can buy now with the money I have." After this post I don't think I can ever claim I have linear thoughts. Have a good weekend folks. :)

Penguins!

This is a business piece I just finished today. Penciled, scanned and colored in Photoshop. There are words on the final piece but since it is specific to a client, I thought best not to share. This one went pretty smooth from start to finish. The only things that were changed from the initial concept was the addition of the flip chart in the lower right hand corner and the penguin in the water front and center. The idea for this comes from a book titled "Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions" by John Kotter. The final file for this piece is quite large: 40 inches wide at 300 dpi. 

POPX Jungle

Managed to finish out this page today with these last two panels. Now the daunting blank page again for the next one. This issue was going to be a standard 22 pages but we decided to expand it to 26 pages. This give us an opportunity to introduce a very cool villain this issue.

Enough POPX for today. Time to move on to some other work before the night is over...

PERILS ON PLANET X again

Another insane day. Squeezed in another panel of POPX. Wish I had more time to work on it. Anyone know a very wealthy benefactor that would like to finance the book? Florida Lottery is up to 9 million. Maybe I'll buy a ticket. :)