Sunday, January 6, 2008

McCandless & Company

McCANDLESS & CO. is the brain child of writer J.C. Vaughn. The series of stories follow a two women detective agency and their male assistant. While other artists have worked on the characters with J.C., I have actually drawn more pages. One 48 page story we did is INSECURITIES. Though we did a cover for it a while back, we decided a new cover was needed for a pitch to a publisher. I started with some quick sketches. The above are the three final roughs.The middle one (#2) was chosen and I went about doing a few color comps. All this involved was taking the pencil rough and adding color to it in Photoshop. After a few tries, the above is what we agreed on.The next stage is doing a complete underdrawing. This is where I will establish the lights and darks of the piece. This is done on Strathmore illustration board using a 2b pencil. When I was happy with the values I established, I scanned it and colored in Photoshop. I tried not to make it too "slick", wanting the pencils to show through. I was inspired by movie posters of the 1930s and 1940s.
Afterwards I added the copy to add to the movie poster/teaser effect. And there you go. The pitch went well and the publisher picked it up. I will post more information when the publisher makes the official announcement.

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