More comics work in progress!

Who's been busy? That would be me! Check out a (mostly) finished page I've been working on for a comic script by the lovely Alison Kooistra. The first panel is still in the works, and a few more details may happen on the existing ones, but for the most part it's inked and done!



I should add: this is actually the first time I've attempted a full inked page. I've drawn and shaded full pages in pencil before, and I've inked individual panels (usually on separate pieces of paper, and assembled and coloured as layers after, digitally), but I've never before attempted to ink over pencils all on one page. So... slow... but in the words of Calvin's father, "It builds character."

Rough stuff!

It's funny: every time I let this blog go a while without posting anything, you'd think it was because I haven't been working on anything. Au contraire. It's when I get busiest with projects that I forget to update! But not this time! This time: I update.

I often get asked about my process for working on things. I've always been someone who prefers to keep my rough ideas hidden, and who waits for the finished product before I'll let people take a look. I'm the person doodling stuff in the coffee shop or on the bus who will snap the sketchbook shut if you get too close. But I'm trying not to be!

So, for the moment, I'm going to post some of what I've been working away at over the weekend. These are for a comics project that just got underway a couple of weeks ago. I'll stay mum on the details for the moment, but it's shaping up to be something really exciting, and is so far a pretty amazing collaborative effort by a large number of contributors.

Anyhow, back to my process. My process is itself a work in process. These layouts were figured out, first, as individual panels sketched out and repeatedly drawn and redrawn in pencil before I decided I was happy enough with them to sketch them into a layout template. I then scanned them and did some resizing and redrawing using photoshop and my wacom tablet. Many many... many... hours later, and they still look mostly like an indecipherable sloppy mess, but from this indecipherable mess will come finished pencils, inks, toning, lettering... and a comic is born.

Here are just a couple of the seven pages I roughed out this weekend:

Death and the Maiden

Sketched in pencil, without photo reference, so it may have some... idiosyncrasies? I'm happy with the mood though, which is the main thing for me.

Based on Gaston Leroux's original novel's description of the Erik and Christine characters. No Gerard Butler in the house here. Though I think this could potentially be a standalone piece, without the context of it being an illustration for a book.