Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Making RED ONE Book 1 Cover Art! Part 2 Colors and Design

Check out the previous post for creating the lineart -


Let's get this party started! 

So, colored  this bad boy in Photoshop CS3 using a Wacom Cintiq 13HD and my 23 inch Apple Monitor.


Flats  - The first stage of coloring is to have the art "flatted".

Flatting allows me to choose an area to color at any point throughout the coloring process.

At this stage I go and adjust the colors to their medium value or imprimatura - I use this as the starting point for the piece.


Initial rough in of colors and turning the lineart red as it's pretty significant to the final art so I need to do it early on in this piece.



Revising and cleaning - colored the lineart for the hammer and sickle and the Alabama and Lew and the bike. Added Red to the white stars - something I knew I would do in the color stage.


Final colors - I added and subtracted stars knowing how the cover was going to work as a wraparound and nailing down where all the "logos" would go.



Detail of Vera



Detail of Alabama and Lew


My cover rough I sent into Image Production Designer and whiz kid Jonathan Chan - so he could place everything.

I've had this cover in my head for a very long time so it's gratifying to finally be at this stage.

'

And afer a little back and forth, VOILA!, the final cover!

SO, RED ONE Book 1 Welcome to America. The book has the 59 page story from issues 1 and 2 plus 16 pages of bonus material including a look at how I made the brand new wraparound cover. All collected in an 80 page oversized European style Hard cover.

Ships July 15th from Image Comics!


Still available for Pre Order from Diamond and your Local Retailer!


TD

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