Rogue One: A Star Wars Story #1 Cover Step by Step Part 1 Pencils

Our variant cover for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story #1 from Marvel Comics

I had been pestering my Star Wars editor, Heather Antos, about doing a Rogue One ever since the trailer came out last April - and so, in December, I was offered this!

Check out how we made it.

COVER SKETCH

The cover concept I sent into Marvel Comics Editors Heather Antos and Jordan White and Lucasfilm for approval.

Roughs were drawn at 2" x 3" in my sketchbook using Warm Grey Copics then colored in Photoshop CS3.

INITIAL PENCILS

Drawn in Light Blue on 12" x 18" Bristol Board 

Quickly roughed in the drawing making sure the composition still help.

I printed out my rough in light blue on the paper to ensure the composition was positioned correctly.

Detail of Jyn Erso as portrayed by actress Felicity Jones. 

I was familiar with Felicity from previous work so I knew what her face looked like, which is always a big help doing likenesses!

Believe it or not, I was pretty happy with everything in the drawing and so I just began to finish the pencils.

Detail 

Not exactly typical way of working but as I wasn't familiar with the costume details of any of these characters.  I basically just worked my way down the character solving problems as I went.

I was happy with the Jyn's face from the start so really didn't do much more with it...

Still finalizing all the correct costume details...

I widened Jyn's stance a bit for a more Marvel Superhero-y look for the cover.

Added shadows.

Now with the Jyn done, I could really cruise on the finishes of the blocked in version of the other characters - "objects" - as everything is so mechanical for the rest of the cover...

FINAL PENCILS

...I had models of Stormtroopers, the Gun, and K2SO I used to reference to get depth/perspective/volumes correct and then used photos to get the color, accuracy and feel right.

And this is what Rachel was handed off - the backgrounds would be completed by me later...

And the scan of the pencils....

Next time, 

PART 2

INKS 

TD