BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA #1 COVER Step by Step PART TWO Initial Color

Here's a look of how I made the cover for Big Trouble in Little China #1 -

out now from Boom! Studios!

Now the color...

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.

My initial flats very simple this as ...

I'm going for a different approach then normal. I'm coloring my pencils instead of a

 traditional inked black and white piece.

I'm going for a Drew Struzan movie poster look so I do a quick airbrush lay in of colors not 

worrying about the colors bleeding - in fact this gives the art the look I'm going for.

This also sets up the imprimatura halftones for the art.

This is done in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom Intuos Graphics Tablet. 

Next I start doing some rendering of form on Jack Burton using the Pencil tool at 100% to hit the shadows.

Crusing right along and add greens to the sky and begin more rending on Jack, the Wildman, the lights and the foggy background. Still mostly using the Pencil tool here at varying opacities and the Lasso/Gradient on the sky and the fog.

  

Starting adding more red's to the BG and really rendering the Wildman more.

I also begin to colorize the lineart - note the lines on Jack's right arm…

Detail of this stage...

Next time - the final coloring including some screen shots of how I set up my layers…

TD