RED ONE Book 2 Word Balloons!

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

Here's a look at how I make the WORD BALLOONS for the RED ONE Book 2 pages. I actually place the balloons on the the original art. I leave the lettering (apart from Sound FX) to the professional - Clayton Cowles!

So here's my roughed in page of RED ONE and sitting on top of it is my Balloon Template I use to determine the proper balloon size. 

Drawing RED ONE Book 1 I really had to guess at the proper balloon size, but for Book 2 I was able to see what worked and what didn't in Book 1 and I made a Template  

using standard Ellipse Templates. I count the number of words in each line of dialogue and match that up to the proper size Balloon. 

I use Ellipse Templates to draw the balloons and then either ink those shapes with the template or Freehand depending on the type of balloon. There are wide variety of balloon types I use (Normal, YELL, Phone, TV, Off Panel, etc) but this gives me the ballpark size to make each balloon. 

I try to error on the small side as I can easily increase the balloon in Photoshop - going the other way means drawing more - not good!

So, this is what the balloons look like before I ink them. I usually ink them after I pencil in the page JUST in case I decide to make a change.

I love drawing the balloons myself as they feel like they are such a huge part of the storytelling and design.

TOOLS

12" x 17" Strathmore 500 Series 2 Ply Bristol Board Vellum

Col Erase Light Blue Pencil

08 Micron Pigma Black Pen

30 35 40 45 60 Pickett Ellipse Inking Templates

Learn more about RED ONE at

RED ONE

and 

IMAGE

Find your local comic retailer 

You can have your local retailer order you a copy through DIAMOND also 

Plus through major online retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble

TD

Star Wars Shattered Empire #1 Variant Cover Step 2 COLOR

Here's a look at how we created the Variant Cover  for Star Wars Shattered Empire #1  out now from Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm.

Step Two 

COLOR

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

This went pretty quick- just used the basic Pencil tool between 100% to 50% at Normal to break the initial rendering and then Gradient tool in the background. 

I use  Photoshop CS3 and a Wacom Cintiq 13HD to color with.

Added stars and started work on the Luke's Lightsaber.

Starting to turn the lineart to color lines and taking the colors to the next level of refinement on Leia and Luke.

Rendering of Ewoks, Lando and Nien.

Worked more on background - added more stars and worked on rendering ships.

Plus more rendering on Leia and Luke.

Reduced Leia's right forearm size.

Final Art

And here is the "bagged" and print version of the comic -

PART ONE

LINE ART

TD

Star Wars Shattered Empire #1 Variant Cover Step 1 LINEART

Here's a look at how we created the Variant Cover  for Star Wars Shattered Empire #1  out now from Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm.

My initial sketches sent to Lucasfilm and Editor Heather Antos at Marvel.

I was actually happy with all these...

 The sketches are drawn at 2x3 inches in my sketchbook in pencil and pen and then cleaned up and colored in Photoshop.

My initial pencils drawn in Light Blue and HB lead on 12 x 18 Bristol Board.

Changed Leia's face and started working on Lando and Nien.

Ewoks!

Finishing up 

Pencils ready for Rachel and me to ink

Detail

Detail

Inks

Rachel Dodson uses Windsor Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable #2 Brush and Higgins Black Magic Ink to ink the covers with.

I inked the ships with a Pigma Micron 01 and 03 Pen.

Detail

Detail

Detail

Next time

 COLOR

TD

Superman Wonder Woman #20 Bombshells Variant Cover Step by Step Part 2 COLOR

Here's the 2nd part - COLOR - of how we created the Bombshells Cover for Superman and Wonder Woman #20 out now from DC Comics.

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

This went pretty quick- just used the basic Pencil tool between 100% to 50% at Normal to break the initial rendering and then a little Lasso with Gradient tool to clean up.

I use  Photoshop CS3 and a Wacom Cintiq 13HD to color with.

Cleaning up and refinig the colors.

Coloring

Starting to turn the lineart to color lines and more value to the Fleshes to "beef up" the drawings.

Final colors with SFX

And how the cover looked when "Bombshell"-ed by DC Creative for publication.

PART 1

LINEART

TD

Superman Wonder Woman #20 Bombshells Variant Cover Step by Step Part 1 LINEART

Here's a look at how we created the Bombshells Cover for Superman and Wonder Woman #20 out now from DC Comics.

My initial sketches sent to DC Comics.

 The sketches are drawn at 2x3 inches in my sketchbook in pencil and pen and then cleaned up and colored in Photoshop.

My initial pencils drawn in Light Blue and HB lead on 12 x 18 Bristol Board.

Final pencils

Inks

Rachel Dodson uses Windsor Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable #2 Brush and Higgins Black Magic Ink to ink the covers with.

PART 2

COLOR 

TD

New York Comic Con Oct 8-11, 2015

We will be at Artist Alley Table D-18 at NYCC in October. I'll be posting more specifics later but it will be a pretty normal appearance for us - please refer to my older convention posts to see what we usually do.

http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/

See you there!

TD