Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Frank Quitely Birds of Prey #125 Cover



I got to color a Frank Quitely Birds of Prey #125 Cover.. sweet for me.

I think it turned out pretty cool... very mad mad mad world.

DC Comics Birds of Prey preview

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Friday, September 12, 2008

Trinity #15 Double Page Spread explanation

So I'm going to break down this crazy double page spread and how I tackled it.

It was drawn by Scott McDanial http://www.scottmcdaniel.net/ and inked by Andy Owens (couldn't find a website).

1. The Black and White:

Needless to say when I first saw this I could have been overwhelmed. Lucky Scott is a really cool guy and asked me back at the penciling stage if he could do anything to help me on my end. Surprisingly I didn't ask for much except for a background issue (which i'll get to late).

TRI-15_14_15B&W

2. Flat the black and white... I use flatters. I love them and they are well worth it for me. My guys and girls do a great job but I usually still need to go in a tweak it for my own break ups after all I'm the one coloring so they don't always know what my end result is going to be. Once the break ups are done I do something called "re-flatting." This is where I assign the flat colors I'm going to start with.

I have to have a few goals when I do this:

1. asign the correct colors to each character/building/sky/etc... The Characters are VERY improtant. The Background is usally down with regarde to the overall mode and plot/story goals.

2. I will sometime fill a mood color at this point to either the entire scene or parts. I do this to either help break-up parts of the scene or effect a mood. Now this image was so large I decided to render it as a whole and then use color to effect depth after wards (see #3). ....but that being said I did do a fill of about 20% blue over the whole image before I started to render to push it towards a more night oriented scene.

here's the flats right before I rendered:

TRI-15_14_15flat

3. ok Render... errr wait, I mean if I just render away without thinking about it first the image is going to look flat. So I did that and thought about how I could break this up into levels. I went so far to make each level it's own selection area.

TRI-15_14_15depth
each color represents a different depth.

4. NOW render...

now I didn't save the rendered version before I implemented the depth because I don't work that way. I pushed and pulled as I worked to make thing recede or move forward. I did this in a non destructive way to the renders by using lots of layers using different color modes but usually "COLOR" or "NORMAL."

TRI-15_14_15-rgb

The thing that Scott did for me was to make the casttle it's own piece of art so that I could plug it in on my own. This made it way easier to implement in the end.

so there you go... questions?

Friday, September 05, 2008

Next Week

one crazy double page spread... thanks to the art of Scott MacDaniel, inks by Andy Owen... color by me.

I'll break down what I did on this one when the book comes out next week.

TRI-15_14_15-rgb

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Trinity #19-21 Covers

hello All

Been kinda busy but thought I would put up my colors for Trinity#19-21 drawn Carlos Pacheco, inked Jesus Merino and colors by me.

The challenge with any of these Trip-tics is maintaining a cohesion but giving each cover enough gusto to stand alone. I like to color them all put together but I often have to do the first in the series and then come back and do the rest because of solicitations.

Knowing little about the story other then where I am on the interior back-up story (at the time around#12) I just went with what was there.

Statues that have been neglected in a broken down memorial/museum. I love the look of bronze cast but going with that color sceme would have been harder to pull off. Luckly I had been to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University for some fun and they had tones of Marble blocks, floors, walls and about everything else.

So I took a bunch of pics... take a look at the statue and see if you can see how I incoperated the marble texture into the art.

Last.. but not least was the light effect.

No I did not use the Photoshop Lens Flare effect (NEVER do that).... but I did use it to help me make my own (like a guide). I wanted the light to work across all three issues separately but as one image as well. It's not as constant and I like to do but I think it pulls off a somewhat stoic effect.

What do you think?

Questions?

TRI Cv19-21