Saturday 15 October 2011

Anatomy Of A Cover

Now that issue 1 is out and available at http://rolhirst.co.uk/, thought I'd run through the cover process...

Rol sent me a brief idea or two, which I developed around 20 crude thumbnails designs from and sent on to him, who picked out elements that he liked, leading to a more refined second round before a design was settled on.I drew the art at full US size, then reduced the line art down to A4 and added gray tones that I scanned in (untidied version above) and sent to Rol for approval. Once that came through, I began colouring in Photoshop, knowing that I would add the signage in once all the colouring was complete.
Once the colouring (except for the sky, as I was doing that separately on a separate layer) was complete, we hit a snag: when I did thumbnails, Rol told me I needed to add the pier but he was unable to fully view the line art I sent him as he was away and only had his Blackberry to view from. Later I figured out that mentally my geography of the town layout was about 90 degrees from the actual locations, leading to about three different amendments removing the pier and inserting a new one. Eventually I got there and when #1 turned up today, I was relieved to see that you actually can't tell there's any jiggerypokery.

Anyway, once the art was corrected and locked, off to Dave Metcalfe-Carr who added the logo and job done. Now go buy the comic, it's probably the best new small press comic you'll read all year...

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