The evolution of a cover, from Mike Mignola's sketch to intermediate layouts to final pencils and inks. The three panels at the bottom were dropped when they didn't work on the cover of #1. I liked them but Mike thought they were getting in the way.
NIce! (great series too!) When you are rendering very specific light and shadow effects like theses, especially on figures, do you take some ref photos for faces and fabric etc or are you just winging it?
ReplyDeleteI've done that before, but not lately. I was just winging it here, using a very familiar lighting effect that's almost idiot proof.
ReplyDeleteGREAT WORK, are you working on bprd series too or just in covers?
ReplyDeletedaniele from Siena, Italy
Just some covers.
ReplyDeleteLove it!
ReplyDeleteStriking image!
ReplyDeleteSo I gotta ask since you didn't mention it, did you sketch out both figures than lightbox them together on the final image? I'm assuming you did and wondered when you did that if anything didn't work out quite right when you layered them together? Like an arm or shading that just didn't quite work out like you had thought.
ReplyDeleteWonderful cover none the less. And interesting to see how you take one sketch from Mike and turn it into that kind of glory.
If I remember correctly, I put the two sketches together in Photoshop, but kept them as separate layers since we kept going back and forth and moving things this way and that. When we finally had a layout that worked I printed it out and light-boxed it so there weren't any surprises.
ReplyDeleteOh, that's cool. I wondered if that is the route you went. Would make sense that you could get that far and not have any surprises. Would have been interesting to see the panels at the bottom had it gone that way.
ReplyDeleteStill great to see a cover progress like this take place. I did like what you did with the snake/skull in the right hand of the background figure. Think that adds a lot to the side of the image like that instead of just a black patch. Was that something you added in or something you and Mike had talked about?
Mike drew the snake and skull in another sketch for the statue.
ReplyDeleteDid you do any research on the Black Dakini, Vajrasattva or Yamantaka ...? these are part of the Tibetan Buddhist "pantheon"... very power image.
ReplyDelete