Vegas 12: now with 75% more Tessa

Okay, remember how, in my last post, I promised to draw someone other than Tessa? Shortly after I posted, Jeffrey told me to read the next script. It's all about Tessa. Whoops! Well, I didn't really renege on my promise; Jeff is there, too. In the background. That counts, right?

Anyways, I knew I'd have to do this scene for the cover after I heard the preview at the end of Vegas 11. It basically popped into my head, fully-formed, and demanded to be drawn. So I did a sketch and sent it off to be approved.
Then I thought that as long as I had the file sitting there in Photoshop, I should try throwing some color on it to see what sticks. I'm not used to doing dark, dramatically-lighted scenes. And THEN I got all caught up in trying out some new CG painting techniques, and before I knew it I'd decided to digitally paint the cover.

Let's just say it's a good thing I was really ahead when I started, because I am very, very slow with CG work. CG is a double-edged sword; on the plus side, you can fix anything at almost any stage. On the minus side, you can fix almost anything at any stage. So I worked and reworked and re-re-worked it until I realized that I would eventually have to, you know, finish it.

Painting (traditional OR digital) is not my strong suit. I'm not great with color. Fortunately, I found this wonderful tutorial by Julie Dillon that made all the difference. There's some clever stuff there!

The PSD at 100%, along with the giant list of layers.

The final file, sans text and the fun grungy-book effect, was 662 mb. It's 600dpi, which is about as big as I've ever worked. It really helped, too, although it was at the limit of what my newish laptop could do. ;) There are something like 26 layers on it and it took around a minute to save. The maddening thing I discovered about the painting technique was that I couldn't really flatten any of the layers unless I wanted to flatten them down to the background; it would ruin the way the colors blended. Because of this, I ended up working on the Tessa figure in a different file to speed things up a bit.

The floor and door textures in this piece are from cgtextures.com. Big giant thanks to EK and Meghan for critiquing my works-in-progress!

NEXT TIME: I make no promises about next time. I've learned my lesson. I may try to do it in less time, though. This took me about two weeks!

Batman: The Ace of Detectives, Issue 30 (Vindicatum 5)!

Here 'tis, viewers. Enjoy!

Commentary is available hyaw.

~ Harley says hi. ~

The Reveal

Heres just the inks, since I don't have a scanner I had to take a photo, I tried to clean it up in Photoshop, but ended up leaving it a bit lighter than this, especially since the colors showed the forms so much.
This is just all the color layers in Photoshop w/o the inks, was just to show how much I colored underneath. I didn't really care for the image so I tried to beef it up with some fun colors. I think I was trying to stick so closely to the character sheet for the characters that I ended up emulating that style instead of making it my own - at least on this cover. But seeing as most were pleased with this cover, I know the next one will be even better received. I'd really like to do a close up face, some sort of emotional scene or action scene. I haven’t been drawing a lot lately and it shows. So personally, I think the covers I've done so far have been sort of stagnant or boring... But i plan to change that! And here's the final with everything together.
Oh yeah, and I also got a table so I was kind of out of my element, it was nice for a change but took some getting used to. I do like the wings though, that was fun. Until next month, -XaqBazit.

Superman: The Last Son of Krypton Issue 42/ Vindicatum 3

Hey folks,

Ya didn't think I'd forget aboutcha, right? Right. Anyway, Here is the cover for Superman LSOK 42/ Vindicatum 3.



My commentary is provided here! Enjoy, and thanks for listening.

Long time listener, first time cover artist

Hey guys, I just took over duties doing covers for Star Trek: Defiant, sorry I'm a little late with the post but i did have some things I wanted to share about my work on episode 25.
So being in Co on a vacation when i got the job to do the first cover, instead of in Ga where i live and have all my supplies. i didn't have the supplies i would usually draw upon, so i drew them separate and assembled them in Photoshop.

So here's a picture of the original inks.
And here's all the pieces compiled in Photoshop.

And lastly here is an early rough version of the colors.

And the final. All color layers are under the inks which have a multiply layer filter on them, and then i airbrushed the thrusters out of the back of the ship and added the lens flair on top of the inks layer.
I was very inspired by Jack Kirby's stylistic version of space, and drew allot from his old work on Silver Surfer, Fantastic 4 etc. I also drew allot of inspiration from the colors of Cam Kenedy's work on Star Wars: Dark Empire.

I had just gotten a description for the last episodes cover because I only came on board a few days before it was due but now with the longer episodes that are starting to happen with Defiant it seems the hardest part of the job will be just getting through the script in time. Looking forward to doing my first cover with the characters on episode 26, look for it by the 8th of July.

Vegas 11 is now boarding

Hi again! Here's the cover for "Once Upon a Time in Vegas" chapter 11. It was more of a struggle this time, but I think it turned out well in the end. I wasn't intending on doing another Tessa cover, but I thought this scene would work out best. I'll draw someone else next time! Promise!

The cover was colored in Photoshop this time around; I had a time crunch, I still need to replace some markers, and I needed to tweak the drawing a lot. This worked out well because I got to play with the colors a lot more in PS than I'd have been able to with marker. I actually colored everything but Tessa in various grays, and then ended up with the sepia tone after playing around with an adjustment layer. (What's an adjustment layer? Check out this video tutorial to find out.)

I got a kick out of drawing O'Hare, by the way. I know airport gates are generally the same everywhere, but O'Hare is my "home" airport. Thanks, Rene and Alicia, for putting that little detail in. ;)

Batman: The Ace of Detectives, Issue 29 (Vindicatum 1)!

Excited about part 1 of Vindicatum yet? No? Well, get excited, darn it! And then you can take a look at the cover I made:


Commentary is available, and may be found at: http://www.zshare.net/audio/134741756786567c/

The sketch which I mention in the commentary may be viewed on my DeviantArt account here.

~ Harley says hi. ~