As I mentioned last week, I’ll be illustrating a new The Tick series!
Today, you get to see the cover’s finished inks! and just for grins, some progress shots, and what went into the making of it.
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Yes, that includes original artwork…
back to the Tick cover…Let’s start with the thumbnail
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Good, but not enough clowns and ninjas they thought…
no problem…
looking good, but I notice at this point that the crane’s vanishing points are wrong. Best to get that figured out, first since it will affect the posture of all the ninjas and clowns.
this is a shot from below so it needs a vanishing point above as well as to the left and right…AND since the crane is tilted, it needs three vanishing points of it’s own.
the purple is for the the crane and the blue is for the buildings. Look complicated? It isn’t…at first…then it’s confusing as f8ck all.
that’s better.
let’s start the bastard full sized.
no one can say I’m not committed to getting every single line right, in order to make sure those cross beams at the bottom were correct I had to go off the page a bit.
…
….no, YOU’RE crazy.
anyways on I went
I usually start inking with shorter curved lines because I’m most comfortable with those. as complicated as that crane scene is, I thought it best to ink a few of the figures before adding more. Also, this was going to take a while and I might as well break up the penciling and inking tasks so I don’t get to burned out.
onward…
So far so good, Arthur’s face was going to be hit or miss, so I might as well tackle that while I’m on a roll
Turned out good…so I inked that crane hook and pulley that I was a bit worried about and that turned out okay. When I’m on a roll tough things seem easy. Big circles like that crane pulley…those are the kinds of lines that either work out the first attempt or the 40th attempt…with no in between. Getting it the first try means this’ll take about 2 hours less than if I didn’t nail it right off.
That middle bottom clown…I went back and forth on his posture and which hand should be grabbing upward. If his left hand grabs up his posture will create a circle pattern with the other figures, and if his right arm grabs up it adds to the motion of the figures going up the right side. I went with the latter..seems like an obvious choice now, but I spend a while mulling it over. Your decision making part of your brain doesn’t work as fast 15 hours into a project.
anyways, after all that the Tick himself didn’t seem as tough to do.
I also changed around some of the clowns for the sake of the overall composition.
and that is that. People ask a lot how long it takes to do a page or cover. It depends on the difficulty and how much is going on and the accuracy that is needed with the backgrounds and non organic stuff. One figure punching another in the snow…that’ll take like 5 hours. A alien inside a ship full of intricate technological crap could take 20.
The laying out of the crane and all these figures and the delicacy in inking needed for this to not become a visual mess (varying line thickness and adding textures to separate things)…this one took me 23 man hours. I thought it would take about 8… Oy.
Anyways…The first issue of The Tick will be on shelves in August and available for you/your local comic book store to order in June. It’ll be published by New England Comics and distributed by Diamond Comics Distribution.
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