wildwords

Tickets now available for the upcoming Cooper Black gig in Chipping Norton.
More details on FACEBOOK

Here’s a strange job. Illustrating a PC case.

With the scanned pencils opened in photoshop all the areas of colour are blocked in and gradually tone and shade and highlights are added until the desired effect is reached. The look I am going for with FRONTIER is an old watercolour look. That is why none of the pages are inked. I want to retain the pencil look and then have the colour look like it is a simple wash. The look of this is enhanced by having all the colours on a multiply layer over the top of a background that is filled with a pale sand colour and a filter applied to make it look like old paper. And thats it. The blue line art that was used for the lettering is replaced with this finished art and the whole lot is exported as a finished file ready for print.

It’s all a slightly new process for me but is as close to what I originally intended for the strip as I can imagine. In fact truth to tell it came out better that I thought it would.

So thats how it is done, just another 10 episodes to go

So thats all the lettering done. It then comes to the point of taking the blue line penciled layouts and making them into something far nicer looking.
This is where the techniques used while working in animation come into play again. I put the blue line art onto the lightbox and lay another sheet of animation paper over the top. On this new sheet I then ‘trace’ the picture using pencil adding all the detail I need (or as much as time allows). When that is done it is scanned into the computer, opened up in Photoshop and the colouring begins…

So just because I can, here is the next bit of ‘The Process’ of putting together FRONTIER
So, blue line pencil roughs are all done. These are then scanned into the computer. Next up is the lettering. Lettering is done in Illustrator, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It can be done in Photoshop and actually no real reason why not other than it doesn’t have the same flexibility as Illustrator when fiddling about with the text and fonts and, very definitely, sound effects. I put the art on the bottom layer, the balloons on the next layer, the text on a third layer and then sound FX on a fourth. It’s a house keeping thing really, enables you to find stuff easily and change things globally.
The reason I letter these blue line roughs is that if for some reason I have been waaaay off when leaving space for balloons I still have the option to change things before committing myself to finished art.
There are lots of ‘rules’ to comic lettering that do make for a more workable job that I won’t go into here. Of course, I say ‘rules’ but it’s all made up. Rules are only things made up by people who want to be ‘right’ about stuff so no point being afraid to break them, but it is useful to know what the rules are. Well lets say ‘conventions’ instead, sounds more friendly and less like school
Anyway. Lettering all done I save it out (if I am happy it fits) and go on to the finished pencils.
Which is next time.
W!LDMAN

I have been asked how i got involved with eh new UK comic The DFC so thought I would chat about that and talk about the way I am putting the art.
I got involved with it through writer the writer, Jason Cobley. We had been fleshing out a couple of ideas as potential projects when Jason was invited to work on the DFC. We then decided to pitch a couple of ideas. Out of those the editor chose FRONTIER. At the time it wasn’t my favourite of the ideas we had but in hind sight it is probably the best and most appropriate. That and the fact that our other ideas trod the same ground as others that had already been given the green light.

So the process… I always used to do my work on Bristol board like most comic artists but after working in an animation studio a couple of years back (designing all the characters for Legend of The Dragon) I adopted some of their working practices. All my work is now done on ‘15 field’ animation paper (roughly A3) and then scanned and coloured in Photoshop. I thumbnail from the script then draw the whole thing out in blue pencil. Animators blue pencil. The ones that are erasable (good job really!). This is the stage that I get all the layout and sizing tied down.
Its a mess at the start but looks like the pic shown.
Will follow up the next stage in another post.

The long anticipated DFC is launched in just 23 days. Although our amazing FRONTIER strip doesnt appear at launch we will be having online content to get you in the mood and that will create back story to take you up to Part One.
The whole DFC thing is going to be an amazing UK cultural event and will herald something not seen in British comics for many many moons.

Check out the dfc website and more exciting info at lovereading4kids

See you in there

A new project and a new direction for me. Part one of FRONTIER by Jason Cobley and myself is now complete although you wont see it for a few weeks. A taster above and more info on the Frontier website, the place for all the news about the new comic strip , soon to appear in the DFC.
Frontier is a story based on the recently discovered diaries of Daisy Adams from 1866. Its WEIRD, it’s WILD and it all happened out WEST.
Dont miss it. More soon

Ok. So it goes like this.

On this blog (and I have far too many of these things) I am going to post news about my work in comics, games etc and over on Blogger I will post all sorts of general stuff and nonsense.

So what’s going on workwise? Well not a lot with Transformers at the moment. No big bots in my life (other than my own!). The Games work is going great guns. Concept work for NiK NaK on the Wii games we are making based on the Ologyworld books. First up from those will be Dragonology. Pretty much all the concept work on that is done. The latter stages needed help as I was overloaded with concept work on Wizardology so we drafted in the services of David Millgate. His background in comics made him perfect for the job and he a thoroughly all round decent chap, which always makes life easier

Other work at the moment is the very nicely progressing, Frontier with writer Jason Cobley. Great to be doing a western (with a difference). Check out all the breaking news on that one at the Frontier blog. I will be putting up posts about how the art is progressing and the techniques I am using (coz it’s a little different). More news about the release date of that one soon.

In case you haven’t heard Draw the World Together are producing a sketchbook of City of Heroes characters. All the breaking news on that one on the DtWT site. This is going to be a very limited run so if you want one ya better get in quick. They will be on sale at the Comicexpo in Bristol in May.
Also for sale will be some Transformers toys. With a difference Each toy will have at least one exclusive ’sketchcard’ included. These will be original sketches by Transformers artists. Nick Roche and Klaus Scherwinski are doing the cards. Oh and there are a few by me, and there was me saying I wasn’t drawing Transformers anymore

More soon

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