The Goonies: Sloth
It’s be quite a while since I posted any new art. I apologize for that. I have been keeping busy at my day job making social media games for Facebook. I have also been working on a ton of freelance work not to mention spending a considerable amount of time building a castle bed for my daughter plus creating Halloween costumes for myself and all three of my kids. I do have plans to begin revamping my website and should be launching my web comic early next year. I have plenty of new art coming your way and I will be previewing the process on the inter-webs real soon, however before I get to that I thought I would do some warm up sketches featuring one of my favorite movies from my childhood: The Goonies…
My Mini Comic Book Process for Young And The Dead: No Zombies Allowed
I recently wrapped up work on my new comic book project Young and the Dead: No Zombies Allowed.
This project was originally conceived as a mini comic for the Art & Story Podcast’s Mini Comics Dump Truck, an annual event where visual storytellers are given the task of producing their own mini comic. Once completed the mini comics are then traded among the groups members at the end of a six month period.
Brainstorming
Because of the nature of mini comics I had set out to do something quick and simple. I had a couple of ideas rolling around in my head involving zombies. I always wanted to do a Zombie story but didn’t know if I could add anything to this already over-saturated genre. Mini comics are typical created with the guerrilla attitude of just get the thing done and out there. I figured what do I have to lose. Then a funny thing happened… As I began brainstorming, basically just throwing around ideas I realized maybe there is a worthwhile story I can tell.
Character Design
For me this story was about the characters first and foremost. So before I even put pen to paper on a script I set forth to develop the characters.
Scripting
With the character designs complete. I moved on to plotting the story and developing a script. During this process characters may change or evolve and new characters may be developed to fit the narrative. I usually draft a pretty tight outline with all of the scenes and dialog in place, however this script is continuously being reworked often up until the moment I do the final lettering.
Thumbnails
Now that I have some idea of the story I do my thumbnails, small quick and simple drawings that I use to plan out my pages and story flow.
Penciling
Using the thumbnails as a visual reference I then begin drawing the pages in pencil. I use a Koh-I-Noor drafting lead holder with Prismacolor non-photo blue drafting leads which can be easaly eliminated later in Photoshop allowing only the black ink to show up and allowing me to skip the erasing stage.
Inking
Once the page is penciled I go over the page in ink. My pencils are typical very straight forward and I add a lot of the detail in the inking stage. For this comic I used a Winsor Newton Series 7 brush number 3, Black Magic ink and various Micron pens for the straight lines and panel borders.
Here is a sampling of my finished pencil and ink pages.
Scanning
After the pages are inked the remainder of the work will be completed digitally. I scan the pages into Abobe Photoshop for coloring or gray tones in this case. I recently purchased a Brother MFC-6490CW Printer which prints and scans at up to 11” X 17” This is awesome because my old method involved scanning the art board in two separate sections and splicing them together in Photoshop. I would recommend this printer to any comic artist if for no other reason than the large scanning area. Costco online frequently has this printer on sale and for much less than what I paid for it. I think at the time of this posting you could get it for about 100 bucks after rebates.
Coloring
Now that the pages are scanned into the computer. I start laying down solid flat colors in various shades of gray. Once the image is “flatted” I select each flat shape and digitally airbrush some highlights and shadows in gray.
Mock up
The orientation and placement of the pages can get confusing so It helps to create a dummy or a mock-up of the book. Here I have folded 8 1/2” X 11” sheets of paper like a book and numbered the pages from 1 to 22 plus title pages etc. Now I can unfold the sheets and use the individual pages as guides to show me how to organize the actual pages for printing.
Lettering
Now I bring my fully toned art into Abobe Illustrator where I organize my pages in the order they will be printed. Then I do all of the lettering, sound effects and graphic design of the book.
Printing
Finally it’s time to print out the pages. I’m doing the books twenty at a time so I make stacks of each page in groups of twenty in a line in the order of how they will be stacked for each individual comic. Then I just go down the line and stack the pages one on top of the other.
Cropping
Because the pages in my book are full bleed and the printed image will run off the edge of the page. I need to cut off the extra edges of the page with a paper cutter.
Scoring
Now I score the books by folding them in half. It helps to line them up against the corner edged of something, I just use the edge of my paper cutter. I do this for the interior pages and the cover of the mini.
Stapling
Next I Staple the pages together with a long arm stapler that you can purchase at most office supply places.
That Extra Touch
For me presentation is everything, You never get a second chance to make a first impression. So I wanted to do a little something extra for this book. I designed a book jacket that when in place would look like zombie hands were closing in on our heroes. Die cutting is expensive and since I am limiting this special edition of the comic to 150 copies I decided to cut the shapes of the hands out by hand with an Xacto knife.
To finish every thing off I designed bands resembling caution tape that would hold everything together as well as provide a nice unwrapping experience for the reader.
And That’s How I create a mini comic.
If you are interested in purchasing the artist edition of Young and the Dead: No Zombies Allowed, you can do so here at my online store
