So I decided that I wanted to do a Scott Pilgrim print for the upcoming Punk Rock Flea Market this weekend. This is the first of several prints I have to do and complete by this weekend! ARRGH.
So while at the comic shop awhile ago, I had done this sketch on a random piece of paper. I went against my nature and made big ole manga eyes to try to keep the look of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s characters. And as for the pose, I wanted to get across the love and the cartoon-y violence that the series has in spades..So I have Ramona and Scott walking hand-in-hand, all lovey dovey, while Scott casually deflects an off-panel attack punch!
So then I just took a pic of it with my iPhone, which is so much easier and quicker then using my actual scanner! It’s ridiculous! God, I love my phone.
So anyhoo, I brought it into Photoshop CS5 and redrew the whole thing. There were some things I wanted to change about the sketch and this was the time to do it. 1. I wanted to make Ramona look less chunky so I made her much taller and gave her a different body type. 2. I wasn’t comfortable with the giant Manga eyes, so I went with MY style eyes. It just didn’t feel right. I drew each character on their own layer, and thank god I did, because in order to make Ramona taller, I just stretched her up and repositioned her. I also had to adjust the size of her forearm which was super-long. (Thanks for the heads-up, Slai!) and that was also really easy since her sketch wasn’t attached to Scott’s.
So then it was time to start adding the color. I decided to again go against my own grain and color the linework as well. Usually I keep the linework black, but thought I’d try something different. The way I did this was to just redraw all the line work using the different colors and then create another layer and add the fill colors one part at a time, then create a new layer and start adding in the shadows for each color. Some tricks I thought of was for the seams in the pants and the zipper on the jacket, create a new layer, use a thick brush size, then draw a single line, say..for the seam. Then I just used the STROKE effect on that layer, which gave the impression of two parallel lines. A bit of a cheat, I know. But I’m stoked that I figured that out, cause I hate having to draw zigzag-y parallel lines. They never match. They always wind up thinner in certain parts and thicker in others, which looks sloppy.
So here’s where I am so far!
I did this thumbnail sketch at about 2″ x 1″, just to get the positioning and composition down, and was pretty happy with it, so I went directly into drawing the full size version in my sketch book:
In retrospect, now that the project is over, I think I like the more extreme angle of the thumbnail better than the actual sketch..better luck next time! After I finished this sketch, I took a picture of it with my iPhone and just used that pic to start the finished drawing in Photoshop with my Wacom tablet. I found a color photo of a brick wall and converted it to black and white and upped the contrast significantly, to create the final piece:
Done and done!
JaydotDeedot! 