Hello and welcome to another process blog, I haven’t done one in a while, and so heeeeeere we go:
One of the categories for the SDCC 2013 souvenir book this year is Doctor Who. The deadline was Midnight tonight. Yesterday at midnight I decided to do a pic for it. I am great planner-man!
Step One: Roughs / Layouts
Did a rough in Photoshop on my cintiq at 7×9 (the size specified). I only did one rough, sometimes I do more, but I find I am more often than not happy with my first rough, (at least with my personal work). I wanted to include all my favorite heros and villians. I did a rough layout sketch, realized I had to skip villains. Once the layout was done I realized it was too crowded, and I was too short on time to include everyone in it even if I fixed the composition. So I narrowed it down to just The three Doctors and K-9.
Step Two: Research
Grabbed a bunch of pics of my characters and the props and BG elements I would be using .
Step Three: Digital “pencils” or Rough Clean-Ups
Using reference I cleaned up the rough to digital “pencils” again Photoshop on my cintiq. This is too rough to give to someone else to clean-up, but more than tight enough to ink myself
Step Four: Revision
Adjusted David Tennant’s eyes and Tom Bakers hair, added glasses to Tennant, added Matt Smith’s Sonic Screwdriver, and the Bad Wolf Graffiti on the Tardis .
Step Five: Lightbox
Converted the rough to Grayscale, adjusted the brightness and contrast so it would print well and printed it out 8.5×11 (larger than print size will be). Taped it down to my light box.
Step Six: Inks
Taped a piece of 9×12 Strathmore Bristol Vellum over the rough and began inking. 80 Percent of the inking was done with the black side of a double sized Japanese brush pen. The rest was pigman pens .05, .03, and .01 for the tardis Bg and K-9, and a 100% Black Copic marker for the space area and the hair and Jacket on Patrick Troughton.
Step Seven: White Out and a Toy
I masked out the outer space area using scrap paper. then I dipped a hard bristle toothbrush into my dr martins bleed proof white and flicked it to create a star effect. I also dabbed it manually to create a few different looking stars. K-9’s head looked a little off to me so I grabbed my figure of him and adjusted his headlines s a bit again using the bleed proof white.
Step Eight: Scan It
My scanner has been acting terrible lately. So, I ran to the fedex/kinkos that is open until 11pm and spent 98 cents to have them scan it.
Step Nine: Crop, Re-size and Contrast
Back in Photoshop I reduce the size to fit the 7×9 requested size, and crop the bleed off. Then I delete all the white using the magic wand tool with “constrain” off, I then lower the brightness and up the contrast.Finally I set the layer blending to “multiply”. NOw I have a nice crisp black ink layer with no artifacts.
Step Ten: Color
Made new layer under the inks and colored all the flats with the pencil tool.
Then made several layers between the flats and inks at varying opacities for shading and highlights.
I was literally coloring up to the last second and sent the final in at 11:59pm . While I think it came out Decent If I decide to make a print of this, I will definitely work on the color some more.