I'm drawing a comic for the boys at Beserker Comics, publishers of The Dead, among other fine comics. They're a relatively small comic company based in Belfast, but the talent working with them (Alan Grant, Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry etc) is HUGE. Its fantastic just to be able to say I share a publisher with those guys.
We're not 100% sure what the comic itself will be called (it might be a 'Beserker presents:' sort of title) but the story I'm working on is called 'My New Best Friend' and is written by Micheal Baxter. The above image is the cover to the comic, pencilled by myself, inked by Andy Brown and coloured by Ryan Brown. Those guys really know how to do a good job, and we'll be working on the interiors together.
We're not 100% sure what the comic itself will be called (it might be a 'Beserker presents:' sort of title) but the story I'm working on is called 'My New Best Friend' and is written by Micheal Baxter. The above image is the cover to the comic, pencilled by myself, inked by Andy Brown and coloured by Ryan Brown. Those guys really know how to do a good job, and we'll be working on the interiors together.
The story will be 24 pages but we're taking this at a slow pace, as the Beserker boys are busy with their publishing business and I've still a good bit of work to do on Slaughterman's Creed. It may even be Halloween 2010 before the comic hits shelves, but I'll update as we make progress.
You will actually hear the Beserker Crew talk on the Sunnyside comics Podcast next week, which is now back on Itunes. (Which also means you've no excuse if you havn't heard Andrew Croskery and myself's so called 'interview' on Ep. 7)
Speaking of Podcasts, Cancertown writer Cy Dethan has been interviewed by the Comicbook Outsiders. This is another one of my regular podcasts and I'm away now to listen to what Cy has to say...
anthology, acting out a quick scene and the resulting panels. This is from the first photoshoot, but when I get a chance I'll show a longer video, maybe a whole page worth and the resulting panels.
I can be a stickler for panel continuity so I wanted to layout Green's tatoos before I got to drawing him in the actual comic pages and keep it as consistent as possible.
I drew the above intricate image with the idea of scanning it at a high resolution and simply using photoshop to place it over the inked drawings of Green. I gave it a try once, but the warping/shaping and cutting it took to make it fit from various angles was more effort than it was worth and I ended up losing time.
Since I would be drawing each tatoo by hand, I wanted a simpler but still detailed tatoo layout; both because I would be drawing it over and over again and because I didn't want the face looking too cluttered when rendering the tatoo in ink. The above version has less leaves but, I think, a bolder design overall. Most of the leaves and sections divided into prongs of 3, so it should be easier to draw without having to count how many prongs were on each leaf every time. 
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The second version (please don't judge me on the first) was inked using the new brush pens I 
I then used the The Kuretake Fudegokochi Brush - Medium to draw all the outlines and main features. The first thing I noticed was that the width of the brush is less that half that of the Pentel brush Pen I would normally use, The brush itself is firm but flexible, giving it a nice 'bounce'. I found myself inking more than I was going to with this pen as I could get quite a small line as well without having to switch to another tool. The flow of Ink is lovely and a steady movement will result in a very dark line. You won't be able to get a full dry brush effect as the tip is constantly wet, but moving the brush really fast can produce a somewhat rough effect, as seen on the hair above Lenny's ear: 
As I said, I ended up using the medium brush more than I had planned, but I did add in little details with the Kuretake Fudegokochi Brush - Fine. This needs a firmer pressure to create a decent line (with quick stokes being a little whispy), and my first impression was that the pen was almost reduntant considering the varied width that could be achieved with the medium brush. However since then, while switching between the two, I've noticed the fine pen allows weight to be leaned firmer on the paper/pen and removes the delicate approuch to drawing fine lines that would be needed for the medium brush or a normal paintbrush. The fine brush is closer to a normal pen than the medium, but with the added bonus of being able to alter the line weight, if to a lesser extent than the medium Kuretake. 
As I'd menitioned above,, the medium Kuretake is smaller than the Pentel brush pen, so you will still need a larger brush for big blacks. I wouldn't want to fill any blacks more than a sqaure inch or so as it would be both time consuming and waste the pen ink. The big blacks on the jacket, tie and neck were filled in with a normal Winsor & Newton brush and ink. I then went back to the Kuretake Fudegokochi Brush - Medium and added more line weight to the left outline of the face, a few of the features and added a few more details around the collar with the Kuretake Fudegokochi Brush - Fine: 
The Zig BrusH2O Waterbrush Detailer is an empty compressible tube with a brush tip on the end. This lets you fill the tube with either water for blending, or an ink soloution (or I suppose really any thin liquid) letting you brush with it. It took a few tries to get the right balance of ink and water for a nice grey, I'm not sure what the combination was, but I'm guessing somwhere near half and half. I put the water/ink in a sink and submerged the tube while compressed and let it fill with water. 
Sinnce my rough pencils were a little cartoonier than usual I thought I'd try some digital inking.
I used both the freehand brush tool (for the eyes and nose etc.) and a little bit of the vector pen tool (the shape of the face, general outline et al). I do like parts of this. The pen tool enabled me to get a really nice curved shape to the hair and I like the varied weight of the brush tool on the eyes, and the ability to undo when I messed the eyes up. The shape of the face was interesting, but wasn't really what I was going for so I gave up on the digital inking and just inked the original drawing.
This is the drawing inked with a Pentel brush pen. Again I like some aspects of this, the face looks more organic, and inking by hand enables me to turn the page around (without messing up the spatial relationship between the image and tablet that would occur with the digital approuch) that helps me get a steady hand with odd shapes like the mouth and cigarette, but the overall look isn't as tight or clean as the digital version. The hair in particular looks a little sloppy, and only having one go at the eyes didn't yield brilliant results.
My first attempt at colours were much too suturated and also realised that it looked like Tank Girl was pointing to her cigarette and not giving us the finger so I was able to digitally mess around with image by desaturating the colours, moving the hand around and switching round the cigarette (as seen in the little animated GIF above).
