Production blog 17

Hey Everybody. Well good news I'm almost done with the pages for issue 3. Every page of the book is now started, I only have to finish four pages, do some touch ups and re draw a panel where I made Drew walk in a physically impossible way. Then the cover and then print. Unless I screw up royally I'll have issue #3 at the Long beach Comic Expo May 11. Now I recently finished a part of the book that I can't show you. But I'm now doing a part that comes earlier, which has one of my long time nemeses
Crowd Scenes...


I hate crowd scenes, they either take me forever, or I rush them and they look crap. I needed a way to make a consistent looking crowd without going insane. So here's what I did.

First I drew my main characters in their positions with some foreground people.

Then I placed a tracing paper over the largest panel that needed a crowd.

then I laid out a generic crowd I didn't add details because this was going to be every bit of crowd in the book.

note that I separate the three layers by making one in ink, one in graphite, and one in blue. Now I place this under my panels with a light box and trace it off on to the board, but when I do this I don't always use the same bit, and sometimes I flip it to make different people.

Kids light box is not a dirty word like the interwebz tells you.

Since this work is being done with a lot of little details I use a mechanical pencil instead of my wood ones.

Like so....

See the variety available Just by changing things up just a bit.

Here I made a different group of people for the reverse shot. made by flipping the tracing paper and changing the order of front to back.  

 One more.

Then ink it up making sure that you don't lose your point of focus.

I think this little trick worked out pretty well and and I plan to keep this crowd for later, and make a collection as future tracing papers are needed.

see you later.