Wednesday, March 18, 2009

IITS Creative Process - The Money Shot

Genevieve and I tried to fill our book with many memorable poses and panels. We wanted to, as often as possible, make our characters do something very interesting rather than make a book about "talking heads". However, that goal we strive towards can often make it very difficult to even get a single page done. The three panel page where Kayli lands on the stranger's stomach with both her knees, catches his harpoon, and thrusts it over his face...took forever. We wanted each shot to good as we could make it and didn't rest till they were. If you don't know which page I'm talking about, head over to the store and order yourself a copy of the comic!

Below are three concepts (out of more than a dozen) that Genevieve did for the "Tadaaa!" panel in the book (viewable in the preview we've provided on the sidebar):

(click to enlarge)

As you can see, each one is very similar to what we eventually went with but Genevieve will keep pushing herself till we get the perfect shot. I have to take some of the blame when it comes to her overworking herself. Sometimes, if I so much as pause one second too long before making a comment, she throws aside the image and starts again. On the other hand, if she absolutely nails it, I spot it right away and she'll put in the finishing touches. Here's the final pencils:

(click to enlarge)

She did the original image "nude" to get the body shape the way she liked it. The image you see in the middle of the three is a scan of the clothing layer which was drawn on vellum (tracing paper placed over the original image). The third image is the final combined pencils before they were inked.

Our process, as you might imagine, can be a bit slow at times. We're doing our best to improve this as we plan the work for our deluxe version of the book and future books. Thanks for being patient!

5 comments:

  1. Looks like a pretty long process... hahaha and all we have to do as consumers is look at the pretty pictures and read. JK! I really appreciate all the effort in making this comic amazing and I am greatly looking forward to the deluxe amazing edition.

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  2. Wow... Well, while all that work is impressive, take it from a guy about to launch his second web comic; you may be over thinking it a bit much.

    But then again, when it looks this good...

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  3. Hey guys, thanks for checking out our page from time to time. We're going to try and strike a balance between quality and quantity but we're still trying to figure out how to do it.

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  4. I Bought the first issue and seen the first pallet on pg 4. If it means going through the process for this much creativity, then do it, because I love the art and story so far. keep the good stuff coming. even if it takes weeks at a time... *sniff*

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  5. Thanks for you recent purchase, Joseph. We're glad you liked it. Our first goal is to finish the book and put it out in color and we're gonna try and get it out to our readers as soon as we can. We want to use the blog to keep everyone updated as to our progress but still want to try to put some good content up on the site as we go.

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