1990 Gettysburg PROCESS

Hey everybody. I've been getting a lot of questions about the process for the stuff I've been posting on 1990 Gettysburg. I managed to take to the time to scan every step of the way, so I thought I'd share the process with you for the 13th chapter in the current story. The final bit is posted above.LAYOUT- I try to pencil as loose as I can for these to keep it spontaneous, but sometimes my finicky nature takes over. I rarely pencil in Li'l Evan's face anymore since I've drawn it so many times. The few faces I penciled here were just to make sure that everybody was looking in the right direction. Since I letter these traditionally, I also block in the dialogue to make sure there's room, even though it's mostly unintelligible at this stage. The blocking of this one, and especially that third panel with the whiteout background, was inspired by Frank Espinosa's work on Rocketo.LETTERING- Lettering on these is a little tough since I've been doing each cartoon on watercolor paper. The pen doesn't take well to the texture of the paper. Never underestimate the power of the relative size of letters. They're all about the same size in relation to each other, but in the context of the size of the figure they're either shouting or whispering or "uhff"ing. I'll do panel borders at this stage too, since they often interact with each other a little. The double border around the fifth panel was a last minute choice, but I'm glad I went with it.

LINES- This is where some of the most dramatic changes happen along the way. I changed Hemingway's stance a little, drew in Evan's face in the 1st panel, a lot of the sheen on the armor, and designed a symbol for the shield in the 4th panel. I played with the levels so you could see this without the paper texture interfering, but again, depending on whether I'm using a brush or pen it tends to muss up the lines a little. I'd much rather ink on a less rough surface.
WASHES- This is where the lighting and rendering come in to play. A lot of the shadows and textures are added at this point. I lay a massive amount of water on the backgrounds and then drop little splashes of ink in to get those cloudy effects. Much like watercolor, the important thing is to lead the water instead of treating it like a regular brush stroke. Bearing in mind, I often do ink washes knowing that I will add highlights (like on metal or hair) later in Photoshop. This is how the original piece looks before I make any contrast or level adjustments in PS, paper texture and all.
OVERLAY- Starting here is where the computer takes over. Coloring the ink wash instead of rendering digitally allows me to spend less time on the computer, which is kinder on my eyes. I'll try to explain this as best I can. With the ink washes as the "background", each panel gets a new layer set on "Overlay" and I'll usually name them something like "Panel1OVER" for clarity's sake. Then I use a brush set on "normal" to color the gray tones. You'll notice above that the whites and lighter tones barely pick up any color. I pick deeper shades so that I'm only coloring the shadows, not changing the values. The image right above is with the "background" linework and washes turned invisible, to give you an idea of the tones I picked for the overlay on this one.MULTIPLY- This stage is basically the end product, so instead here's a shot of what the whole thing looks like with the background turned invisible again. Please note that this isn't just the multiply layers (that would be MUCH lighter), this is the multiply layer overtop of the overlay layers. This part is very similar to the overlay process. Every panel gets its own layer, something like "Panel3MULT", where the layer setting is set on "Multiply". Then I just use a brush set on "normal" and go over everything. In contrast to the overlay stuff, you want to pick much lighter colors in this stage or things start to get muddy. The only exceptions I made were Panel 3 where I wanted Hemingway to look as if he were in shadow, and the background in Panel 4 which I needed to be dark for contrast. In this shot, you can see where I erased bits of the multiply layer to make highlights on armor and hair. I try to make sure dialogue balloons are kept a stark white as well.

Well, I hope that all makes sense. I know from experience that I don't always explain things as clearly as I could. If you guys have any more questions I'll keep updating this post with my answers to them.