Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Wacky Reference Wednesday, No. 161

Daredevil #3, Page 14, Panel 1. 2011.
Ink(ed by Joe Rivera) on Marvel board, 11 × 17.25″.

Daredevil fights traffic. I fight the camera. You may recognize the pipe from my infamous mirror contraption at conventions. Lately, I've been using a rolled up piece of 11 × 17 piece of copy paper. Much lighter.


Monday, January 30, 2012

Heads Up!


Here's a quick tip for those of you running Adobe CS5 with a Wacom tablet. The latest version of Photoshop features a heads-up display (HUD) that makes color selection easier than ever. To access it, however, 3 buttons must be pressed in concert with a pen click (control, command, and option (on a Mac)).

Hoping to simplify the process, I reprogrammed my pen eraser to "press" the buttons for me. I never use the eraser anyway, so the added functionality was a boon to my color studies.



The screen grab above shows what settings are necessary to enable the customization. For a full explanation, check out this Wacom video tutorial (part of a larger series). I'm using a Cintiq 12WX, but the same rules apply.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Daredevil Trade

Daredevil #1 Cover. 2011. Gouache and acrylic on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

In case you haven't heard, the first Daredevil trade is out in stores (here's a glowing recommendation). I've got my copy and it's a pretty handsome volume (if I may say so). It includes a couple interviews, preliminary sketches, and a step-by-step feature of my page process, not to mention the first 6 issues of our relaunch. If you're not near a comic shop, it's also available via my Amazon store.

Next week, The Twelve #9 continues the story that started in 2008. I provided a hard-to-ignore cover for the issue. My apologies. Although I painted (and posted) this a while ago, I gave the file a minor facelift, improving the color and contrast with Photoshop. I've learned a few tricks in the last few years, resulting in a truer representation of the original artwork. It's tough to say how your individual computers will portray the difference, but I thought I'd show jpegs of the 2 versions.


The Twelve # 9 Cover. Acryla gouache on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

One trick I that helped was copying the background, pasting it on a layer above, blurring it, and lowering the opacity according to taste. This lessened the splotchiness of the paint strokes, which tend to be exaggerated by the scanner (and my own heavy-handed contrast adjustments). The other issue was CMYK conversion, a larger subject that I tackled in a previous post.


The original file I submitted in 2008.

Rounding out the news, I'm about a quarter of the way through Daredevil #10 and things are going great. And if all goes according to plan, I'll be making a trip to my alma mater, RISD, next week to give a lecture. Should be fun. Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Twelve #12 Demo Video

The Twelve #12 Cover. 2011. Gouache and acrylic on bristol board, 13 × 19″.

I'm skipping Wacky Reference today because I've got a demo video to share with you, courtesy of Mike Furth and The Comic Archive. We documented the creation of this cover from start to finish, including multiple interviews and an unabridged time-lapse recording of the painting process. Running time is 30 minutes, split into 3 parts, and we cover quite a bit of material. Here's the link. Hope you enjoy it.





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