Blogwithfeet: The art/rant blog of Renee Lott

Process Piece: Festering Romance SDCC09 Bonus Book cover

Another process piece for today! This time, it’s the cover of the Bonus Book I made to give away with copies of Festering Romance at San Diego Comic-Con 2009.

I did a few sketches before I penciled out the cover… This is the only one I can find though. The idea I had in mind was Janet and Paul doing 80′s style aerobics.

Penciled this baby right onto a piece of 8.5″x11″ computer paper with a 2H graphite pencil (it’s what happened to be readily available).

Scanned the pencils, transformed them to blue-line, and printed them out to ink on 400 series vellum bristol board. I don’t like inking on vellum anymore, but it was the type of bristol board I had in the small size. I inked the pic mostly with a Raphael 8404 #2 brush, Copic Multiliners, Hunt 102, and Rapidographs with a dab of Titanium White Acrylagouache for white-out.

After inking was complete, I scanned the image into my computer and added design elements such as text and tones to finish the cover.

Thanks for stopping by today! Check back on Friday for a new blog post!

Also, as soon as I get my comp copies of Festering Romance from Oni, I’ll be holding a few contests, so keep an eye out for ‘em!

Process Piece: Festering Romance cover

For today, a little more of that ol’ Festering Romance stuff. It’s been a while since I did a process piece, so I felt like I might as well do one for one of the most important images of Festering Romance: the cover!

Before I could start on the cover, I had to submit several ideas to the editorial department. I sketched these up in Photoshop and then the editorial and art departments chose 3 they liked best.

After the editorial and art departments chose which cover ideas they liked best, I developed those ideas a bit more so we could all get a better idea of which cover we liked best.

After we chose which cover we liked best, I did the pencils for the cover. I first arranged the elements on tracing paper and moved them around until the composition worked best. After all the elements were in place, I traced them all onto a new piece of tracing paper and used that as the finished pencils.

After the pencils were finished, I scanned them into my computer and printed them out in blue-line onto Bristol board. The inks were mostly done in Raphael Kolinsky 8404 #2 brush, Hunt 102 nib, Copic Multiliner SP, Rapidograph, and brush pen.

After the inks were done, I made a lot of color thumbnails for the editorial and art departments to choose from. They eventually chose a composite of a couple of the color combos.

Once the colors were chosen, I colored the image in Photoshop. I scanned a few textures to add in on the board (parchment) and background table (woodgrain). I worked with Keith Wood, Oni’s art director, to fine-tune the contrast and texture of the ouija board until we found a balance that pleased both of us.

After the colors were finished, the cover was sent to the art department (AKA Keith Wood) to add in final design elements. I made the logo design, font for my name, and the flourishes beside my name. Keith arranged them on the planchette and added the stars beside the logo (the stars were taken from the ouija board surface).

And that’s about it! WOO. Thanks for stopping by, and check back on Friday for a new blog post!