Wednesday, December 12, 2012

ULTIMATE COMICS X-MEN #12

Ultimate Comics X-Men #12 with my inks over Carlo Barberi's pencils.
Cover by Kaare Andrews, who was standing behind me in a portfolio review line with me years ago over at San Diego Comic Con.  When we were in line, we got to talking and exchanged contact info.  Took one of his sample packets and give to my editor over at Marvel, which lead to his first Marvel mini series work, Before the Fantastic Four: Ben Grimm and Logan.  Which was my first and only time I've inked over Kaare's pencils.

Carlo Barberi enjoys drawing a lot of details into his background.  Panel 1 above is a great example of what he can do.  His lines are so tight and thin, that sometimes I'll my magnifying lamp to get a closer look.  I don't wear glasses and have perfect vision.  But with the amount of details, it's always better to make sure and 'zoom' into the line work.

Again with the nice fine details.  You see the car rear on panel 1?  All if that, I've inked with templates.   I can always freehand those line work, but with mechanical stuff, I like to make them look... well... mechanical.  Like it's machine made.  
With this page, there's hardly any template work here.  Majority of it is with a brush or pen. in freehand.  Sometimes, I'll still used a ruler to draw squiggly lines.  Like what I did on the cushion walls in panel 2 and 3.  Using the ruler as a guide going up and down, but when ink pen touches paper, I wiggle it along the straight edge.  

Double Page Spread.  Again, templates with everything mechanical.  Now, often times, using template is more work than going freehand.  Sometimes I don't have the exact template for the size that's pencilled.  Take for example the larger wheel on the wheel chair.  Keep in mind that this is a double page spread and the original art being 17x22.  You can imagine how large that wheel is drawn.  So what I'll do is use a template to ink in a certain line, then use another template to continue into a different direction, and so on and so forth until I get that whole wheel done.  Lots of switching around for one oval. 
More info about this comic here.

1 comment:

  1. Love your point about the wheel in the last page. Honestly, one of the hardest things I found to deal with was something I didn't have a template for and had to switch back and forth. At one point I had this bendable form that would be perfect for what I needed to do. Nice solid rubber edge that I could just form to the shape and run the pen along side it. Lost it, always unhappy.

    But that stuff is great. I have that mini-series that Kaare did too. Sweet stuff!

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