Making a Marvel Comic Book cover part 2

Warm ups and research. Creating quick ideas is fun but being a feature animation guy full time means I'm not set up to make cover art. I decided that I was going to do this with actual media. No photoshop. I had to limber up. I created folders of images of tuxedos, Sean Connery (who wears it best), hands, shoes, asian models (for Tyger), fabrics from Singapore and Malaysia and tropical plants and pots.

Then I started to paint studies. Past experience taught me that I could be too casual about the job--to disastrous results). I learn from reading about other artists' process like this post from Leif Peng's Today's Inspiration where Mitchell Hooks was interviewed about his process.

On another front, I blew up the thumbnail to 125% of print size and roughed it in on tracing paper. That revealed the next problem. Without a pair of actual models I am making this up entirely out of my head. I had to hunt for poses that I can reference and draw the composition several times. Each time I found something to fix (which leg is bearing the weight, relative sizes of body parts, hand poses, etc). Next post is about painting the final!


This is just one of the full sized pencils I did. I had transferred one of these to illustration board only to change my mind after a day of staring at it. Tyger was too big, Wolvie didn't seem convincing in his pose. I tortured myself but I'm glad I did.