HOW IT'S DONE: Re-creating Digital B/Gs

I frequently get questions about how I actually recreate these backgrounds. Today I was working on refining a B/G for one of my Mary Poppins Penguin cels, and I thought I'd show the process, step by step. There were actually eleven layers. Here I am sharing the major steps only. On rare occasions, a background will appear for a frame or two by itself, before a character enters or leaves a scene.

THE MARVELS PROJECT #7 Cover

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The Marvels Project #7 hits the shelves in two short weeks on March 24th. What will you find inside? From Marvels' online catalog:

Cap meets Bucky! The origin of the Destroyer! The interrogation of the Sub-Mariner! And it's all leading up to the Nazis' conspiracy to bring the US into World War Two!

Below is the original cover sketch. It's obviously very rough, but it does its job in that it shows essentially what the basic elements of the actual cover painting will be. As you can see, quite a bit of compositional shuffling went on as I worked on the final image, but this was submitted with the understanding that it's a basic framework that I'll be working from, not an image set in stone that I'll follow slavishly. After so many years working with my editor, I can get away with a pretty rough sketch for the approval process, since he trusts me to turn it into something that's actually printable. Incidentally, the top portion of the sketch is left blank because that area will be covered by the banner logo.


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The Marvels Project #2 Cover

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Marvel's September 2009 solicitations are now available for all to see, and this time they include The Marvels Project #2. Here's how Marvel describes the issue:

THE MARVELS PROJECT #2 (of 8)
Written by ED BRUBAKER
Pencils by STEVE EPTING
Cover by STEVE MCNIVEN
Variant Cover by STEVE EPTING
Variant Cover by GERALD PAREL
The award-winning and best-selling team of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting bring you CHAPTER TWO in this definitive tale of the origins of the Marvel heroes. As 1940 hits the world is already changing -- The Human Torch is on the run, The Angel makes his masked debut, The Sub-Mariner stalks the surface-worlders who have targeted his people -- and a young soldier named Nick Fury saves a German scientist from the Nazis and leads him to the USA. The battle-lines drawn in this race to create superhuman weapons of mass destruction still reverberate today in the Marvel Universe -- as this epic espionage thriller continues to unfold and reveal new twists!
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$3.99

Painting the Human Torch on fire is still a challenge. I probably spent as much time on the Torch alone as I did the entire rest of the cover. Below is the rough sketch that was approved, and this time around I followed it pretty much exactly when doing the final painting.


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January Covers - BONUS!

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I wanted to make sure it was okay to show this cover before posting it on my blog since it didn't actually appear in the solicitations, and now that I've been given the green light, here it is - the variant cover for AVENGERS/INVADERS #8 featuring the new Captain America and the original Invaders. Here's how Marvel describes the issue:

AVENGERS/INVADERS #8 (of 12)
Written by JIM KRUEGER & ALEX ROSS
Penciled by STEVE SADOWSKI
Cover by ALEX ROSS
Variant Cover by STEVE EPTING
With the real enemy revealed, two teams of Avengers are drawn together for a brutal battle royale. Meanwhile, a secret from the Invaders’ past threatens to destroy the present, upend the chessboard and send several heroes back through the veils of time...perhaps lost forever.
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$2.99

I've always loved the Invaders so I jumped at the chance to do this. And here's a little bonus - the approved thumbnail layout:

Overpass Assault

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Another dopey speedpainting done over the course of the last week or so. No story behind this one - it was just done for fun and as a warmup before painting some covers.

Now I'm going to tempt fate and again attempt to show you an animated version that condenses the 2 hours or so of painting time into about 15 seconds. It didn't work out too well the last time I tried this, so let's see what happens today.


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Sketchblog: Year One

Today marks the first anniversary of the ol' sketchblog, and since August 21st is Hellboy day (at least on this blog) here's a quick sketch-


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Well, I said it was quick. Just trying to keep the tradition alive.

Thanks to everybody who drops by here on a regular basis, and especially to those of you who take the time to leave your feedback. Your comments are greatly appreciated.

In other news, Captain America #41 came out this week featuring the penultimate chapter of the current story arc, or as Ed likes to call it: "The Death of Captain America Act 3 - The Man Who Bought America: Part 5".



Here's a little behind the scenes stuff - some graphics I made in Photoshop during the production of the art for this issue. The first is a sign for the Diner that appears on page 2-

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- and the second is a series of little campaign posters I made for a single panel on page 20-




I have no idea who snuck in the Colbert poster that appears in the printed book.

See you in year two!

Page Process

Captain America #40 went on sale this week, and instead of my usual lame generic post announcing the fact, I've decided to show a little of the process involved in drawing the book.

After printing out the script, I'll usually go through and do thumbnails directly on the script pages as I'm reading it. These are generally quick impressions, and are subject to change (to put it mildly). Here's the thumbnail for page 11-

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The next step is the actual pencilling. I really prefer drawing with pens and markers instead of pencil, so "pencilling" may not be the right term. I only use pencils to roughly block in the figures and then draw everything with whatever pen I have laying around, using a Sharpie for the big solid blacks. Usually on this step, I'll lay out everything a little more carefully than you see here, but since this page required no establishing shots or busy environments, I could just concentrate on getting the figures on the page-



This then gets scanned into Photoshop to tweak the placement and composition, completing the "pencils" part of the process-



This rough is then printed out on 11x17 paper and then taped to the back of an art board supplied by Marvel. My drawing table has a lightbox and I go straight to inks from this stage. There may be some incidental pencilling as I go, particularly if I'm working on something very specific, like a certain building or type of car. Faces and hands also are subject to being refined before the inks go down . Here's the final inked page-



Finally, it's uploaded to the folks at Marvel, who then pass it on to the one and only Frank D'Armata for coloring-


- and that's that.

I don't follow these steps exactly for every page, but for the most part this is how it's done. I'm constantly trying to tweak this process and eliminate steps in an attempt to increase speed and production, so this is all subject to change.

Captain America #42 Cover

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Marvel's September solicitations are here, featuring Captain America #42. Here's how Marvel describes the issue -

CAPTAIN AMERICA #42
Written by ED BRUBAKER
Pencils & Cover by STEVE EPTING
The final chapter of the epic "Death of Captain America" saga is here! The New Captain America, the Falcon, the Black Widow, Sharon Carter - all in a final showdown with the Red Skull and his minions for the future of America!
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$2.99

Comparing the cover featured in the article to the one above you'll notice that:

A) The cover on Newsarama is unfinished.

and

B) I changed the background at some point during the painting.

Not my favorite cover, but not my least favorite either. After all, it does have Arnim Zola on it.

UPDATE: Just for comparison's sake, and a little peek at the work in progress, here's the cover as posted in the solits-



You can see my pencils on the two main figures of Cap and Red Skull with flat color underneath them. The smaller figures below are more finished, but there was still work to be done on them. I liked the graphic appeal of the star, but the dominant blue field behind it merged too much with the blue of Cap's costume and made him recede into the background. Cap (and the Skull) needed to be the focal point and the cool blues of his costume contrasted much better against the warm red and white stripes.

Iron Man 2

Another piece of Iron Man liscencing art from 2004 (again, I only supplied the pencils) that was painted by Scott Johnson -

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The Iron Man figure and the cityscape background were done separately so that the background could possibly be used many times with different characters.

Iron Man

In honor of Iron Man's success at the box office this weekend (and yes, I saw it and enjoyed it), I'm posting some Iron Man art I worked on for Marvel's Creative Services Department back in 2004. I should point out up front that I only supplied the pencils for these projects, and the lion's share of the work was done by the incredibly talented Scott Johnson.

First up is an image of Iron Man surrounded by his various armors. I was supplied with an image of Iron Man that was done by Adi Granov with a mockup background pasted in:

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I was also given this image by Paulo Rivera of a similar scene:



What they wanted was a background with the same look of the Paulo Rivera piece to paste in behind the Adi Granov figure. After fighting endlessly with the perspective and the various armor designs, I finally managed to get a pencilled piece finished. I wasn't too happy with it at the time and I still see a lot of obvious problems that I should have fixed:



This was sent to the aforementioned Scott Johnson, who despite the flaws in the pencils used it as the basis for this incredible digital painting:



And here's the final result, with the Granov figure in place:



As you can see, Scott did a great job of painting the background and integrating it with the previously existing art.

More Iron Man tomorrow!

Captain America #36 Cover

Marvel's March 2008 solicitations are out, including Captain America #36. Here's how Marvel describes the issue:

CAPTAIN AMERICA #36
Written by ED BRUBAKER
Penciled by STEVE EPTING & BUTCH GUICE
Cover by STEVE EPTING
THE SECOND ACT OF THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA COMES TO ITS SHOCKING CONCLUSION!
The new Captain America fights the Red Skull's minions with Black Widow at his side and chaos erupting all around them! Meanwhile, Sharon Carter, still under the control of Dr. Faustus, makes a horrifying discovery about the next stage of the Skull's plans! By Eisner and Harvey Award-Winning Best Writer Ed Brubaker with art by master storytellers Steve Epting and Butch Guice.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$2.99

I did another montage for this cover, and though I think there was some potential for a decent cover in the rough, I'm afraid I didn't quite pull it all together in the final version.

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The image above is the finished version of the cover. Unfortunately, the cover being used for the online solicitations is an earlier, unfinished version that was rushed out for the catalogue.

The Falcon Fights Alone!

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Quickly roughed in panel from an upcoming issue of Captain America. The title of this post is borrowed from the cover copy of Captain America #177 (which coincidentally also features the phrase "Captain America is no more!").

Sterankomage

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Now that I've cleverly titled this post with a made up word (thus insuring that it will never turn up in a search), I'll get to point and post some art. Several people have already posted the Steranko homage that ran in Cap #31 on various blogs and message boards, so in addition to those pages, I'm posting the black and white line art above. Ed Brubaker has made no secret of his love for Steranko's all too brief run on Captain America (which I share, by the way) and included this scene as an homage to Cap #111 (1968). I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, even down to Frank D'Armata riffing off of the color palette that was used in the original.

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Rejected Cover Sketches: Thor 83

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Back in 2004 when I returned to Marvel, one of my first assignments was to do covers for Oeming and DiVito's six issue run on Thor. This sketch was for issue 83, which quite obviously featured a few guest stars - Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk, who are seen posing politely behind the star of the book, Thor himself. Sadly, It was later decided that Hulk wouldn't be appearing in this issue after all. The cover sketch wasn't technically rejected, I was just told I needed to remove Hulk, since he was previously engaged and would be unable to attend the festivities in Thor #83. Since this composition clearly wouldn't work without Hulk's massive frame in the background tying everything together, I scrapped it and started over. Here's the final version - colored by Laura Martin:

Mighty Avengers

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Here's a painting I did of the Mighty Avengers that was used as a background element for Tony (Iron Man) Stark's press conference in Captain America #27. I tried to keep it sort of simplified and muted so it would not compete with the foreground elements of the page, which were done as traditional line art. After it was pasted in, our colorist Frank D'Armata lightened it and softened the focus a bit more to integrate it into the colored page.

Captain America 32 Cover

Marvel has released their Nov.2007 solicitations which includes Captain America 32. Here's how Marvel describes the issue -

CAPTAIN AMERICA #32
Written by Ed Brubaker
Pencils & Cover by Steve Epting
THE EPIC DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA STORY CONTINUES!
The Falcon and Black Widow hunt together! Can they save the Winter Soldier from becoming a tool of the Red Skull again? And if they do, will he just go kill Tony Stark? And what of Agent 13, Sharon Carter, who shot the final bullets into her true love, Steve Rogers, and has seen her life fall apart since then? Those answers, much action, and more! From the Eisner Award-Winning Best Writer Ed Brubaker and Fan-Favorite Artist Steve Epting, who brought you the biggest selling comic of the year!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$2.99

The entire list can be seen here.

This is my tenth cover painting (!) and I'm still experimenting with the process I'm using to produce these. This one (like the last 2) started with a pencil and ink wash drawing that was then scanned for painting in Photoshop.

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