Ernor Cover Production
This is a sort of "behind the scenes" on how I put the cover for Ernor #4 together. For those of you who are veterans of Photoshop, the techniques described here may seem "old hat", but I have been asked on several occasions, "how the heck did you do that?"
The hardware that I used at the studio for the Ernor comics was a Macintosh G3 "Yosemite" mid-tower with a matching 17" Studio display set to 1024 x 768. It's running at 300 mhz with a whopping 256 meg of RAM. On top of that I set the virtual memory to 512 meg for running Photoshop 5. I used a USB Wacom Pen Partner 4" x 5" tablet that was connected in addition to the mouse. Never draw with a mouse - it makes your head bleed! For storage and exporting images we used a 120 meg Imation SuperDisk drive, a Zip 100 drive and a Sony USB Spressa CD-W/RW drive. The publishing industry is about 90% Macintosh based - if you plan to do your own imaging, get a Mac - it'll save you big headaches later.
Well I can't really give ALL my trade secrets away, but for those of you who can't ignore the man behind the curtain - step into Oz and see how the wizard works...
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Here is a shot of the finished cover ready to be shipped off to the distributor so they can include it in their catalog. The final image is 10.5" x 13.5" as a full wrap-around cover. Usually the images are 10.5" x 6.75" to allow for a trim area specified by the printer. This is the standard comic book size. I usually do all my work in CMYK mode since that is the file type that the image setters at the printer require. Since there is a horrid color shift converting RGB files to CMYK, it's always best to start off your coloring project in that mode than having to convert it later. I had to go back and re-color the entire cover to issue #3 because of that. So, let's get stuck in and see how it all comes together... |
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I start off by scanning the image at 600 dpi as a bit-map. Then I usually trim it a bit to fit the final dimensions of the image using the Canvas Size function. Once the image is properly aligned I change the resolution to 300 dpi. This is the resolution that most color pictures are printed at. Then I convert the bit-mapped image to a CMYK file and the megs add on like extra weight over the holidays. The file size I worked with on this image alone was between 85 meg and 135 meg. The next step is to create an "ink" layer. I got this idea from Jeremy Bernal and it has sped up my productivity 40%! |
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Basically I copy the background layer and name it "ink". Then I change the setting in the Layers pallette to Multiply. With a black & white image, it turns the white areas transparent. This acts like an animation cel and allows you paint on layers below without disturbing the actual line art. This is actually the coolest thing since sliced bread, and since you're painting areas "underneath" the black outlines there's no greyed area that can be caused when using the Magic Wand tool or the Paint Bucket. We'll look at this a little closer in a bit. But first - the background. |
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Since I am fortunate enough to own a copy of Bryce 3D, I didn't have to sit down and paint those cool looking mountains by hand. I got to take a lunch break instead. While I am very capable of painting the scenery by hand, it would have taken more time than I had to complete the project and publishing equals DEADLINES! I created some terrain models and covered them with a canned texture that came with the program, Deep Moss, I think. Then after some careful tweaking and fidgiting with the water terrain, I had something that vaguely resembled Vicky's original sketch of the scene. Setting it to render at 15" x 11" at 300 dpi cost me another 35 megs. So I went to lunch. |
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When I came back, Bryce still wasn't finished. It took roughly two and a half hours to finish the scene you see at the left. Then I impoted it into Photoshop and set to work. Since Bryce only renders RGB images, I'm always a little leery of converting the images to CMYK. This time there was very little color shift, all I had to do was brighten the image a bit. |
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Next was the foreground rocks. Again Bryce came to the rescue and gave me a nice stoney texture that I could work with. It was a little difficult positioning them with the same perspective as in the drawing so... I imported a little b&w image of the inked drawing and applied it to a 2D object. Then I set the tranparency high and stuck that directly in front of the camera. I used that as a reference to position the two rock objects so that they matched the perpective in the drawing. Then I set it to render and went and read some comics! Hey, you have to catch up whenever you can! |
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This was the final rendered image. You'll notice the "blue screen" in the background. I generally create a neutral backdrop for foreground objects that makes it easy for the Magic Wand to drop out all in one go. |
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Okay, so why did I render two different layers for the same background? As you can see the cliff face had to be trimmed to match the line art in the original drawing. This would've been impossible to do precisely in Bryce. I then went in and painted the foreground with additional shadows and highlights to add more of a natural shape to them. This also accentuates the contour of the cliff face and makes it a little more three dimensional. For the highlights I created a separate Layer and set its attribute to Color Dodge. Then, carefully spraying with the Airbrush using a light brown I added the patch of sunlight in the foreground and created the highlights on the rocks. Before merging this layer down I added a bit of Monochromatic noise, just to break up the play of light over the surfaces. Once the setting was all done I had a general idea of how the characters would be lit, so I moved on to them next. |
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This is a shot of what the character color layer looks like after all colors have shadows and highlights. This layer is kept underneath the ink layer and is built up one color at a time. Generally I will work on one character at at time until it is finished before moving on to the next one. This prevents me from forgetting an important step somewhere along the line and discoveing it too late. I start by laying down a base color with the Pencil tool generally outlining the 'interior' of the shape and then filling that with the paint bucket if the area is exceptionally large, like the orange on Hask or the grey on Whitepaw. Confused? Here's how it works... |
I start off using the pencil tool and in this case for the spearhead, a blue/grey color. I fill all the area within the spearhead on the Colors Layer. Then I create two new Layers just above that one.
Then I use the Magic Wand tool to select the spearhead area on the Colors Layer and then move to the layer above to spray highlights and shadows.
This process is repeated for every object in the picture, whether it's a feather, spear shaft or a character's eye. Sometimes, depending on the complexity of the image, there will be several layers of shadows and highlights to achieve the desired effect but the procedure generally remains the same. Each object is then Merged Down to the Colors Layer once it is complete to save disk space. The more layers, the bigger the file size.<
After everything is colored, all the layers are merged and the brightness is adjusted for output. I usually save several copies of the same file in different formats, like JPEG, to to keep them on hand.
And that's it. Feel free to send me an e-mail and share your own adventures in Photoshop. There are still plenty of worlds left to paint!