Cover

Cover below. As always, it's a composite of a whole bunch of images - not least the photo which is compiled from different photos. The cliff edge, the little village in the distance, the outcrop of rock, the church, the hill in the far distance... all different pics. The illustration is also layered to hell and back.

In other news, I've also uploaded the entire first issue to the printer's, and ordered a couple of issues to proof! If it's all ok, I'll post details here...

Creation of a single frame

So, although this is essentially a sparse frame, what there is is quite technical.

This is the basic artwork:


The pub sign is in perspective, but is important and will appear again. So I decided to draw it as a separate piece:


And created the name of the pub in Illustrator (adding a slightly rough edge to give it a little more of a 'hand-drawn' quality. Yes, ok, I cheated.


The shadow that Marwood casts needed to also be a separate piece due to a cross-fade thing which happens on the previous page.


Bolt it all together in Photoshop and you get, if you're lucky, this:


The fun of working this way is that the final art is a surprise to even me. I do what I can to minimise any errors in the artwork (and anyway, any problems can be ironed out in Photoshop) but until it's put together I can't say for sure how well it'll work. I'm really pleased with the pub sign, for example and I wasn't sure I was gonna pull that off.