Monday, May 7, 2012

THE PHANTOM "Power House Gang": Week Five

The tale of the Power House Gang continues.  A few extras can be seen below.
 I "pencil" the strip in Manga Studio.  Below is a very early rough -- I'm just figuring out the storytelling and composition at this stage.
 After shooting some quick reference photos using Photobooth (with me as the model -- hey, I work cheap!) -- to check pose, drapery and lighting -- the drawing continues. I'm concerning myself with the characters here, knowing the backgrounds in this strip will be fairly simple.
 Here, ready for me to print on bristol board for inking, are the finished pencils -- backgrounds added and drawing tightened and revised.  Lettering and borders finished as well -- all digital.
After inking, this is scanned, the blue dropped out, and then colored in Photoshop.  See the first image up top for the finished results.  Hope you're enjoying the "extras" I post here -- if so, please leave a comment.  Thanks!

6 comments:

Carolyn Watson-Dubisch said...

This is great! I love seeing your process.

kit*walker said...

Amazing! Thanks Terry for sharing it with us. How long it can take to draw a Sunday strip from the rough to the final product?

Terry Beatty said...

Kit -- it takes anywhere from two to five days for me to draw these strips. But remember, those days involve me doing other work and also taking care of my three year old son and three month old daughter! Yes, it's the Beatty cartoon studio and day care center these days!

The Holding Coat said...

Always enjoy seeing the artistic process. Thanks!

Andreas said...

I just saw this post, better late than never! Very interesting to see your work process, and I enjoy your style and layouts a lot. To see you break up panels now and then (not for this example though) has so far only been refreshing. If I may offer one piece of (hopefully) constructive critisism, it's the shape of the speech bubbles which follows the lettering very closely. Remember that the Phantom is a very popular strip in other countries, which means that the shape of the bubbles won't match the lettering in other languages. Simple "rounded" bubbles with a little more space around the words are easier to letter in other languages, without having to retouch the bubbles and artwork. Keep up the good work!

Luis Guaragna said...

great to know the process, super useful! many thanks.