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Art tips and techniques, reviews and interviews from my studio. Archived here and at World Famous Comics. Comics 101 for 10/04/2001 White Wolf - Werewolf: Storyteller Cover! Week One: See it the way it was originally made! Uncut! Every scene intact! The version magazines didn't dare show! As I write this in October, darkness creeps sooner into daylight, there's a chill in the air and ghosts and goblins will soon be running up and down my block. Run away...'cause now it's Halloween. Shave your head and burn your jeans. Evil could be right next door... or maybe just behind these web pages. What more appropriate to discuss in this month's online feature than my horror art for White Wolf Publishing? Lock the doors, bolt the windows, and check under your bed. There are scarier things out tonight than vampires. Like what you ask? Like this month's Comics 101. Growing up, I enjoyed reading horror comics. Vault of Horror, Tales from the Crypt, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Swamp Thing, Ghost Rider , the Unknown Soldier, Weird War Tales... the list goes on. These comics were always stashed away at my grandparents house and were treasures to be found if you knew where to look when searching the right rooms. Being an impressionable little six or seven year old boy I was actually quite surprised my gandma let me read them now that I think about it. It actually might explain alot about what's wrong with me today. Hmmm... I think we might have the makings of a more introspective Comics 101 in the future. But I digress, magazines like Fangoria and Starlog with images from horror and sci-fi movies filled my imagination and left a strong impression on me as well. These days, when I draw monsters and mayhem, I still look to my comic books and definitive horror artists like Bernie Wrightson and Mike Mignola for inspiration. Often times, a good horror movie like John Carpenter's The Thing, Halloween, Evil Dead 2, Blade, Delamorte Delamore, Fright Night or Aliens can inspire me to create. Illustrator By Night I was given the oppurtunity to create a cover illustration for White Wolf, a company I had been freelancing for since 1998. The art direction I received in my notes from my art director, though very descriptive, were actually somewhat flexible and read as follows... Werewolf Storytellers Companion cover art: To play up the "telling stories" aspect, perhaps it would work well to see a Garou (werewolf) elder of some sort carving the record of a great story into a stone or something -- maybe he's in a small cave, carving the story onto the walls, or maybe there's a large standing stone. Either way, the writing surface should have a lot of glyphs (or runes) on it already as if plenty of stories have been recorded before. And of course, the Garou is carving the glyphs with his claws, not with any tools. The specifics (tribe, setting, whether there are other werewolves in the picture or not) are pretty open ended.With these art notes in mind and my pencil in hand, I let loose the hounds and attacked my drawing table. Stare into these eyes. Discover deep within them the unspeakable terrifying secret of... ...my sketchbook! After drawing a few rough thumbnail illustrations, I felt confident with this rough sketch (Example A) from my sketchbook. I had to design this sketch with the intention of type for the title of the book to be added in above. With the cover to be printed at 8.5 inches by 11 inches, I designed my rough sketch (which I drew at the final printed size) with two inches of 'dead space' near the top to allow room for the type. Also, since this was to be a full color painting, I designed the illustration at this stage with key color decisions in mind. In fact, here's the actual email I sent with the rough sketch to my art director explaining my 'method of madness'.... Example A Here's my sketch idea for the cover. This one is abit rough but I'm working on the line drawing right now. I have two Garou inside a cave with three Lupus werewolves. The Garou kneeling is scratching runes onto the cave surface and the werewolf behind him is holding an old lantern. Above the scene I have some imagery of Garou eyes in the cave ceiling. The eyes will be painted an amber color. The overall scene will be pretty graphic with some bold warm colors and some cool highlights in the shadows. I plan on moving the two lupus on the left over to the side just abit more in my line drawing so that we can see the Garou scratching the runes with his right hand more clearly. My goal is to create an eerie glow effect with the lantern as the main light source. As soon as I get the line drawing tightened up I'll send it your way probably Tues.Once the sketch was approved, I began to tighten up the drawing on bristol board using my lightbox. As you can see in the pencil line drawing (Example B), I relied on the art director's notes heavily, which helped me to narrow down my idea and move on to the inking and electronic coloring process quickly. Example B The one thing I added in my original design that wasn't suggested in the art notes were the glowing werewolf eyes imagery in the cave ceiling. I was really trying for something that would be 'eye-catching', would jump off the bookshelf and grab potential buyers' attention by the throat. Not very subtle, eh? Well in this market and medium, pulling out all the stops and grabbing the reader by the jugular usually works in your favor. I also felt with my original design that a third element or accent was needed to pull the illustration together since I already had the dominant imagery of the werewolves with the cave setting being secondary. These haunting werewolf eyes were the right accent I needed. My final line art actually ended up over 9.5 inches by 12 inches to allow for somewhat tighter detail once it gets reduced at the printer. See ya next week when the India ink runs thick as blood and the illustration becomes more.... graphic. And in the meantime, to avoid fainting keep repeating, 'it's only a web column... only a web column... only a web column...' -Joe Recent Columns:
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