I’m currently working on a new series of digital art pieces focusing on a golden age comic called “Western Adventures”, specifically featuring the character Cross-Draw Kid. I thought it would be cool to give some thoughts about my process. I wish I had stage-by-stage saved files to better demonstrate the process, but perhaps that’ll be something I do for a future blog! For now, I’ll keep it simple and treat it more like plain-ol’ commentary.
Showing the side-by-side images below you can see that I zoomed in to crop out the title and covered most of the bottom scroll-text with two panels from later in the story. The reasons I do things are both intuitive and intentional.
The intuitive part of the process exists at the start when I start layering things, cropping things, adding filters, using the airbrush tool, masking things, adding text, etc. For the most part during this stage, I trust gut feelings to stumble upon “happy accidents” that guide me to a path I want to take.
The intentional part is when I start applying basic elements and principles of art to re-affirm the aspects of the piece I want to highlight. I use colour to unify the piece and guide the eye around. I use patterns to both flatten layered elements on the same plane (the grunge artifacts) as well as add texture (the comic dots and shirt). I added two simple things to this piece to help frame the Cross-Draw Kid better (the dead tree and birds). I cropped and repeated the title “Cross-Draw Justice” and placed it on a highlight coming from the sun in order to re-enforce the vertical framing created with the lower scroll and panels and the original “Cross-Draw Kid” title bar.
The best thing about making these is discovering things as I go. Layers are my friend. Textures are my friend. Filters are my friend. Moving layers around, or changing filters, or duplicating elements after I get something I like sometimes create whole new opportunities for the piece. Some examples are below.
Lone Stranger Pitch: Page 4 of 8
Half way through the short, and here come the Trouble Brothers! Now’s the time to say a little about how this whole idea and goal came about.
At some point two years back I started to really REALLY get into public domain comics from the golden age. I got them where I could and consumed them. I started to focus on the western issues for some reason even though I never really got into western movies. Part of the reason for that is that it took me long enough to watch “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” and I ended up LOVING the flick. I didn’t want the magic of what I felt there to be ruined by a “bad choice”. Being a newbie to the genre, it was a fear that simply held true.
With the golden age stuff, what fascinated me the most was how FAST these stories were told. Heck, there were even ONE page stories in these collections. That’s what set me off: If I was going to put a pitch together, I’d keep the story tight, try to get out quick character development, hit the climax and ride off into the sunset. Done!
So, these two ruffian bastards are actually characters from a public somain story that appeared in Western Adventures #3 featuring the Clayton Brothers (and Dry Water Gultch) called “The Last Stand”. That tales was enough to give me the antagonists to my protagonists. It also set up for me a clear intent to tell future stories using golden age western details as easter eggs; characters, town names, saloons, you name it!
It was an excuse for me to keep finding more old PD westerns and imagining how Lone Stranger tales could keep some of that content alive.
Also, worth mentioning at this point was how I had to really minimize how much was said. I wanted Lone Stranger to say as little as possible to real people, so the story had to move with visual queues or with other characters being the “lead dancers at this shindig”… ha… four pages in and I already can’t help the comparisons…
Anyways, that’s a wrap for this post! More next time!