Sithrah 2:
Kickstarter Contest
Introduction: The Sithrah 2 Kickstarter is running right now! There is a lot to love about Book 2, and it is all currently available to read on WebToons. At this point we all know that I would back Jason on any project that he set out on, but this one in particular has struck a chord with me. The Sithrah 2 Kickstarter includes a special art contest to be featured in the print edition of the book. This article will chronicle my process of completing my submission for this honor. I will go through my thumbnails, rough sketches, pencils, inks, and colors. That is ton of material to cover on my end so let's dive into the rules as stated directly on Kickstarter.
Just like my past publication, I want to include some guest art in the back of the printed book. And so... ART CONTEST!!! I'm going to ask for art submissions while the campaign is live to give you a chance to get your art featured in the gallery of Sithrah: Book 2. Send me your amazing artistic version of the Sithrah characters to be printed in the book... FOREVER! I will credit you in the book too. These are the winners that were printed in Sithrah 1:
The page dimensions are 6.75 inches (wide) x 10.5 inches (tall). Please make sure all art is 300dpi when scanned. The deadline for submission is the closing of this campaign (May 31st at 5PM MST). Please send all submissions to [email protected] for consideration. Once this campaign is over, I will display all the entries for everyone to see and vote on their favorite. Then I'll pick the final winner(s) for the book. :)
Planning Stage 5/1: This Kickstarter goes live, and catches like wildfire. I immediately begin thumb-nailing for the art contest. The following images showcase my thumbnails and geometric composition guide.
I worked out a handful of thumbnails based on the concept of Dino being wrapped up by the tentacles he was attacked by in Episode 23 and 24. I really enjoyed the colors in this scene, and I thought that this would lend itself to a strong composition. Dino is such a dynamic character, and I thought that showcasing the gravity of that scene would emphasize his iconography.
Pencils 5/2: I had settled into a concept that I was pretty happy with, and then came the actual penciling stage. In most cases, as you could probably guess, I like to work on computer paper for panels, and the composite the images in Photoshop. I would have liked to work on my original pencils for this piece on a larger sheet of paper, but alas I currently do not have a large format scanner. So I settled for working at the assigned 6.75 X 10.5 size. This ended up being okay, but a scanner that can handle larger papers is something I will be looking into for the near future. A combination of 2H and 3H pencils were my weapons of choice, and these are my preferred drawing utensils.
I felt pretty confident with these pencils as a jumping off point, but I knew that the piece would really pop once I started inking. These pencils are fairly precise, and I felt that was necessary considering the brevity of the image and the tooth of the paper. There is a subtle horror to this scene that I really wanted to emphasize, and I think that these pencils were the beginning of pulling out those feelings with simple shape and composition.
Inks 5/3-5/4: Inking is really one of the most exciting portions of the comic book process for me. I love the finished look of black and white comic art, and I spent about 4-5 hours fine tuning the pencils to prep for this phase. Traditionally, I would not have spent this long on the pencils for a typical panel (maybe for a cover), but this is Sithrah so wanted to make sure everything was perfect.
Inks 5/3-5/4: Inking is really one of the most exciting portions of the comic book process for me. I love the finished look of black and white comic art, and I spent about 4-5 hours fine tuning the pencils to prep for this phase. Traditionally, I would not have spent this long on the pencils for a typical panel (maybe for a cover), but this is Sithrah so wanted to make sure everything was perfect.
I like to lay down all of the large spot blacks first, (I saw a video with Todd McFarlane, and that is what he said to do. I guess it just stuck.) this lets you get a feel for the positive and negative space. It is hard to tell from the angle in these images, but I used the golden ratio to divide the top and bottom half of my background. Eventually, during the color stage I will turn the bottom portion into red water.
I really like the stark contrast that I created in the finished ink image. There were a couple of slip ups that I need to touch up, but that can be addressed in Photoshop clean up. Once the levels are adjusted to pure black and white I think the geometry that I spent time working on will truly start to pay off. I really think that the graphic nature of this image will benefit from some Dave Stewart-esque coloring. Selecting the colors will be a difficult process, because the entire visual language can change on based on what selections are made. Luckily, I roughed out a general color scheme plan with my trusty Crayola crayons on some scratch paper.
Colors 5/3-5/4: I did feel a lot better about my image once I adjusted the levels in Photoshop. As you can see below the image has a strong balance of black and white, and that was always my original intention. This gave me a lot of room to work with for coloring, and I made very specific choices for all of the colors. I wanted there to a be a stark contrast, and I wanted to keep the original color scheme that Jason used in this scene. I think that this simple coloring style really helped play to the strengths of this image. I must have gone through 30 different iterations, and I finally settled on one that I kept coming back to. I think there is a good balance of color value, color intensity, and mood. I love the horror that is presented in the pose, and I think that is mirrored by the colors. The weight of this situation is an important point of the Sithrah series, and I cannot wait to see where it goes from here.
Final Image
Conclusion 5/8: I hope you enjoyed this little write up on my submission process. Jason is a great guy, and even after just a few days of launching his Kickstarter for the printing of Sithrah 2 it fully funded. With any luck, we will also be able to reach the stretch goal of getting Sithrah 3 printed as well. If you like the piece that I am submitting there will be a venue for the fans to vote on their favorites once the Kickstarter is complete. I would appreciate any support for it, and I'll add the link here when it is available. Ultimately, Jason will make the call on what is featured in his book, but I do hope to be in the running. Thanks for taking the time to check out this article, and continue to the Sithrah series. There is truly nothing else like it currently in comics.