#makecomics – September 7/16

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I wrapped up “primary production” on the pencils last week and now it’s on to tweaking some things and working on rendering. The rendering stage is a new one for me and it does a couple of things which I like:

First off, it let’s me focus just on drawing and form when I penciling which has been a big help. Simplifying that process down has actually made my drawing better.
Once I’ve got all the drawing done, I’m then able to really focus in on lighting, textures and the overall rendering on a page. This has allowed me to mix things up a bit so that I can draw more or less detail as needed instead of just repeating the same basic rendering on item after item after item.
And finally, I’m able to work pretty quickly here with minimal tools – mainly a sharpie and a pen – to work everything out. I’m not trying to be precious are too careful in this stage as that’s what final inking is for. This all about trying things out – and if they don’t look good, you just print off another page and do it again.

The hope is that all of this makes for more interesting looking pages and stronger compositions. It’s also probably one of my favourite stages in the process because you can quickly see how everything comes together.

Here’s a shot of my desk as I kind of plow through a bunch of different pages in THE BUTTERMAN.