Sunrise

In the past I’ve examined the creation of the storylines,   but so far very little attention has been given to how the art in Sunrise is produced.  (I’m tempted to say “not very well” but that would be unfair,  as I do work hard,  though admittedly the art leaves something to be desired.  It’s a learning process,  and I should really stop comparing myself to Jeff Smith.)  So,  here is the first installment of a two-part series on the art of Sunrise (the next segment will be about the creation of a page,  and I have no idea when it will appear).

In this article we will be following the creation of the cover for Issue 6.

The first step in the creation of the cover is usually to do some rudimentary sketches.  For Issue 6 I skipped that step,  something you should never, ever do.  Really.  Don’t do that.  Always sketch first.  What I did here is known as being a “bad role model.”

Here’s what I did do first:  I did what should have been the second step,  which is to draw a pencil version of the cover at my drawing table.

To the left you can see my sketchbook,  which is open to the page with concepts for Mr. Ashbroch.  Normally I draw my pencils at 100% size (that is,  8.5×11) but for the covers I use a scaled-up size.  This is because I want to be able to draw the details more easily.  The reason I don’t draw all pages at the larger size is that my scanner is fairly small and I’d have to scan them in multiple sections.  I’ll do it for the cover,  but it’s a real hassle,  and it would cut my productivity considerably if I had to do it for every page.  It’s just an efficiency thing.

Once the penciled lines are complete,  I scan the image in at 300 DPI and piece together the sections.  I adjust the contrast and then turn the pencil lines blue so that I will be able to see them easily while inking.  (More recently I’ve begun experimenting with other colors instead.)

The “Background” layer is just an empty white field.  “Layer 1″ is the rough linework.  “Layer 2″ is where I am about to begin drawing. Hereafter the layers will be named,  which should make it more clear what’s going on.  I always name the layers on the covers,  because there are a lot of them by the end.  This is less true of the regular pages,  so I don’t  always name those layers.

The first inking I do is usually the straight lines and curves.  I often don’t freehand the architectural lines (although sometimes I do,  it’s a case-by-case thing).  Straight lines are drawn using the straight line tool,  and curved lines are drawn with the pen tool and stroked (there are no curves in this image).

In the next screenshot the linework will appear as if by magic,  which doesn’t do justice to the process,  as drawing the linework is one of the longest steps.  I do all the linework for Sunrise on a 4×6 Wacom Graphire tablet.  Yes,  those are the tiny,  (relatively) cheap ones.  I’d like to upgrade but the bigger models are much more expensive.  The little one does get the job done,  though,  so if you’re in the market for a tablet,  don’t let some salesman guilt you into buying one that’s more expensive than you actually need.

Anyway,  back to the linework:

The linework is,  as you can see,  on a layer called “Linework.” The linework for the portrait,  though,  is on its own layer.  This is because I’d originally toyed with the idea of making the lines on the portrait be a different color,  and I wanted to be able to adjust them easily later.  Also note that I added a layer mask to the architecture layer.   This is so that I could “erase” small parts of that layer without actually losing the image data.

Now I put down the flat colors.  This step makes everything look really bad,  but the flat colors ultimately get broken up in the steps which follow.

The colors are dumped in with the Paint Bucket tool.  Generally it doesn’t fill up to the edges,  though,  and leaves a fringe.  Here’s how I solve that problem.  I use the magic wand tool to choose the color block I’ve just dumped,  then I enlarge the selection by one pixel and fill it again with Ctrl+Backspace (or alt+backspace,  one fills with background color and one fills with foreground color,  and I can never remember which is which so I just try both until I get the result I want).  This eliminates the fringe.

You may also notice that the color layer is below the linework.  This is my own preference.  The linework layer is set to “Multiply” to these ends.  You can also set the color layer to “Multiply” and put it above the linework.  It’s the same in the long run.  Which you do depends largely on workflow and preferences.

The next step is to add some large areas of shadow.  They’re just flat black blobs,  and I adjust the opacity until they’re the intensity I want.  The shadow layer also includes the sunbeams cast on the floor,  which are actually just holes in the shadow layer.

With this next step you’ll see a lot of layers appear.  I don’t actually add all these layers at once,  but these steps tend to occur more or less simultaneously after a point,  so these screenshots were taken after the image was completely finished.  I’ve tried,  though,  to set these up in roughly the order I began working on them.

The next layer I add is what I call the “Highlight Colors” layer.  I originally called it this because I used it to add lighter versions of the flat colors.  However,  it’s become a bad name because I use the same layer to add darker versions of the flat colors as well.  I continue calling it this because I’ve become used to it.  This image shows the effect of the Highlight Colors layer:

Lighting effects:  sunbeams and reflections:

Various cool details  including reflections,  wallpaper,  and marble tiles:

And that’s all for the cover art.

All that’s left to do is to add the text,  which is also accomplished in Photoshop:

And the cover is done!  But wait…why does it look slightly different on the website?  Well,  I finished the cover a good month before it appeared,  and in that time I became more and more irritated by the fact that the windows did not have a wood frame separating them from the wall.  Literally hours before the image appeared online,  I finally got fed up with it,  slapped on the missing detail,  and uploaded a new version,  which is the version you can see today.

And that is how a typical Sunrise cover is made.  I hope someone finds this useful or interesting.