Art: Baby is so shiny - SPN_Heatwave entry
Title: Baby is so shiny
Artist: blythechild
Characters: Sam & Dean Winchester, and of course, Baby
Rating: 14A for wincest, a suggestive final panel, and general shirtlessness - nothing here is explicit but I'm gonna say don't look at it at work just to be safe
Medium: pen and ink, Photoshop & Illustrator CS6
Artist's Note: I hate summer. I mean, I really loathe it. The heat, the humidity, the endless stretches of unrelenting sunshine, the expectation to be more 'sunny' and social, the flip-flops... you get the point. So what do I do to mark the occasion? I sign up for a summer-themed fan art challenge and decide to create a textless, one-page comic book that celebrates everything I dislike.
I can say that the one thing I do like about summer is COLOR. Everything is much brighter and this challenge gave me an excuse to indulge in that. Since I don't often draw lighthearted things, at first I didn't know what to do as an image. Then my husband - helpful as always - blurted out the following while watching an SPN episode one night: "Baby is always so shiny". I swear to god that he might have been bouncing like a fanboy at the same time *eyeroll*. Anyway, that got me thinking about how Dean keeps Baby looking great on the road, and then everything fell into place.
Since I decided that this would be a story in pictures, I tried a simplified style and a new technique. The serialized storytelling, the stripped back style, and the use of color made me fall back on the comicbook heroes of my childhood: Jean Giraud, Roberto Gligorov, and Paul Rivoche. Basically, I've been wanting to do something like this since I was 12 years old but have never had to balls to try before, so this project turned out to be a lot more nerve-wracking than I thought it would o_O
Anyway, here we go (process stuff is after the image):
Click image to go to gallery, then CLICK AGAIN TO ENLARGE
I recommend that you view this BIG.
Process:
This idea seemed deceptively simple but it turned out to be the most labor-intensive project I've done in years. First, I had to storyboard the hell out of it - figuring how to tell it briefly, clearly, and using repeated elements. There were several panels that didn't make the cut in the end and I could probably endlessly debate what I cut and what I kept, and whether those were the right choices. Then, I had to image search elements for each panel and that was frustrating (FYI - searching "hot guys washing cars" drops you into porn quicker than you can blink). Next, I sketched elements for each panel, but not the panel itself - then I inked the sketches, scanned them at the highest resolution possible, took them into Photoshop to correct and adjust the image levels, and then I took each image into Illustrator and turned the linework into vector objects. I've never done this successfully before and discovered a technique by accident while doing work for a client recently. The upside is: VECTORIZED LINEWORK LOOKS GREAT! The downside is: the technique I used only works on large images (8" x 12" minimum) and you will lose a certain amount of detail in the process. I'm sure there is a way around this but I haven't figured it out yet.
So, I saved all of the drawings as AIs and then started creating the panels as individual Photoshop files (to reduce file size and prevent PS from crashing on me). Once I had a panel PSD file and a corresponding AI file open, I could copy the vector directly into Photoshop as a Smart Object (you could save the AI files as EPS images and import that way but my experience has been that EPS files are buggy - and it's a file format no longer supported/encouraged by Adobe). The end result is crisp linework at any size, and, thanks to Clipping Masks, the linework can be any color you want without losing the original's edge integrity (maybe this seems like a no-brainer to some, but it's a revelation to me).
After creating separate files for each panel, I had to assemble them into a final "sheet". It would have been easy to save each panel as a jpeg and just create the sheet with those, but working on each panel separately meant that there was a slight lack of consistency in color progression, element size, and other adjustments. So, I assembled the sheet file with fully editable panel contents, and then tweaked each as necessary to make things more cohesive.
Those are the broad strokes of the process. It took me 3 weeks to complete this from start to finish, and given the opportunity, I could've spent another 3 weeks fine tuning it. But at some point you have to STOP. It's not how I pictured it in my head, but it was my first try at this. I am still very pleased with the results ;)
There we go: spn_heatwave challenge completed! I AM BATMAN!
Artist: blythechild
Characters: Sam & Dean Winchester, and of course, Baby
Rating: 14A for wincest, a suggestive final panel, and general shirtlessness - nothing here is explicit but I'm gonna say don't look at it at work just to be safe
Medium: pen and ink, Photoshop & Illustrator CS6
Artist's Note: I hate summer. I mean, I really loathe it. The heat, the humidity, the endless stretches of unrelenting sunshine, the expectation to be more 'sunny' and social, the flip-flops... you get the point. So what do I do to mark the occasion? I sign up for a summer-themed fan art challenge and decide to create a textless, one-page comic book that celebrates everything I dislike.
I can say that the one thing I do like about summer is COLOR. Everything is much brighter and this challenge gave me an excuse to indulge in that. Since I don't often draw lighthearted things, at first I didn't know what to do as an image. Then my husband - helpful as always - blurted out the following while watching an SPN episode one night: "Baby is always so shiny". I swear to god that he might have been bouncing like a fanboy at the same time *eyeroll*. Anyway, that got me thinking about how Dean keeps Baby looking great on the road, and then everything fell into place.
Since I decided that this would be a story in pictures, I tried a simplified style and a new technique. The serialized storytelling, the stripped back style, and the use of color made me fall back on the comicbook heroes of my childhood: Jean Giraud, Roberto Gligorov, and Paul Rivoche. Basically, I've been wanting to do something like this since I was 12 years old but have never had to balls to try before, so this project turned out to be a lot more nerve-wracking than I thought it would o_O
Anyway, here we go (process stuff is after the image):
Click image to go to gallery, then CLICK AGAIN TO ENLARGE
I recommend that you view this BIG.
Process:
This idea seemed deceptively simple but it turned out to be the most labor-intensive project I've done in years. First, I had to storyboard the hell out of it - figuring how to tell it briefly, clearly, and using repeated elements. There were several panels that didn't make the cut in the end and I could probably endlessly debate what I cut and what I kept, and whether those were the right choices. Then, I had to image search elements for each panel and that was frustrating (FYI - searching "hot guys washing cars" drops you into porn quicker than you can blink). Next, I sketched elements for each panel, but not the panel itself - then I inked the sketches, scanned them at the highest resolution possible, took them into Photoshop to correct and adjust the image levels, and then I took each image into Illustrator and turned the linework into vector objects. I've never done this successfully before and discovered a technique by accident while doing work for a client recently. The upside is: VECTORIZED LINEWORK LOOKS GREAT! The downside is: the technique I used only works on large images (8" x 12" minimum) and you will lose a certain amount of detail in the process. I'm sure there is a way around this but I haven't figured it out yet.
So, I saved all of the drawings as AIs and then started creating the panels as individual Photoshop files (to reduce file size and prevent PS from crashing on me). Once I had a panel PSD file and a corresponding AI file open, I could copy the vector directly into Photoshop as a Smart Object (you could save the AI files as EPS images and import that way but my experience has been that EPS files are buggy - and it's a file format no longer supported/encouraged by Adobe). The end result is crisp linework at any size, and, thanks to Clipping Masks, the linework can be any color you want without losing the original's edge integrity (maybe this seems like a no-brainer to some, but it's a revelation to me).
After creating separate files for each panel, I had to assemble them into a final "sheet". It would have been easy to save each panel as a jpeg and just create the sheet with those, but working on each panel separately meant that there was a slight lack of consistency in color progression, element size, and other adjustments. So, I assembled the sheet file with fully editable panel contents, and then tweaked each as necessary to make things more cohesive.
Those are the broad strokes of the process. It took me 3 weeks to complete this from start to finish, and given the opportunity, I could've spent another 3 weeks fine tuning it. But at some point you have to STOP. It's not how I pictured it in my head, but it was my first try at this. I am still very pleased with the results ;)
There we go: spn_heatwave challenge completed! I AM BATMAN!