Behind the Scenes: New Mutants # 28 cover

Hey guys,

Here is the process of the work behind New Mutants #28 cover.

These are the three layout sketches I sent to the editors. I was asked to have Magic from New Mutants in a jail cell hunted by her demons so I nailed the three quick composition sketches and sent them for approval. I do these sketches all in photoshop.

I did these entire image digitally because I wanted to try something new on my technique, I never try coloring over gray tones of shading so I decided to give it a shot. At this point I take the approved sketch and do a clean version on top of it just by tracing over it on photoshop.

When I’m done with the clean lines I set on “multiply” on photoshop to begin the coloring process. At first I set five tones from white to black so for the most part of this process I work strictly with this tones.

The main idea of why I wanted to try this new process of coloring was to get a better feel of the volume, the lighting on the scene and the characters. Usually when working straight on colors is hard to proceed the tonal values because of the amount of color variety on the image. So by sticking only to gray tones I can focus on the shapes and tonal values.

At this point I usually use a regular hard edge brush with 70 % in opacity and 25% on flow.

Once I layout all the gray tones on the image I start going over the lines and cleaning all the edges from the pencil lines.

When I was at this point I started to get nervous since this was the first time I try this coloring technique and I had no idea how to lay colors on top of the gray tones.

So I started looking for a couple of tutorials on the web on how to work on it.

http://www.imaginefx.com/-2287754330544769555/Combining_traditional_and_digital.html

http://www.3dtotal.com/

At this point I’m pretty much learning by trial an error and I started laying colors on layers from “multiply “and “color.” I really don’t remember the exact process I used for this since I don’t have the technique nailed down but I had a really clear idea of how I wanted the image to look in the end so from the beginning I knew I wanted a defiant looking Magic with lots of cold tones and the moon lighting on the jail cell.
Once I’m done with all the coloring aspects of the image I start adding textures like the walls and the floor.

This is the final result, I hope you guys like it.

MORE COVERS COMING SOON.

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