I'm glad I could help bring some new blood to the RPF in the form of hardcore HPL fans! Welcome fellas! No price or timetable just yet. Keeping things organic for the time being. First time doing a project like this but I will say that I'd love to get this done in the next month or so. I'll keep you guys updated.
This forum is usually about resins and styrene so I thought it might be fun to go through the "build process" for the box art. I've been a comicbook artist and animator for most of my life now so most of my design work tends to reflect that style and process. Here are the basic steps for the box art-
I took all those sketches into photoshop and shuffled the elements around until I got a basic design that I was happy with and then printed that out.
I reworked the main statue image and removed the black rectangle it was sitting in. I wanted himn to be a little larger and I felt I was leaning on the design aesthetic of Mike Mignola a little to much there. I also reworked all the tentacles to fit this new design element.
Here's a little bit evidence of me obsessing over that stuff-
Sometimes I'll rework that kinda stuff in the computer, sometimes on paper. I use both tools interchangably and in tandem at times. I just go with whatever feels like the right solution. Hard to explain.
That image was then physically traced in pencil onto a thick paper called Bristol Board using a lightbox. It's the stuff used to draw comic book art.
You'll noticed that I even traced the computer laid out text. I really like the way this looks. You get the nice spacing and shape of a nicely designed font along with the organic quality that comes from something being hand made. Best of both worlds.
The next step is inking! I'm kinda old school and mainly use a Windsor and Newton Series 7 #2 and #3 for most of my artwork. Nice art markers get used for anything that requires a straight line or is text related. I try to use them as little as possible though to keep the lively quality of the brush work.
Here are the inks for the first layer of artwork-
You'll notice a bunch of weird stuff in the drawing that won't match up with the final artwork. This was drawn to be messed with in photoshop later. You'll see what I mean.
I decided to draw and ink the wavy water lines separately from the main artwork. It's easier to be able to draw through objects rather than around them and just alter it later in photoshop.
Doing this kind of "effects" style inking can be tedious stuff but it creates a cool look and texture that it's worth the effort. I could have spent forever on this step caressing the individual hatch marks into perfection but ya gotta keep moving forward and not sweat the small stuff. It came out pretty good nonetheless and anything that really bothers me I can clean up in photoshop.
Here's the image after dropping the main artwork and the water lines into photoshop and combining them.
You'll notice also that the linework above the water line have been inverted to make the black lines turn white. This has also been done to the monster parts in the large black island areas under the water. Other little bits and pieces have been tightened up too but only tiny crap that only I'd noticed.
That's it for now.
This forum is usually about resins and styrene so I thought it might be fun to go through the "build process" for the box art. I've been a comicbook artist and animator for most of my life now so most of my design work tends to reflect that style and process. Here are the basic steps for the box art-
I took all those sketches into photoshop and shuffled the elements around until I got a basic design that I was happy with and then printed that out.
I reworked the main statue image and removed the black rectangle it was sitting in. I wanted himn to be a little larger and I felt I was leaning on the design aesthetic of Mike Mignola a little to much there. I also reworked all the tentacles to fit this new design element.
Here's a little bit evidence of me obsessing over that stuff-
Sometimes I'll rework that kinda stuff in the computer, sometimes on paper. I use both tools interchangably and in tandem at times. I just go with whatever feels like the right solution. Hard to explain.
That image was then physically traced in pencil onto a thick paper called Bristol Board using a lightbox. It's the stuff used to draw comic book art.
You'll noticed that I even traced the computer laid out text. I really like the way this looks. You get the nice spacing and shape of a nicely designed font along with the organic quality that comes from something being hand made. Best of both worlds.
The next step is inking! I'm kinda old school and mainly use a Windsor and Newton Series 7 #2 and #3 for most of my artwork. Nice art markers get used for anything that requires a straight line or is text related. I try to use them as little as possible though to keep the lively quality of the brush work.
Here are the inks for the first layer of artwork-
You'll notice a bunch of weird stuff in the drawing that won't match up with the final artwork. This was drawn to be messed with in photoshop later. You'll see what I mean.
I decided to draw and ink the wavy water lines separately from the main artwork. It's easier to be able to draw through objects rather than around them and just alter it later in photoshop.
Doing this kind of "effects" style inking can be tedious stuff but it creates a cool look and texture that it's worth the effort. I could have spent forever on this step caressing the individual hatch marks into perfection but ya gotta keep moving forward and not sweat the small stuff. It came out pretty good nonetheless and anything that really bothers me I can clean up in photoshop.
Here's the image after dropping the main artwork and the water lines into photoshop and combining them.
You'll notice also that the linework above the water line have been inverted to make the black lines turn white. This has also been done to the monster parts in the large black island areas under the water. Other little bits and pieces have been tightened up too but only tiny crap that only I'd noticed.
That's it for now.
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