Process pics from Dinosaur Empire (Patreon)

Here's what a page from Dinosaur Empire looks like from start to finish! This is one part of a 2-page spread which was going to be too compressed to read on Patreon, so I've attached the full image below if you'd like to see it.

I usually do both pencils and inks traditionally (with pen and paper), but for Dinosaur Empire I did all the pencils digitally. I found if I'm laying out big spreads full of animals of varying size that need a lot of tweaking and editing as I go, it saves a lot of stress to just be able to select parts of the drawing to size up/down or move them around instead of having to erase the whole thing and start over! It does make for a slightly different drawing experience, though, and I've found when I'm working with traditional pencils I can make more lively illustrations.

I then printed out the pencils on 11x17 bristol, the kind of paper I like to use, and inked them with microns. I don't like inking digitally at all, so even though the extra steps may seem silly since I'd have to scan the pages back in for coloring, it made a big difference for me!

Then when I scanned in the pages, I'd get rid of the pencils, which is why I was working with a blue pencil. In photoshop you can eliminate certain colors, so I could just magic away the blue pencil lines underneath the inks! No erasing required. Then there was a step I didn't include here-- I sent all the inks off to a flatter, and they filled in all the areas that were going to be different colors with random colors so I could just go into with the paint bucket tool and fill in things with the colors I chose, rather than having to painstakingly fill in each chunk with a brush. It takes forever, and I was in a time crunch.

Then I'd do colors, which is a very long process for me. I like inking a lot, but colors are the bane of my existence. How do I know if I'm picking the right color? There are so many colors!! At least in the case of recreating ancient beasts, I had a limited palette and limited color patterns to choose from. Then after I'd finished the base colors, I added in the shadows and highlights, and that was that!

Right now I'm currently working on the pencils for book 2, and I'm really looking forward to when they're done so I can ink for days. It's the best part.

Also, I'll be at Small Press Expo around Sept 16/17, see you there??