Showing Your Work

Work on the new volume of Teuton is going swiftly so far. Like The Dark Knight was to Batman Begins, Fred and I want to improve every aspect of our continued series. That's right, I just compared our book to Batman.

Part of our mutual improvement plan involves speeding up my page output.

For most of the last volume I worked very haphazardly and didn't do much drafting at all. Many times I made my layouts lightly in pencil on the finished page. Sensible artists complete a series of drafts before working on the finished page. This isn't to say I'm some drafting maverick--more like a fool stubbing his toe in the dark, since I so often worked myself into corners, and either the page came out less than great or I'd lose precious time revising my half-finished page (in some cases I redrew the page entirely on another board.) What's maddening is that I knew better. I paid money to extremely knowledgeable and skilled people for the privilege of knowing better, and still, a good deal of the time I threw myself at the board without a plan. Or if you can stomach another analogy: like playing mini-golf blindfolded.

No more. No sir.

Anyhow, here's a look at the process of a page, from thumbnails to finished piece. Fairly elementary to most seasoned artists, but I still get a kick from seeing the development. Enjoy!