My creative process in relation to my comic hobby

I mentioned that this weekend I was working on a paticular panel for the third issue of my comic. When originally done, that panel looked like this-



I was very proud of it as it seemed to me to be a very original angle. Looking straight down from the sky, you can see the Skrulls marching down the street inbetween the buildings. The words, I like to think give the effect of the Skrulls moving foward. But It just dosen't look complete to me. I see to many probelms. The Skrulls, for one, are all looking straight back at the reader and don't look very natural. And the size of the narative obscures the building making the image very hard to understand. And so, I made the decision to scrap the panel in favor of something a little easier to understand. I searched and searched through my arcives and found several images that I considered.


The first and formost place I look for Images to use is in Kiry Era which is the first 100 plus issues of Fantastic Four (1961-1970). That search brought up a "Pin-Up" of the Super-Skrull which I knew right away I wanted to use.



But having a guy standing there carrying a flag really dosen't cut the mustard when you consider that there is suppose to be "LEGIONS OF SKRULLS" marching and so I had to find something else to add to the image. I considered doing just him and making multiple images of him standing infront of himself, But then they would all be carrying the flag, so that didn't work.

The only image in 44 years of F4 comics that comes close to showing any army of skrulls came from FF#205 with art by Keith Pollard. But they weren't marching. they were flying. I really considered useing this image.



But becouse they were flying I couldn't justify having the guy with the flag standing in front of them so I was back to square one.

Sometimes, I can find other charaters doing what I need them to do and simply have to change the ID of the character to make the picture look the way I need it to look. I went back to the Kirby issues and started to look for other races, the Alpha Primatives, the Kree, the Mole People. the under water people. I found another image from FF annual #1 that fit my needs.



This one would have worked, But with all the words and having to take the bystnders out of the picture, Plus with how centered the marching people are, I thought I might be able to do better. So I keept searching. and found this image from FF#249 Art Adams art.



Ah, this one was do-able. Turning Moloids into Skrulls wouldn't be a problem and the pic sure fit the need of "Marching Skrulls" And so I went to work trying to see what the final product might look like be combineing the two pictures I intended to use. I edited out the words and the Goast rider image and lengthened the picture so that my guys would fill the panel. I then went back to the Super skrull image and did the same little bit of editing. Combineing the images I got this:














It was just in the range I needed so I got cracking on re-drawing the Super Skrull with solid blacks and re-configuring his size until I fit him in to the panel right where he needed to be. I also took to re-doing the narration so that it fit my needs and wouldn't be so obtrusive as to completely waste away the back part of the panel.


























Using these two (well three but I am only showing two) I set about working on the background image or marching skrulls if you will. I de-colored the picture and started to re-inked making all the Moloids into skrulls. However about halfway through, I discovered that with the size and placement of the word boxes, I was doing twice as much work as I needed to do. Why would I want to re-ink everything only to have it obscured by the front part of the image?

I then set the word panels into the picture where I needed them to go and started to work around them.














This made the process of re-inking the entire image much easier but still presented some problems. Mostly in the area under the Super Skrulls flag and right arm. I couldn't tell what was what and so couldn't possible ink it properly. So I took an outline of the perfetly fitted super-skrull and layered it over the marching moloids then blacked the whole thing in so all I could see was the moloids. I then higlighted the exposed areas and changed the tint and brought it back to the Super skrulls image. That way I knew what was going to be exposed and what wasen't. I don't have a picture here of the tinted areas by themselves which would go a long way in explaining what I am talking about, but here is what the image looked like after I completed that process.















I then went back and re-layered the superskrull onto the background and got my completely re-inked image. All that was left was to re-color it and add the word boxes thingies. When I first imagined the picture I didn't think all the purple would be a problem as it would be broken up by the green in the skrull faces. But that didn't quite work out like I planned. I found that all that purple made the image run together and look clutered and so I had to find something else to do with the foreground part of the Super skrull. I toyed with the idea of just leaving his purple clothes white, but that didn't look quite right, So I created an overlay that wasen't quite white and wasen't quite purple. Almost grey. In the end, I think the absence of color in the super skrulls clothes makes up for the obscurity provided by the word boxes and makes the whole image work.

The test to know if the image works or not comes from time. If a reader can look at the process of the whole page and not think twice about how strange the image looks on its own then it won't detract from the story. If however, the reader has to stop and ponder what is wrong with the picture then it dosen't work to well and my little expirement failed.

Anyway, heres the completed panel.