Vol 2 cover - Final

Blog posted by Ste Pickford on Sun, 09 Nov 2014
Subject: Plok comic strip

Here's the finished cover for 'Plok Volume 2: Boom'.

We hope to release this as an ebook, and a paperback volume, before the end of November, which will make this perfect companion to 'Plok Volume 1: Awake' for anyone Christmas shopping for a comics or video games fan (hint hint).

This cover has taken me ages because I *really* didn't like it about half way through, so didn't want to keep working on it. I'm glad I carried on with it though, instead of throwing it all away, as I'm quite pleased with it now. With the cover done there's not much more work needed to get the book finished, so we should be able to get this published quite soon.

I thought I'd do a series of blog posts, like a 'proper' comic artist, showing my whole process from layout sketch to finished art. I did a two stage version for the Vol 1 cover (pencils -> finished), but I decided to go into a bit more detail this time.

This blog post is the first in the sequence, but also the last, as the sequence loops, so if you're at the end of the sequence I better explain the final few changes I made here:

To fix the problems with the background - to knock it back a little bit, and add a nice feeling of motion - I added a Photoshop 'Radial Blur / Zoom' filter on the whole of the background layer, centred on the crater. Actually, that effect was a bit too sharp, so I overlaid the radial blur version of the background on top of the original version, with 80% opacity, and this softened the effect slightly and added a bit of smoothness that I couldn't get with filter settings alone. I then upped the brightness of the whole background a little bit with an adjustment layer, just to balance the contrast out a little bit.

Finally, I added the 'BOOM' title at the bottom, which I drew from scratch yesterday morning once I'd finished everything else on the cover (mainly because we hadn't settled on a title until yesterday). This gave me the chance to add an extra splash of colour at the bottom, which I think finished everything off nicely.

Click the 'This post has a follow up' link at the bottom to go to the next post in this sequence, and see the start of the cover process.

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Tags: plok, volume 2, ebook, cover, process, drawing, colour, photoshop

Follow up post: Vol 2 cover - layout

Predecessor post: Vol 2 cover - combined!

Permalink to this post: http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/blog/view.php?post=819

Ha very nice!

I love the dimension.

Comment by Mr. Polygon, added Fri, 21 Nov 2014 12:48:44 GMT