Thursday, September 11, 2008

NOIR PRINT PROCESS

At the last minute I decided to make a print for Comic Con. I thought it would be fun to show a little bit of my process. So here it goes...

THUMBNAIL
First I start out with filling as many pages as I can with all kinds of ideas. I keep the drawings small and loose. Concentrating mainly on composition and shapes.

ROUGH SKETCH
After I find something that I think works, I take it and do a larger rough. Still keeping it loose and not getting concerned with detail. I'm just trying to hone in the shapes and perspective while exploring some tone too.

CLEANER ROUGH
Now I'm starting to define the piece more. Tightening up the shapes and getting more concerned with lines rather than tone. Still keeping it loose and full of energy, but refining the shapes and design. Each step is an evolution towards a better image. You lose things that didn't work and define those that do. You can see I didn't like the man's silhouette and I made an adjustment to hopefully improve it.

CLEAN UP SKETCH
Here's where I begin to think about detail and start to tighten things up for the final image. If I make any mistakes, I don't sweat it because I know I can make changes in Photoshop when I begin to do the tone.

FINAL TONE

Then I scan in my sketch and begin to paint in the tone in Photoshop using my Cintiq. This is a huge step and unfortunately I don't really have any 'in progress' versions of this. So you'll just have to do with the final. You'll notice I never stop evolving my piece, even at the very end. Take note on the sign. I wasn't buying the "Noir" sign and I decided to change it to a more appropriate 'hotel' sign instead.

It took me a weekend to put it together and I had a blast with it. Hopefully you dug seeing the different steps!

12 comments:

Scribbler said...

brilliant work

RAWLS said...

Nice print indeed my friend... wish I nabbed one of those. Maybe next year! Love seeing the process! Great work man.

Bill Robinson said...

Love this print - how did you do the actual printing?

Mike Nassar said...

sweet man. thanks for sharing.

Kmann said...

thanks guys!

Bill, I went thru a local printing company in Santa Rosa. They did a great job. They actually printed on an unusual surface. Kind of a smooth vinyl.

I have a couple left. I was thinking about putting them up on my blog for sale thru Paypal.

Josh 'Hat' Lieberman said...

Holy crap!
This stuff looks great and as always, inspiring.
You're awesome.

Unknown said...

Really beautiful work man. its great to see your process.

SalBa Combé said...

WOW! Nice Sketches and very nice final art. This style remember the film "dark city". I love it

Gulzar said...

Phew! Blown away by all of these great works!

ROBERT BANDEL said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ROBERT BANDEL said...

Great work. Always nice to see the preliminary artwork.

I had read your Noir synopsis a long time ago and for some time had wanted to email to say I really enjoyed it. Most animated scripts I end up reading usually end up to be drudgery trying to get through. But Noir kept my interest and made me want to know more. Hoping you can still do something with it in the future.

Johannes Liehr said...

wow, i always love to see rough drawings! these are very cool...