This week I'm taking a break from my day job at Defiant Development to blitz my comic in an effort to get ahead on it. It's been a productive few days and is going to be capped by my attendance at ZICS (Zines & Indie Comic Symposium) this weekend. I'll have a table there selling my wares, and will be doing a talk abut my motivation and process I use in my Hilt at 2pm on Sunday.
In the meantime, I thought I might show a couple of style tests. I've always been keen on the heavy black look, bold shadows and harsh lighting, as well as the screentone techniques used in manga. I was looking for a good ratio of striking style to effort put in. The top image used the screen tone masked off to add tones and gradients. The middle version is pure black and white, but has a degree of shading that I've added using a custom brush. In the bottom one I've added colour with a few simple gradients. Click on the images for higher resolution.
In the end I went for the screentone version, the reason being that I can get a lot of mood and lighting effects using it. It would also allow me to do the backgrounds in a lot more simple but effective way than with pure black and white or colour, using fogging and some custom brushes for leaves, trees etc. I think I've made the right choice.
