Thank You Cards

I have absolutely come to a screeching halt with my comic book.

It's very sad. I keep justifying my 'stalled' predicament by thinking, "it's okay, I've been working hard to finish the colors... I only have a cover to do... I need a break". And that's where it gets dangerous.

When I don't ride that artistic momentum, it's really hard to get it back again. Kinda like excercise. You get into a groove, and it becomes 'easy'. BUT, you miss even one day from your regular schedule, and it's so hard to find that groove again.

Sigh. Anyway, my blog is looking sad, so I thought to post something up.

This is the thank you card I did for my wedding. Still going with the comic book theme, I whipped this up relatively quick ('quick' for me at least). Unfortunately it's been taking me and the wife a LONG time to send them out!

I can't find any physical sketches of the thing, so I think I did it all digitally. Sorry about the way I laid out the images; it's a little weird, but the top half is actually the inside of the card and the bottom half is the front.

Rough digital pencils

Trace-worthy background reference!

inks

flat colors

First color pass

Final Colors

For the background, I just googled up our hotel and traced one so it would fit into the cartoony world of the characters. What can I say? I'm lazy, slow and get even slower when I do backgrounds. I had to do this card quick. I knocked the linework for the building back, so that the characters would pop-out more.

My initial color pass had gradients in it, but I felt like it was trying too hard. I didn't like the colors when it came out in print, and I felt the gradient wasn't really adding much. So in my final color pass, I left the colors very flat.

I was also experimenting with a caption at the front of the card, but I think it took away from the image and opted to get rid of it entirely at the end.

That's it for tonight! Here's hoping I can get my groove back and really put issue #2 in the can! Good night and God Bless!