Benjamin Hobbs:
The Remastered TMNT8 Kickstarter campaign is moving right along. One of the covers on the campaign was drawn and colored by me:
Over the next several weeks I'm going to show an Overly Exhaustive Progression of this cover. This week: The sketches and start of pencils.
The first two sketches are from my sketchbook, dated November 2020. These would be from right after I heard there would be a TMNT8 campaign, but long before I had confirmed I was doing a cover.
In the first, Renet is holding a little Turtle and has a non-Cerebus Aardvark wrapped around her. I wasn't referencing TMNT8, so her helmet has a third circle on top, with an arrow sticking straight up:
The next page in the sketchbook has Renet kissing what appears to be Cerebus. Odd, given there are no romantic overtones between the two in the comic. Was I doing a Frog Prince riff? No idea:
The next sketch is digital. A very rough Cerebus is sniffing Renet suspiciously:
Next is another digital sketch. The Renet figure from the SNIFF sketch is flipped and there is a new Cerebus drawing. He now has his sword. This is the first time the Turtles appear, in the four corners. And Cerebus and Renet are surrounded by circles. There was going to be a lot of organic foliage around the cover, because it's fun to draw. The logo, swiped from Dave's cover as a place holder, is divided up between the top and bottom.
The next image is a revision of the previous sketch. The text is now at the bottom of the cover, and Cerebus and Renet are smaller on the cover:
I decided to try a pose for Renet with more movement, and replaced Cerebus' sword with the Time Scepter from the issue. The foliage has been replaced with energy from the Time Scepter:
This is the image I sent to Waverly that was approved.
From here, I proceed to start the pencils. However, when laying it out, I realized that I didn't really know what I was doing with the rings around the figures. I had envisioned them as being filled with different decorative drawings, but there were WAY too many rings to fill them all with items from the issue. Instead, I made them interlocking rings. I started with alternating small and large rings. Cerebus was still holding the Time Scepter in front of him. I wanted more movement, but I couldn't work out how to have him swinging it without either A) The scepter extending outside the circle or B) obscuring a lot of his face.
Having made a mess of this piece of Bristol board, with too many circles and lines and erasure marks, I retreated to a sketch book, to work out Cerebus' pose and how to draw the rings. For the rings, I settled on having them the same size. I tried texturing them, but it looked too busy. I knew I wanted the color to do a lot of the heavy lifting on the tone and texture. In the bottom right, you can see the basic pose for Cerebus that I landed on:
Having resolved these issues, I started the pencils again, on a new piece of Bristol Board. I laid in Cerebus, Renet, the circles, and the basic outline of everything else. Although at this point, I hadn't settled what would fill all the spaces around the Turtles. I was still imagining that there would be organic foliage:
Next Week: An Overly Exhaustive Making of A TMNT8 cover Part 2: Pencils and Inks
1 comment:
This is cool! Keep it coming!
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