Issue 2 Page 25 Pencils and Inks

Page 25 of Issue 2!!! WOW! I never thought I'd be saying that. Finally on the last pages of NPW Issue 2. The big showdown between Nightmare Pro Wrestling Champion, Grim and Mr. Hyde. At this point, I'm still at Grim's intro. I wanted it to be so epic so you know how important he is in this world and to the NPW fans.


I pictured Grim with a bit of a Triple H kinda entrance, as this intimidating force with a cool ring entrance. I've actually had this page in my head for a while -- fire breath and all. It's nice to finally see it on paper/computer. 


I'm really happy with the way the inks came out on this page. I was a little worried about how the pyro on the last panel was gonna come out but I think it looks good. I think all of that will look a lot better once its colored though. 


I changed the fire coming out of Grim's mouth so it looked more like a controlled burst. The original sketch in pencils was a lot smaller and less intense. I want there to be the idea that if Grim wants to breath fire on you he can control its severity.


I also took off a lot of the motion lines from his arms. I think it was too much. It almost made the original drawing look like he was going to clap his fists together (or in Nicole's opinion, made him look hairy) which I didn't want. I'm also not sure if I need the "BOOM" sound effect. I think the images creates the sound all in itself, but I'll test it out and see how it looks.


Alright, hope the pencils and inks got you excited to see the colored page. Check it out on Monday at NightmareProWrestling.com


Later.

Issue 2 Page 24 Pencils and Inks

Here are the Inks for page 24 of Nightmare Pro Wrestling. Something that I've started doing on the pages is creating the backgrounds and characters differently. For the characters I sketch them out on paper then scan them in but for the backgrounds I've usually been drawing them directly on the computer. It's been saving some time and allowing me to still get the perspective I want.

Page 24 is pretty much the beginning of Grim's entrance into the arena. I really wanted to get the mood right on this page. What I wanted the reader to feel was the the excitement of and anticipation of Grim's entrance, along with the knowledge of how popular he is with the fans. When a big star comes into the ring his entrance music gets the fans cheering and then the star pumps up the crowd and the fans get louder. Then the star's music stops and then suddenly the bigger star's music plays. And the crowd goes WILD.

I hope I can get this moment across to wrestling and non-wrestling fans alike.

I plan on putting in some cheering for Mr. Hyde in panel 1 in a big font. Panel 3 is the moment I imagine Grim's music starting. I'm going to use a bigger font for his cheers to establish that the crowd really loves this guy.

In this page I'm also playing around with a special insert panel for the announcers. I like the idea of a smaller panel with the announcers in it to remind you where the commentary in the caption boxes are coming from. I'll test out throwing these panels in every other page during a match.

The last panel is the one that took me the longest but it's also the one that I had the most fun with. The biggest obstacle was drawing each monster in a way that has  them doing something without covering up the other monsters too much.

What I ended up doing was separately drawing all the main monsters first, scan them in, cobble them together in Photoshop. Then just filled the spaces with other random monsters. I had a lot of fun designing the monsters and it was great to finally have the Nightmare Night Creatures in a crowd shot. If you look closely you can also see a few celebrity monsters in there, including the Strange Kids Club puppet.  I'm not really sure what to put on there signs yet. I'll think of something.

  

Now to do paints....ugh...that last panel is going to take a while.

Later.