Wednesday, June 20, 2007

HANA PART 2: Nine lives

As you can see, while I did very little drawing on the last page, I more than made up for it on this page.

Page 9 was hell. I don't think I spent so much time on a page apart from the final montage page.

This was so damn tough for one reason alone: Niki. I drew, redrew and redrew that picture of Niki. It killed me. Even after I sent off the final montage page, I came back and with an hour to spare, redrew this page. So despit me touting the revolutionary new drawing technique, I still got done over.

At the end of the day, I ended up coming back to this version. Not because it's a great likeness - it's not. But because it had the best performance for me.

Personally I blame my lack of photo reference. Do you realise how far back you have to go to get a picture of Niki not in a straight jacket? Really far. Really, really far. Then consider how little I had to work with and then I had to find a picture of her with the right expression with a reasonably similar lighting. Suffice to say, my likeness of Niki is inversely proportional to my likeness of Micah. I don't wanna blow my own horn here, but the likenesses of Micah on this page are pretty damn solid.

I can't believe that I never saved any of the other versions! In my haste I must have saved over them. Ah well.

I also want to apologise to the letterer on this page. Normally I have a very clear idea of where the dialogue balloons should be placed. I stared and stared at Aron's dialogue, but I just had no idea how to lay the balloons out. In the end I just drew the damn panel and let the letterer figure it out themselves? The final result meant that many people found this page difficult to read. While you could blame the letterer, I personally hold myself accountable as I really left the poor guy out to dry.

Thanks again to Ryan Gibson Stewart for finding me the reference for Niki's car, their house, Micah's room and even the model of laptop that he owns! He enabled me to leave no stone unturned, so that was pretty cool.

For my "night effects" I chucked a transparent blue layer over the top. Included here is what the page looks like during the day. =)

3 comments:

Kelly J. Crawford said...

Your depiction of Micah was dead on, Jas. Nice job!

Anonymous said...

You shoulda let me know you were having a hard time finding photo references of Niki--I have tons of stuff. Oh well, no harm no foul. I actually think it's a fine likeness. But really, who's looking at her when it's Micah's likeness that has jaws dropping.

By the way, your questions about Micah's computer inspired me to write an article about his laptop. For whatever that's worth... :)

Unknown said...

"Do you realise how far back you have to go to get a picture of Niki not in a straight jacket? Really far. Really, really far."

LOL at work again! Good thing I'm alone here most of the time... 8-) Your blue tint reminds me of old movies where they would shoot during the day with the camera stopped down so that it was "night" -- damn that moon was bright back then! 8-)

I think what happened with Niki is that her lips are actually rather thin, and you gave her an injection job. Heh.