HANA part 2: Game on!

Well, well, well. Here we are at the end. But I'm still chatting about page 6 of part 1. I fell like everyone's talking about the next election and I'm still lamenting JFK's death.

As a homage to part 2, here's my image of Peter and Nathan. My friend Lee played the part of Peter Petrelli, and I played Nathan. I sent this to him and his wife to thank them and show them their contribution for their hard work helping me out. This is what the black and white toned art looks like before I go in and do my colours. I'm going to be drawing like this in the future. I can't tell you how quick and fun it is. I can't wait to see what Annette does with this sort of art!

But if you have any questions about part 2, please let me know. I'd like to know what you want to know. The only thing I will say about part 2, is did the 9th Wonders readers find my "shout out"? It's a tiny, very hard to find "easter egg". It's so small because I had to make sure it didn't disrupt the story and that the editors wouldn't kibosh it.

Anyway, page 6 was one of the easiest page to work on. It looks full-on, but really it was very simple. The toughest thing was the layout and the direction. The original script direction looked like this:

Splash Page - Hana PUKES out email addresses. Wi-fi signals. Radio transmissions.

So my initial sketch looked like this:

But as I worked on the earlier pages, I thought, wouldn't it be cooler if she was upright and vomiting these things like a volcano? I mean, it's not like radio-transmissions conform to gravity in any direct sense. I sent along this layout:

NBC really liked it, and off I went. The key to this sort of image or effect is texture and layers.

First up, is the lineart. Here it is. As you can see, there really isn't much on this page. It's all effects. On the far background is the sky. I found a nice photograph of a swirling storm and blurred and played with it. On top of that I added the mountain range, again, slightly blurred to pull it out of focus. Over the mountain range I airbrused mist and clouds to give it more depth and make it look less like a photo. Then came my shaded grey texture layer and lineart (see Peter and Nathan above for an example). Over that came the colours for Hana and Bennet and the snow foreground texture. Right now it looks like two people enjoying a sunny day on a snowy mountain.

Then comes my airbrush layer for Hana and Bennet, adding dramatic and extreme lighting from Hana's digital purge. The first of my special effects, the halo around Hana's mouth is here. The base of the texture is a computer generated liquid metal design that I found somewhere. I selected it, coloured it a golden yellow, and then added a vertical motion blur. The next layer is a bunch of nonsense digital text for texture all overlayed with the SCREEN layer effect. The final effect is a great airbrushed blast of white energy shooting upwards. Lastly is the snow added over the top for drama and depth. This was one of the fastest pages that I did.

COMPETITION: I haven't judged the entries yet, as I haven't watched the final episode. Expect the winners to be announced tomorrow night. What I will require from each of the winners is who they want drawn, and any basic direction from them. I will then mail out an original signed print to them. Everyone else can pick one up at the San Diego Con. If you give me names and details beforehand, I might even mail them all off in the US while I'm there. But the idea is that these are supposed to be portraits for the fans at the San Diego Comic Convention.