HANA PART 2: Of Ten

So here is where I had some fun with the injokes.

First up, I can't remember if it was Ryan (of Heroeswiki) or myself who remembered the Uluru desktop from the 9th Wonders that Micah is a fan of... But I'm glad it's there. To be honest, it was probably Ryan who remembered it.

Of note also in the first panel is my injoke shout-out to the members of the 9th Wonders Forums. Wolfbro7, one of the moderaters of the 9th Wonders had been aware of my presence on the boards and my rapport with the fans there. He asked me if it were at all possible to include any sort of shout out to the 9th Wonders fans. I was already on page 5 of this story, but I instantly knew what I could do. The hardest thing about including stuff like this, is making sure that it doesn't get spotted and subsequently asked to be removed by NBC. I snuck the 9th Wonders into the taskbar on Micah's laptop. You could rationalise it that he was simply checking out the 9th Wonders comic forum in his world. =)

Of additional note is that I decided to letter this page also. Once I had designed the user interface for the captions, as well as the font, I thought it would be easier if I just did it myself. I did specifically ask Frank to make sure that the letterer was still paid for this page. I didn't want to go taking anything anyone's pay packet just because I decided to make an artistic call. The lettering is most of the actual artwork - I mean, look at the lineart. Again, there's barely anything there.

Panel 1 is simply the laptop frame before I pasted in the Tim Sale Uluru picture. I slapped the text box on top (cobbled together from a Skype window) and added the lettering.

Panel 2 is just the same text box and background with different text in it.

Panel 3 is a close up of a circuitry board, again with the text caption over it.

Panel 4 is a hybrid of panel 3 and a closeup overlay of her eye from panel 5.

Panel 5 is really the only other panel of note. If I could be so bold as to say it about my own stye - or process rather, I'm really enjoying knowing where to stop and knowing what I can do with the painting and the airbrushing. Look at Micah on page 10. The lineart barely resembles him, but the painted art is pretty spot on. I'm still stunned by my ability to just know when to stop. It obviously didn't work for Niki, but hey, there's always casualties in war. I find that the lineart on this page doesn't look a thing like Hana, but the painted art makes it look like one of her glamour shots. I'm very happy with it. It has a nice angelic look (intentional based on her angel references in part 1) while still homaging the digital noise that she has now integrated with.

The hardest thing was to not make it look like the Matrix.

So I made her blue.

Genius, I know. =)

This process again is why I don't want to do HEROES sketches at San Diego. I just don't do great likenesses as lineart.

More on those winners images coming.