Cover

Here is the finished cover for the comic. I think the logo could be better but it kind of works. I was trying to capture the feel of the old X-Men logo. I also think that the cover could be stronger. I was already too committed to the lines to completely change it when I decided I wasn't 100% happy with it. I should have had a few more options in the rough stage before I moved ahead. I don't like that the heroes are kind of small in the back and I wonder if it's clear enough who the heroes and villains are. If i had to redo the cover I would make that more obvious and have the team take a more central role in the image.

Pages 1-24

Here are the original 24 pages completed bar some colour corrections and fixing any errors I find. I'll be adding 2 more pages, a cover, and title credits, etc... over the next few days. If all goes well I might actually finish a few days before hand in.  

My take on the pages at the moment is that I might have over done the texture image. I think it's a little low res as well. If I can find a higher res one I want to use I can edit the colours to keep them with the aged faded look. There're also some slight colour variations on the white on each page as I have used some colour layers on Hard light on most pages but using a different colour. It might not be worth "fixing" that as it is barely noticeable. 

Over all I am really pleased with how these pages have turned out, particularly because I am not experienced colouring at all. 

14-15

Two more pages done today. As with the penciling and inking, it feels as though the way I started on early pages with the colouring is not the way I am working now. I am trying consciously to keep the pages looking consistent. 

1-13

I've coloured half the comic now. I think I screwed up by using different colour pallettes for different scenes. I think what to do is have one colour pallette for the whole issue as otherwise it looks like it doesn't belong together. 

I "fixed" it by making post colouring adjustments to make all the pages match. I think it looks better than it did but perhaps needs some further tweaks. At the stage the pages are at I will be able to do this once artwork is complete. That makes the most sense to me as I will be able to look at the book as a whole while making corrections.

Texture

I've been playing around with a paper texture to "age" the pages a little. I think it's a nice fit with the overall retro style of the lines and colours although at this level it might be overdone. Here they are along with 2 new pages. I also edited 5-6 to remove the cyan as I felt it was clashing with the previous page and they are both depicting the same scene. 

 

First coloured pages

Here are the first coloured pages. I've always had issues colouring and as such have tended to avoid it. I wanted to challenge myself this year on the masters and have planned to do the dissertation project in colour. To tie in with the "90's" style of comic I have made I wanted to use flat colours. I grew up reading comics coloured like this and miss them in this modern age of shiny digital colouring.

What I have been doing to help is finding images that have a colour scheme I like and that is suited to the pages I am colouring, extracting a colour table from that image in photoshop and then importing that table as a colour set to Clip Studio. I then can use the colours in this swatch exclusively to colour the scenes which ensures that the colours all work together.