Page 12 has just been lightboxed onto it’s own page so I can work on tightening up the roughs. A photocopy of the enlarged thumbnail for page 13 sits next to it waiting for the same transfer process.
When starting a page, I usually do a thumbnail, blow it up and then lightbox the enlargement for the rough. This is where I start to correct proportions and adjust the art and lettering to fit the page a bit better. Also, as seen in panel one, if the thumbnail stinks, I’ll redraw the art.
In the roughs, you’ll notice pencil over some blue lines. The blue goes down first as I lightbox the thumbs to the larger size. I then go over these in pencil. You may also notice the red line in the last panel. I’ve been doing the second pass in red to separate the blue from the red easier in the computer. This also works if you’d like or need to take a third pass, usually with a black colored pencil or marker. Again, I can just key out the blue and the red in the computer leaving the cleanest dark lines.
Even after these two steps I’ll still enlarge the art up to its “original” size for the “final” art. I put these terms in quotes in because even after that stage the artwork goes through an extensive amount of digital processing, color art, lettering and production work to get the page ready for print.
Ballyhoo 