Monday, July 29, 2013

SAMURAI JACK: PAGE ONE PROCESS

So how do you crank out a monthly Samurai Jack* book by adhering to the series stunning, line-less visual style?

You don't.

Well, you can, but I didn't. I really hope fans of the groundbreaking series that I worked on will appreciate what I do bring to the book I'm doing with writer Jim Zub, despite my opting for the utilization of holding lines. Yes, there are lots of traditional and digital trickery in our arsenal and at our disposal as artists, but instead of simply mimicking the series aesthetic qualities that would no doubt pale in comparison to the original and thus fail any fans of the animated series and readers expecting a seamless translation--I decided to dig deep into early inspirations for Jack and other visual, tonal reference elements we utilized doing the television show and go with a far more boiled down, traditional method. So traditional, that it might look like it predates modern comic book series and hopefully harken closer to the golden age books,  MAD Magazine and Harvey Kurtzman in particular.

So, how do you handle translating a show with no holding lines? Well, in my case, you add tons and tons of lines.

 Above: initial thumbnail roughs sent to Jim and Carlos (editor)

 I tightened a bit more before cleaning up.

 Final inks


Colored PG 1. (Not final art) But close enough to post!


*Make sure you PRE-ORDER Samurai Jack #1 from IDW Publishing NOW!!! The book will be out in October.

5 comments:

Korak said...

This! ^^^^

And it's really awesome to see the progression, too.

Kat Ketchum said...

This looks AMAZING!! Can't wait to see more!

Unknown said...

Looks great to me! I'm so excited! And yes I agree with what you said about trying to copy the original, keep going with how YOU want to tell your story. I always enjoyed the variety of characters in Samurai Jack and this will only bring more variety to it's already vast catalog of characters and styles.

Unknown said...

Looks great to me! I'm so excited! And yes I agree with what you said about trying to copy the original, keep going with how YOU want to tell your story. I always enjoyed the variety of characters in Samurai Jack and this will only bring more variety to it's already vast catalog of characters and styles.

codydang said...

Thanks for showing us the art process. The sense of style really comes through and makes sense for the comics. Can't wait to see and read more about it!