I’ve been kicking this idea around in my head for some time now, so with the Half-Blood Price out in theaters as of 12:01am yesterday, I thought I’d be a good time to finally draw it. Actually, if already you’ve seen the movie, this should look pretty familiar. If you haven’t, reading the comic should sum up about half the movie’s plot. No, seriously.
This was the first time I’ve drawn Base14 characters on a Wacom Cintiq. I think the sketching phase went really well, as I expanded on what design elements were successful in last week’s comic. The third panel has especially nice depth and forms. But something went wrong in the clean-up phase. The line quality isn’t effective and the color palette isn’t very cohesive. I’m working with source art that’s now 16 times as big as the final web comic (for eventual book printing), so I haven’t fully adjusted to the best brush sizes to use when inking. I’ll work on that.
I always wondered what the average time it took you to create these comics Tyler?
The first season and early second season comics took an average of about three hours each. The last two took significantly longer, now that I’m concentrating much more heavily on three-dimensional form and line quality. They’ve been averaging around five to six hours. You can see why I have a hard time getting one done each week!