Magic’s In The Air

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.