Hello Steemit! Rolling into my last week at the book shop before returning to comics full time, I spent a few hours last night putting together a new poster for PLOTSICK, which I will be plastering all of Minneapolis and Saint Paul leading up to its release at FallCon 2018. The final physical print will have tear off tabs at the bottom with a website containing a five page preview.
For this poster I wanted to to go heavy on design while still trying to retain a pulp feel. The concept came as while having a cigarette and glazing aimlessly out the window. So to start, I needed to establish the face, which would contain the meat of the content.
Then I sketched out the main character, in a traditional noir pose; gun raised, brick wall, femme fatale in the background.
Following that, I tightened up the sketch.
I then went in and started rendering, only adding highlights from the implied light source around the corner.
It became apparent at this point to letting the field of color that made up the face be the “black ink” of the piece was a better approach, as actual black linework would have been too distracting from the overall composition. So I ditched the linework layers, added a few more strands of hair to the horde, and dropped in the title and copy.
Hope you enjoyed the process, it was a pretty straight forward piece. I’m still working on adjusting to the idea that a piece doesn’t need to be super complicated and overly detailed if it gets the point across. As long as it conveys the information and mood needed, it doesn’t matter how long or difficult it was to create. As always, would love to hear any feedback y’all might have!