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The Making of Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs - by: Joel Gomez
(1317 total words in this text)
(5934 reads) 
Lost Boys - Reign of Frogs
| Hey, Guys- Joel Gomez -Wildstorm staff artist ,
and Penciller of LostBoys:Reign of Frogs, here to give you a special step-by-step
sneakpeak of the process used to bring the Frog Bros. and their adventures
to life.
Today ,we'll be focusing on the layout to completion
of pages from issue three of LostBoys:Reign of Frogs which hit shelves July
10th..so check it out!
I tend to read a script several times to let the story
tell me the pacing and the layout based on how descriptive the writer may
be about a scene, or how dramatic and impactful a sequence of events reads.
There are usually "indicators" which help visualize and compose the page
and pacing.
Let's start with page fourteen. The layout was a fairly
simple action/reaction shot with the camera kinda flipping 180 to see what
our heroes see...
When doing layouts I tend to work on 8 1/2x11 with
two layouts per page. This size allows me to rough out the placement of
things and how well they read without worrying too much about the finesse.
I was able to focus on the impact needed to create the morbid/ dramatic
shot of our heroes having walked into den of vampiresses feasting...
On page nineteen we see Sam Emerson (character made
famous by Corey Haim) fighting for his life against hot vampiresses! For
this page, I wanted to vary the figure sizes enough to create interest in
the action. I also tried to create a sense of quickness with panels 3-5
by using silhouettes to move the reader quickly through those panels...
You'll notice that there are more vampiresses in the
inks for panel one on page 19 as there were in the pencils stage. Being
a staff artist at Wildstorm, I get to see the pages come back from the inker
before they go to print. I would take this time to enhance the art with
effects and/or extra details that I felt helped tell the story.
I consider myself fortunate to be able and go back
and 'touchup' the art as I have for LostBoys. In this case I was able to
add more vampires to panel one. Originally, as it stood in the pencils,
there wasn't much of a threat to Sam Emerson. I was much happier with the
final image...
Page twenty starts with the pay-off set up by the
peril we put Sam Emerson in on page nineteen. The last panel of nineteen
shows a close-up of Sam grabbing an arrow quiver, where panel one on page
twenty shows the end result. I had the idea of breaking the panel border
for a more dramatic effect...
Once again, having the opportunity to 'enhance' the
artwork, I felt the splatter effects heightened the drama and violence of
the scene...
Page twent-one has Edgar Frog (character made famous
by Corey Feldman) skulking through a vampire den to find his brother Alan
Frog in trouble. Not much changed from layout to pencils. I made sure to
establish the idea of Edgar clearing out the last stragglers of his vampire
extermination, when he comes across his brother in peril...
You'll notice a bottle in panel five of the inked
version of page twenty-one that wasn't there in the pencils or layouts.
This was something that was story-driven and a very necessary set-up for
a reveal on page twenty-two. Once again, having the fortune of being able
to enhance the artwork before it sees print allows me to further effect
the page to help tell the story, and once again splatter effects help set
the tone and add drama to the action...
Thanks for joining me in this special behind-the-scenes
look at the process of putting together LostBoys:Reign of Frogs. Don't forget
to pickup issue three out now at your local comicbook retailer. Make sure
to drop by Myspace (www.myspace.com/joelgomezartist)
and say hello as well as check out some of my other work.
- JOEL
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