Hello Monster Lovers...
I'm Shawn Surface and I'm the artist on the new kid on the block; "Billy
the Monster Hunter", created and written by newcomer Ramsey Rusef.
The project was presented to me by my friend and working buddy Mitch Hyman
("BUBBA; the Redneck Werewolf") who thought my meager talents
were best suited for this new series.
The story was well constructed and laid out like a screenplay so it was
pretty easy to follow and transfer it to the page art.
I also designed and colored the cover art and title for the book (Issue
#1), I colored and shaded the piece using Photoshop CS2, some people prefer
Paintshop Pro to do there coloring but I am more comfortable with the
Photoshop program and I am still learning the tricks.
I am more of a classic comic style artist used to having my work inked
or inking the work myself, but for "Billy" as was the case with
my previous works on Mitch Hyman's "Bubba" the inking process
was unnecessary, instead we went from pencils straight to colors.
By habit I am a pretty tight penciller and I rarely do thumbnails, I usually
work right on the art paper itself at it's usual dimensions (11 X 17),
I use 2 ply Bristol stock (vellum or smooth) for my illustrative work,
in my opinion Strathmore papers are the best to work with. You'll notice
that the pencils here have very little or no shading, this is not the
norm unless you plan on inking and coloring your own work.
In this case the colorist (Vince Vinson) and I had a good rapport and
with some brief instruction on the pages he knew what I wanted as the
final look.
When doing pencils to colors for a book it's important that you have a
clean tightly pencilled original in which to scan, this will prevent any
anomalies or imperfections from appearing once it is in the computer.
Once in the Photoshop program its time to clean up any residual marks
on the art, stray pencils lines, ghosts, any imperfections that may appear.
From there you go to the adjustments button in your toolbar and adjust
the contrast to the point where it darkens the linework considerably,
do this too considerably and you may lose detail in your work...so be
careful.
This darkens and prepares the image for the colorist who will have an
easier time in applying the finished colors and shading to the original
scan.
Once the colors and shading are applied to the page all you need do is
insert the corresponding dialogue from the original script and voila!
you have a page ready to go to the printer, now all you have to do is
finish the rest of the book :)
-"Happy Haunting"
For more on Shawn's art check out http://www.surfaceartstudios.com/
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