The Making of the Living Corpse by Ken Haeser

The Cover.

Hey guys, just wanted to let you get a glimpse into how we do the Living Corpse. In this case, we’re gonna use the cover of the trade as an example.

We start out doing the roughs. Sometimes we get it right away and other times it takes a few different roughs to find the right shot. Since this was going to be for the trade we wanted it to be the best we could. I did several different kinds of shots--- a creepy silhouette to an action shot of the Corpse. Since the book is all about him we settled on a moody straight shot of the character to show off what he looks like.

The creepy and mysterious silhouette was very striking but from experience from people checking out the book, we know that people are drawn to the way the character looks so we wanted to show that off. We block out the text where all the copy will be and then we’re off to…

The pencils.

Me and Buz trade off penciling and inking duties on each other’s artwork for all of the Living Corpse stuff. In this particular piece the penciling was done by Buz. He took it from a scribble on a paper to a kick ass Corpse picture.

We always give each other pretty rough pencils to work from; trusting in each other’s inking to solidify the piece. After the pencils are done it’s off to me for the…

Inking.

I clean the whole thing up and spot the heavy blacks to make it pop out. I add details here and there. After it’s inked I take it and scan it in to Photoshop and clean it up further and fill in the large sections of black that I didn’t feel like wasting ink on.

The artwork doesn’t have to go too far because I do all of our…

Coloring.

First I throw in all the flats on the characters.

It’s quick work since all of the backgrounds and stuff that I color are done with real…

Textures.

Real sky, grass, a shovel and concrete textures on the tombstones are used to get the realistic backgrounds with the cartoony coloring on the figures with very simple…

Shading.

I go in and block out the shadows and highlights so it looks animated. I never use airbrushing on the figures--- only the backgrounds.

I also threw some blood spatter onto the shovel after the coloring is all done. Buz suggested we stick a moon in the background and the colors are done! Then it’s on to the final part…

The text copy.

I throw in TLC logo, and write in all the text that we’ll need to hopefully get everyone in the world to pick up a copy and make us millionaires.

With the cover complete I send it off to Zenescope and then I…

Sleep.

Covers make me tired.

And that’s basically how we do most of our stuff. For more on The Living Corpse you can order the trade in this month’s Previews.

Thanks!

-Ken Haeser

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