How I paint comics - The Techno-Templar #28

A detailled progress report of a post machine-domination-universe graphic novel page. Crafted with watercolour and ballpoint pen.

In the previous page our main protagonists Devlok and Phtae just discovered that their "real" bodies are on their way to termination, and now on top, the Templars who where on their tracks seem to have localised their very digital copies and are up for a virtual interception of their target ...

Just to remember: Devlok, the Techno-Templar is a 100% auto-produced project. I have created the scenario, penciled, painted, scanned, did the tought bubbles, the onomatopeas. etc... Two books were out, financed through various crowdfunding campaigns.

We are back in that scene in the local Network of Node 32. Which means a derogation of my usual 100% paint work. For this one too, it's analog painted characters and digital background.

Starting with the ultra-rough, private, story-board. You can see that for the two last panels it turned out pretty much different.

And now, on a tensed watercoloour paper Arches 300g, the pencil.

Here's a shot from the inking process. Done with thinliners.

And now coloured.

In this pages, the challenges were that grid on the ground of the "arena", since I am not using 3D softwares, it was a lot of trials until I got it placed how it had to.

Also, it's a bit difficult to explain but the way to two last panels are integrated in the page itself gave me a hard time. I wanted the "tentacles" to come out of the boxes. But by opening completely the panel, it gets timeless, which wasn't really desired for a rather action scene. So the 7th panel has the outline on its left (which indicates when the action starts) and then opens on its right. There was a whole thing with their sizes to have them touching the edge of the paper once printed. You can see that there was outlines on the original board but at thend I erased them. Again, it was a lot of trials to get where I wanted.

So here one can see the stroke of border I do on PS.