How I paint comics: The Techno-Templar #39

Back to the creation process of my 100% watercolour, sci-fi, cyberpunkoid and surreal graphic-novel. Here's page 39!

In the previous page, our main protagonnist, Devlok, encounters close contact with erratic cyber-zombies. At high speed and with several devastating blasts, they're vaporized while he's already far.

You can read it, here.

Details.

If you don't know, "Devlok, the Techno-Templar" is a 54 pages illustrated story I wrote and produced between 2016 and 2017. Two books were self-published with crowdfundings and in total, counting the French and English editions, around 1500 copies have been printed.

So, let's see the process!

My great story boards, always very refined as you can see.

I've changed a lot, the jump scene just deserved a bigger panel! But I kept the main idea of the sequence, the jump between the open tunnels looking like mouths, the landing and opening (and closing) of the next door. The text, that is very short, was subject to (very minor) changes too.

Pencil. One vanishing point perspective for the main guidelines to make the tunnel openings, the pillar structures and for the rest I had much space to let my mind go for details.

Now starting to ink.

This is how it looks after having erased the pencil, ...
... before I risk everything by painting directly over it.
In fact, I am still struggling to find a company in Germany that is ok to print (a copy of) the inked illustration on a correct 300gr. watercolour paper but on a bigger format, like a bit less than a meter wide. It would allow me to save the inked work and make possible to re-do a page in case of total mess. I'd alo try to replace the ink over the paint (in PS), something I'm very curious about. But it is just so weird that I can't find that easily, I am shocked!

Let's go for the colour! In this panel, it was really important to keep a tone, as the complex had to look huge and doomed. I end up with that greenishes that could be explained by the presence of (whatever) nano-lichens.