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Tears of the Dragon is on a short a short hiatus, but rest assured, Koko, Miguel and I are hard at at work on the next Volume. (What? You want proof? Okay, fine.)
Covers sell books. There’s no question about it. Though you all know the story is serialized on this site for free, I also sell TOTD digitally through Graphic.ly, DriveThruComics, and MyDigitalComics in single issue form for readers who want to own a copy to read anywhere. So, during this hiatus, I made sure to ask Koko for a few cover images first, before he digs into the next batch of story pages.
So, let’s chart the cover creation process of what will be the cover to TOTD Book 4.
My initial cover notes to Koko
“Koko, let’s try to do a pin-up capturing an important moment from this next chapter. We’re in the King’s bedchamber. The ASSASSIN is in the foreground, but has been knocked down on the ground, and is looking up to the pointed sword of Yordania, age 19. It’s night-time, the assassin snuck in to try to kill the king, but was interrupted when Yordania came in and knocked him down. The Assassin has his signature cruel dagger in one of his hands (something that looks like this, perhaps.) Yordania has a look of rage on her face, as if she’s going to run him through. She’s also in her night clothing, not a warrior outfit. Behind her, in the background, is the old King, looking on, weary. Again, we’re in the king’s bedchamber at night, there might be some candle-light and such, and maybe a piece of broken furniture or two, to suggest there was a struggle before the Princess got the upper hand.”
Koko’s 1st Layout
As he often does, Koko knocked this one out of the park on the first try. In fact, I only had one note for him:
“Remember, this next chapter, we’re jumping into the future a bit. The years are tough on King Torvuld, his hair goes white, he’s older, and wearier. And his beard has grown long and white, like you had him drawn in image attached. Otherwise, looks good!”
Koko’s Loose Pencils
Now, here’s where Koko had an interesting proposition for me. See, he’s trying to expand his artistic repertoire, as it were, and is interested in doing some fully painted Tears of the Dragon art. Cool, right? The only thing is, I have little to no experience with fully painted covers, and am not sure if I’ll be able to use them for the comic itself. (But boy am I looking forward to seeing how it comes out.)
So, as a compromise, I asked Koko to give this cover a shot, but told him I also wanted to do a traditionally inked and digitally covered version as well. But, I had the idea that yours truly would do the inking on this piece, leaving Koko to do the paints. (Mostly, I was just excited to ink over Mr. Amboro.)
Koko, great guy that he is, decided to do me a solid, and do more finished pencils for me to ink.
Koko’s Finished Pencils
Damn, that boy’s good!
Tyler’s Inks
With Koko’s delicious pencils in my inbox, I simply brought them into Photoshop, through a blue line filter over them, and printed them out on my wide format printer. On a personal note, I moved residences last week. Inking this was my first official piece in my new studio!
Miguel’s Colors
Finally, I sent the inked page to super color artist Miguel Marques to perform his magic. My notes for Miguel were pretty sparse:
- In this picture, the assassin is wearing a grey outfit, not white in the other one.
- That’s Yordania in the background, Red hair.
- The King in the background has grayish white hair now.
- It’s night time, so this cover should be appropriately dark.
Now, what floored me was the turn-around time. I sent this to Miguel Sunday morning, and he had it back to me Sunday night. Impressive. However, what I didn’t mention was that this was the SECOND of two covers Miguel finished in one day. (I’ll share the other one with you guys another day.) The guy is fast, and good. A great combination in a color artist.
So there you have it! A cover from concept to finish, and for the first time ever, I got to ink over Koko!
I’m especially stoked to see how Koko’s painted version comes out.
Hope you dug this look into the creative process!
