A few weeks ago I posted our first YouTube vid on the coloring process in high speed and now to wrap this up- here is step by step explanation.

If you missed the vdo, here it is.

Below picture is the scanned drawing I will have to clean it up. Adobe PhotoShop is my choice of tool here. This maybe a bit of a tech talk if you are not familiar with the program.

I used the “Level” and/or “Curve” tool to get rid of the left over pencil lines and make the line art more vivid. The dodge (set on Highlight) and Burn (Set on Shadow) also help with certain area where it needs special attention. In most case if my drawing is pretty clean on paper I will not have a lot of problem here. If I need to I will make final changes in the drawing before extracting out the line art into a transparency layer.

To extract the lines out. I use the “load channel can selection” button located in the CHANNELS tab (pic below)

This will cleanly select all the white area for me but I want the opposite so I am going to “Invert” it (The Invert tool is located under the “Select” pull down menu)

Once I got all the black line I “COPY” and “PASTE” it into a new layer. This layer will always stay on top. I then run a Hue/Saturation with all the way to the left brightness. This will make sure I get a vivid line art. Finally, I lock the transparency on this layer so I will not mess it up by accident. Lets call this layer “LINE ART”

I have my color swatch ready (bottom-left) from a different HANGBoY WW2 picture for consistency. Unlike the Inking process, I work the Coloring from the back. Although I do jump back and forward a bit but in the grand scheme I paint this form the back.

Now it is time for “blocking”. Here I began stacking my layers as I block out the diffident elements in the image. For example I have one layer for Hangboys, one of the rocks, one for the train etc. This will help me tweak or work each layer separately with breeze.

I then stack the color, tone and lighting layers on top of previous blocked layer. For example I have my Train layer all blocked out, I will have a group layer with all the Train related items on top. I rather be more organize here than dealing with the all the mess later so I name my layers well. (Karma is real)

I imagine the time for this image is around 1-2PM (Not a good time to work outside in Thailand). Light source is coming from the top-right. So I make sure the cast shadows are in the correct direction. Since it is a cartoon image I am pretty loose about lighting.

Once I am somewhat happy with the overall look I then paint the “LINE ART” layer (with Lock transparency on) This will bring the image together in harmony. I keep the rule simple; if it is a green object it gets a dark and slight more saturated green for line art.

As you can see in the image below I painted dark with the object is in the foreground and lighter in the back ground to create a sense of depth and atmosphere. cooperating this with the thick and thin lines this image is starting to show the depth. I also set the train in blue tint to push it event feather back.

Now lets set Hangboys in with the tone and shadow. Making them pop in 3D. Always fun :)

To create distance and even more depth into the image I lay in a layer of gradient fog and 100% erase it out in the foreground, 50% erase out in the mid-ground and have this layer is sitting on top of the Line art layer. This effect also adds the a little bit of drama. It feels like the train making chaos in the back with all the dust. I then set the opacity for the layer down according to my need.

So close to finishing line. Here I pick up all the little extra stuffs and make any adjustment I need.

Finally, the post production stage with color correction, Hue adjustment, adding noise, photo frame and scratches, making it looks old and Desaturated. Bringing you back in time.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoy creating it :D

Thank you for reading!

-Pao

Once the Sketch is ready,It is time to do some cleaning and inking. The goal is to have  clean/sharp lines for coloring. As I mention earlier in THE TOOLS session, I use Kneaded eraser, hand roll it on the sketch to clear out the lighter lines. This not only make it less confusing for me to draw it also picks up tiny particles from your pencil to prevent clogging the ball point pen (Very annoying).

using kneaded eraser roll to clean the drawing

At this point the sketch is much clearer to see and sometime appearing a bit “empty”.  I often re-draw some of the area to improve the line quality and add more little jokes here and there to fill it back in.

The rules are simple

• Draw what is in the foreground first then work all the way to the back. This prevent you from accidentally draw on top of things you don’t intend to.
• What is in the foreground has thinker line. Much like what they do in comic books or illustrations. This will create a sense of depth and make things pop.

Drawing the foreground first

Like I said, here is my change to add a few minor gags into the picture. I added a coconut and sweet stick rice with mango served on banana leaf (Thai) to tell a little bit more about where this event took place. Plus I added Lego bits into the construction site… after all it is an universe that not a lot of things make sense so why not. I worked my way through the entire drawing. If I make minor mistake I want to fix it with white out right away, I don’t want to come back and hunt for it later. I also moved the Japanese solider (Top-Left) in a tad so he won’t be staying behind the POW. He is the slave boss, his role is important here. It also look like there some kind of romance going on with the far left POW and the local…and the boss is there to prevent it in the middle.

Ready for scanner

Finally, I use dust-free eraser to clean the final drawing to get rid of any remaining pencil lines (The dust-free eraser is soft and will not pick up paper fiber too badly so I ended up with nice solid black lines). And here I am ready for painting. Just going to pop this drawing into a scanner!

NEXT : PAINTING

See ya there.

-Pao

Lets get to the drawing part. Here I will mainly talk about Story telling and Composition. Again This is simply just how I do things. I don’t claim it is the correct way to do it. I learn about this  from observing then I adapt and apply.

Before anything here is the rough sketch.

-STORY TELLING

As you can see. It is an image of the infamous British prisoners of war (POW) building the Burma-Siam (today Thailand) railway for the empire of Japan. There are books and movies you can check out to learn more about. The Classic The Bridge of the River Kwai is very much my inspiration for the image.

They say 1 picture = 1000 words and I suppose they are the viewers. They get to look at a picture and think as much as they like but for an illustrator… how can one fit a story (words) into one picture?

So I begin with keywords and brainstorm.  I want a person to look at this drawing and recognize that it is a historical event (given that they are already familiar with the history). The combination of keywords will be translated into items in the picture and that will send the message. Here is the list of items that I wanted to have in the picture.

• POW, Slavery, Train, Rail way, Bridge (Won’t fit so I drew a cliff at the end), Tropical forest, Janpanese Soldiers, Boss, Whip, Construction site, Rocks, Dirt, The local POW.
• There are mini gags I added after but these are my main words. Notice I left out the British flags on the chests and replace them with the “X” band-aids as my symbol for POWs

With all my main keywords I should have enough to tell a story but it will be plain and simple I have to make it fit in HANGBoY universe with twisted humor. I don’t pick side really. I am not trying to say who is the good guys or bad guys. Everybody fight for their perspectives. All countries have their deep dark secrets so I will leave the politic out. Anywho, according to the history the Japaneses were in a big rush to get to India and I think it is funny if the train arrives a bit too early. Of course it wouldn’t be cool to have the train crush only the POW’s. It is much better to have it seems like a mistake or an accident. This will be my “punch line”.

-COMPOSITION

Really I see it as part of story telling still. I suppose I could also call it “layout”. Here I will digest the drawing up and demonstrate how I telling the story.

Now I will talk about how I lay in all the items in my list into the image. Lets take a look at the images below.

If you do visual arts, I am sure you already know about  “1/3 rule”  or “rule of third” It is a very common compositional rule. Basically It is much more interest to have a focus on the red spots, or more “energy” if you are a yoga hippie. I pick the top-left point for this image because I want the viewer to spot the joke it in the background.

Once I have chosen a spot, I drew everything else around it. As you can see, The red lines are leading your eyes to where the focus point is. This is done in a one-point perspective manner. I have many lines suggested the viewer to look there. The Railway, The Bush, The Banana leafs, The hammer and the digging tools, The Japanese (far left) looking at the focus point, even his Katana is playing along with the perspective.

To re-enforce the effect I placed Hangboys in a roll from foreground to background. So your eyes subconsciously dancing from left <-> right.  This also help me to create a sense of depth. All these happening so fast in our brain we don’t usually think about it.

I am trying to tell this image to 2 parts.Foreground = Regular slavery day AND Background = An approaching accident.

Before I Sketch I always do a mini thumbnail tests to see if I like the composition. This save me a lot of time and paper :)

whew! That is it for now, thanks for your interest.

HAPPY SKETCHING!!!

-Pao

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