MAKING OF KINGMAKER'S DOUBLE SPREAD!

Helloooooo.... been a while, so I thought I'd kick off with a little something from Kingmaker which debuted in 2000AD this year! Basically, Kingmaker is a dream project for me. Here's the elevator pitch: It's an alien invasion of Middle Earth. BOOM.

It's gloriously written by my buddy and Grand Wizard Ian Edginton, drawn and coloured by myself, the sexy elfen stable boy, and lettered by the lovely dragon tamer Ellie Deville. 

This is actually the first series that The Mighty Tharg has allowed me to colour myself, so it was a massive undertaking for me but I bloody loved it! Here's how I made the first episode's double page spread....

First up, my rough layout. It's actually more detailed than my usual roughs, probably due to the fact that I was overthinking this opening episode. For this scene I think I had to design the look of around five different armies fighting around the main armoured bad guy, The Wraith King.

Next up, pencils. I made sure to draw this on a single sheet of A2 bristol board instead of taping two A3 sheets together. More of a bugger to scan, but nicer to have as a single sheet in the end. 

 Here's a photo of when I was halfway through the inking process...

 Finished inks....

 After a looooong time, I finally get to colouring, which is made easier now that I have a Ugee 19 inch drawing monitor. Soooooo much easier from the days where I used to colour my covers using just a mouse...... *shudder*..... Here's my flat colours.

 And here we come to the final image, with all my shading, fading, blood splatter, highlights, etc..... Pretty proud with how it turned out in the end, and I think it set a good bench mark for the rest of the series. Hope you like it, and there'll be more Kingmaker process posts coming up!

See ya!