Comic art class cover work

As part of the "Intro to Comic Art" class I'm taking with comicsexperience.com we were asked by our esteemed instructor, Robert Atkins, to pencil three pages of a comic book script.  As someone who has spent quite a bit of time searching in the past, I know how difficult it can be to find scripts online.  So fortunately Robert provided several full scripts - and actually published, major publisher scripts at that - for us to read and chose from.  After some careful deliberation I decided to go with the first three pages of Heroes for Hire (the most recent series) number 5.  I knew that Brad Walker had been the regular penciler on this book but I had no idea that Robert himself had actually penciled this along with issue 4.

We've done some sketches of covers and page thumbnails but, as of this writing, I'm still awaiting feedback for my cover breakdowns and page thumbnails.  The next step would be to complete some page breakdowns and then go on to the finished pencils.

Before I get to showing off any of the page sketches I figure I'll go ahead and post some of the cover stuff I'm working on.  This is all pre-final cover work but I'll post that as soon as I'm finished.

I'm not sure how noticeable it is here but the last image here is an homage of the old National Lampoon magazine cover.  Not something I really considered as an alternative for this assignment but it popped into my head and I couldn't help but use.  Maybe it could be an alternate cover or something like that.

Anyway, Robert liked that there was some variety here but thought that either of the first two images would be a good choice and left it up to me at that point.

The next step was a "breakdown" of the chosen image.  A breakdown is a drawing that while not being as large or detailed as the final pencils allows for more opportunities to work out placement and details of the characters and setting.  After a little bit of consideration I decided to work on the second image (Punisher standing over Misty Knight's seemingly lifeless body).

The lighting on an image like this is very important and working a larger scale gave me more opportunities to define things like light sources than I had with the thumbnail sketch.  I kind of like the ambiguous "doorway" light that's shining here and even think Punisher's shadow turned out fairly well but I found it a challenge to draw a shadow for someone lying on the ground that is consistent with the rest of the scene.  First, off I drew Misty's hair too big so I may not have to worry about so much hair providing a shadow.  But the shadows are very important in a scene like this and I don't want to feel like I'm short changing anything either.

Since I had a hard time choosing between the two I did decide to give this cover a shot as well.  Who knows, perhaps once I was working on a bigger scale and was able to work out some of the details this one would strike me better than the other one.  Couldn't hurt since I would be able to get professional feedback for both of them.

This one has a lot more "story" elements than the other more "noir" cover I did.  I had to do some research on how a puppeteer holds the control (or whatever word they have for it) of a marionette puppet.  I think I'm getting close but I would definitely need to do more research before drawing this an actual cover.  The biggest problem I see, however, is that the size of Puppet Master's hands are too dissimilar.  They should really be about the same distance from the camera and be very close to the same size but it's pretty clear that is right hand is larger than his left.  Not a big deal since I did notice it before the final pencils but it would have been good to catch something like this before I even got going on this "breakdown".

The Punisher figure is really stiff but that's intentional.  He's supposed to be not much more of a puppet or toy in this instance.  But I still wonder if I'm not implying enough of a threat with him so stiff and toy-like.  Misty's suppose to look like she is struggling for control from Puppet Master but I don't believe it is properly conveyed here.  She probably needs some more emotion in her figure and it might be good to make a bit larger as well.  She is pretty much the star after all.

The puppets in the background were a late addition.  It's difficult to tell here but they are suppose to represent the other heroes who had appeared in the series to this point.  From what I can tell this is the end to the first arc of the series so I thought it would be good to get them represented somehow.  Of course the logo is going to really cover them but, oh well.

So there's that.  Once I get the final cover pencils finished I'll post them.  I don't think I'll post any of the page work until the cover stuff is all completely posted but who knows.  Keep your eyes posted!