Who Will Save Me...

Leaving the studios last week I was fairly certain of where to direct my focus. Speaking with Chiu, it was obvious some of my images were stronger than the others, what with the use of reference images, better composition, the use of the golden ratio, etc etc etc. Building off this, I collected a lot of reference photos, done some drawings from life and also from the photos to get an idea of the forms. I then thumbnailed (an idea from one to one tutorial) many different compositions for each page. Many of my designs remained the same, or very similar, but the thumbnails did help me to focus on the aspects of each superhero, and better place them in an apt environment.

taking these ideas, i knocked them around for a bit in my RVJ, getting some good compositions and inks sorted. Once they were inked (first image). I tackled the issues of colours.

This is the cover, speaking with peers, the best aspects of it are the subtle colours on the black eye and the tie, combined with the dripping effect bordering the central character. It has also been pointed out that the cover is quite interesting, and makes people want to look through the 'zine simply to see what the cover is referring to, so in that respect it's quite effective.

Taking heart from how good the cover looked, i applied the same approach to the internal pages.

Most of today was spent running around trying different binding methods, trial and erroring with different printers, and so forth. Unfortunately, short of discreetly ramming the inkjets full of cartridge paper, i can't get my cover printed on thicker paper stock as i was hoping, so spent some time trying different approaches and methods, and analysing it in my RVJ. Thankfully this has payed off, and now I know the sizes to print to get a good looking cover which is slightly bigger than the internal pages, and found the best binding method (long armed stapler) to get the most accurate and precise spines.