Walt has always been kind and supportive of my work and Mouse Guard, so I was thrilled when he agreed to do a cover. It will be released at SDCC as an exclusive.
Walt was gracious enough to share steps of his process below and I also wanted to show my colors on his work as well.
Pencils:
My editor shared this drawing Walt provided with the note that Walt would like for his drawing of the Black Axe in this cover to be the axe going through the logo instead of the standard one on the other covers. I agreed to do some editing work on the logo image and he could proceed.
Inks:
I don't know what Walt inks with these days, but I know he's been a fan of technical or drafting pens in the past. I was provided with this scan to work with for the colors and logo alignment.
Flats:
In this step I was just about placing flat color in the color areas (fur, cloak, helm, grass, tree, etc) as well as establishing color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) on the sunburst and rays, and where they overlapped Bardrick's ear.
Color:
Most of the cover was rendered out with a combination of a soft paintbrush and the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop. I've come to find out after now coloring Dawn of the Black Axe work for Gabriel Rodriguez, Kevin Eastman, and Walter Simonson, that I have to approach the tools and color dynamics differently with each. I found that less of my normal rendering was needed on Walt's inks and just more soft color transitions and then slight hue/saturation/value changes on any little area formed by his ink lines (almost like stained glass panels)
Final Cover:
Here again is the final cover with that logo modified so Walt's Black Axe weaves through like the original.
This version will be available at SDCC exclusively (though if there are extras at the end of the event, I may have some for my online store)
This version will be available at SDCC exclusively (though if there are extras at the end of the event, I may have some for my online store)
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