Howdy!

I have got a very special update for you today. George has offered to take us "behind the scenes" of how he creates Huckleberry's art! He's walking us step-by-step through the process he used to create our Consumptive Sanitarium two-page spread. But first, let's reveal the playing card you voted for. 

Much obliged,
- Steven

As a young infant, Bartholomew was laid low by disease. The doc said it was rabies and that Bart's father should start diggin' the grave. The disease didn't kill Bart but instead warped his features and stunted his growth. His short stature leads many to call him "Bat Boy", but the last man to do it in ear-shot now lies under Boot Hill. And Bartholomew has excellent hearing.

Who do you want to be revealed next? Poll attached below!

Let’s look at the process that went into the Consumptive Sanitarium illustration.  In the lore of Huckleberry, the Consumptives are living dead who have died from tuberculosis and come back somewhat….agitated.  Their swollen bellies are filled with acidic blood and bile, and they use it to attack your Maverick!  For this illustration, Steven asked me for an homage to zombie movies, set in an 1800s consumption sanitarium, with our Devil Maverick keeping the horde at bay with his pistols.  He asked for the Devil to be in some sort of elevated position too.

Typically, when it’s something I’m not super familiar with, the first thing I do is start collecting reference material.  Here it helped me to understand what an 1800s sanitarium looked like, how it was laid out and what kinds of details should be included.  I also wanted to find out what nurses at the time would have worn, because a nurse in 1880 doesn’t wear the same uniform as a nurse in 1960, or 2025.

Since this was a pretty crowded scene, I started with a quick and messy thumbnail sketch to establish the general layout and start deciding where I want to spot some black for visual impact and balance.  I wanted to make sure we see that the Devil is isolated and totally surrounded to create some tension and excitement.  At this point I’m not worried about drawing anything nicely.  It’s a very rough framework that helps get what I envision in my head onto the page.  It’s like one step up from stick figures.

This image will appear in the Huckleberry book as a double page spread, so I had to set it up with that format in mind.  The red box shows where the image will eventually be cropped for the book, and the red line down the center shows where the book will fold.  When composing a double page spread like this you want to make sure not to put anything important, like a character’s face, on that fold line.  The light gray box in the top right shows the general area where text will be overlayed on top of the image, so nothing important should go in that area either. All of these factors help to determine how I can compose the picture, and how I can’t.

Steven liked my initial scribble, so I moved forward drawing a cleaner rough.  At this point, it’s time to do the real work, establish the perspective, and draw solid anatomy and interesting poses and forms.  I’m a big believer in getting all that stuff figured out in the rough sketch stage because it makes the rest of the job easier.  I don’t want to get to the stage of doing the final line art and still be working things out.  So I usually spend the most time on this stage of the process.  

I work digitally, and the program I use (Paint Tool SAI) has some really handy perspective tools that let you set your horizon line and vanishing points, allowing you to draw naturally while keeping things in the correct perspective.  They’re great for scenes like this. 

I worked on the cleaner sketch in two phases, since it was a crowded scene. First I locked down the angle and perspective of the room and then sketched in the Devil.  He’s a flashy, dramatic gunslinger so he’s pulling off some behind-the-back trick shots to take out his adversaries stylishly.  He’s got a bit of Dante from Devil May Cry in him.

Next I tackled the Consumptive crowd. One special request Steven had was to include a bunch of cameos of real life players, depicted as Consumptives.  So I had some fun zombifying them for inclusion in the scene.*

I wanted to make sure to vary the poses, expressions and details to keep the crowd interesting, and leave room for some anchoring black shadows.  They help to balance the black vs white, draw the eye through the scene, and also simplify any areas where you don’t want an overwhelming amount of detail.  In the end I have a sketch that’s really well figured out and could almost pass for finished line work.

But it’s not the finished line work.  I now drop the opacity of my sketch layer way down, usually to around 20%, and start drawing the clean, finished lines on new layers on top of the sketch.  I’m not going to say I totally turn my brain off for this part, but it’s always the phase where I can put on a podcast or music and partially zone out, just enjoying drawing over the sketch because I know nothing major needs to be changed at this point.

Finally comes the color stage, and working digitally, this is typically the stage where I end up with dozens of layers so I can keep everything separate for easy manipulation.  For example, I kept all the Consumptive’s clothing and the bed sheets on the same layer since they’re basically the same dirty white color.  The Devil’s red skin is its own layer.  All the shadows get their own layer too so I can control the lighting and change it on the fly if need be.  Work smarter, not harder! I’ll sometimes do a color thumbnail, but usually not.  Even if I don’t, I typically have an idea of what I want to do with the color before I start on it.

And that’s the final result!  I hope you enjoyed this look at the process and if anyone has questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.  Thanks for coming to my Huck Talk!

-George