Pen & Ink on 11x15 Warm Press
Original Creation Date: May 20, 2014
Color Completion Date: Jun 3, 2014
No, there is no actual 'Alien Legion #60' being published by Epic Comics this month.
Heck, there's not even an Epic Comics anymore.
This is the final 'Harkilon Hell' cover design piece, in all its colored and cover mock-up glory. As fun of a pencil and ink exercise this was for me, I may have very well learned more about the digital coloring process on this one, just because there was so much layered detail. I originally planned on using some blurs to push the background away from the figure and action, but in the end I think the contrast of value and color was enough to define things in their proper environments.
A glimpse of the final piece without the branding and title treatments:
I'm happy with this, and certainly happy calling this a portfolio piece. I probably took more time than I would have liked to color the completed inked version, but I was doing it part-time at night, and without a Wacom tablet. Either way, this is certainly a display of what I can do and how I can do it.
A glimpse of its evolution from pencils to production color:
Finally, for the record, why #60? Well, in a perfect world, Alien Legion would have ran endlessly from its original series if not the second, and there would be just hundreds and hundreds of adventures featuring the famed footsloggers of the Tophan Galactic Union. I just chose 60 because it's a number that hits very close to home for me, both in sports and design. For many seasons I wore '60' as a hockey player (I've since shortened it back to '6') and I have freelanced as a branding and design consultant as 'Six Zero Branding.' So it just seemed like a logical choice.
Finally, if you haven't ever had the opportunity, take some time to check out Carl Potts' ALIEN LEGION. There's a new series breaking this summer from Titan Comics, but the originals are still out there and in recent Omnibus collections from Dark Horse. It's some great sci-fi comic book storytelling.
"TOUGH AS TUNGSTEN, AND LOYAL TO THE DIRTY END."