ALIEN LEGION #60 COVER, aka HARKILON HELL FINISHED

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."

WHO YA GONNA CALL?

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored
Original Completion Date: June 8, 2014

Not much to say about this little character study, really. I tried to limit the time involved for color, just to test the overall process duration.

30 years since this movie. Wow.

WOLVERAMPAGE, finished

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored
Final Color Completion Date: May 27, 2014

The Wolverine piece in color. Did some different things in the coloring process that I think worked out fairly well. I'm still on the fence with the lens flares, but decided to leave them in there, at least for now.

GREETINGS FROM THANAGAR

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored

Original Creation Date: Apr 26 2014

This thing, very small, was part of the inking experiments last week. It borders on cartoonish, mostly because I was trying to limit myself to a certain pen size.  Not the best ink job, but I enjoyed the coloring.

Also, Hawkman is really weird. I never truly appreciated how unique his color scheme is, however.

ROCKET, COLOR

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Colored Digitally
Original Creation Date: Apr 15 2014, Final Completion Date: Apr 21 2014

The Rocket Raccoon piece, in all its digitally-painted glory. Ever since I drew this one, deep down I knew I just
wouldn't be satisfied until I took it to full color. Over the past few days I've been grabbing snippets of spare time
to attack this, one multiply-blended layer at a time. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the results, but after
playing the colorist on the job, I can certainly admit there's a few things I would have gone back and
changed during the inking phase.

But, I guess as a wise artist once said, each finished painting is its own lesson.

A production screenshot, somewhere around the completion of the figure.