This week's issue of The Phoenix features the rip-roaring conclusion (and that's not just hyperbole: THINGS GET RIPPED AND THERE IS A LOT OF ROARING) of our recent Pirates of Pangaea mini-epic, Ghosts of Mathrak Chu! And so it seemed a good time to (a) remind you of this fact, so you can all run out and buy a copy, and (b) share a little peek at some of the art and how it was put together.
This story, of course, featured GHOSTS PIRATES riding on GHOST DINOSAURS, because I guess Dan had not quite sufficiently found ways to blow my mind with things that were awesome / painfully difficult to draw. Anyway, it took a bit of figuring out but I was really happy with how it turned out. "Spooky Dio De Los Muertos Dinos" was the general effect I was going for, and it involved adding a couple of extra stages in the inking and colouring. First I'd draw the regular dinosaur:
...and then do the skeleton as a separate layer. I've added a grey underlayer to these pics so that the skeleton was visible and, basically, so my writer and editor could get some idea what I was going for...
And then it was just adding the colours and a bit of glowy misty effects. Almost like making Mo-Bot Dinosaurs, really (and there's a whole other story waiting to happen...).
Here's a couple more pages!
Aaaand one more, this time with Sophie and Cornflower JUST PLAIN BEING AWESOME:
There were some pages in this thing that weren't splash pages, I swear.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who's said lovely things about our little return to Pangeaea, it's wonderful to hear people are enjoying it. I'm currently hard at work on our NEXT instalment, which is going to be another giant whopping epic adventure, full of - guess what - insanely awesome and exciting new ideas from Dan that are horribly hard to draw. COMING SOON TO THE PHOENIX!
ALRIGHT, SOON...ISH!
