PAGE 5 COLOR

Sabrina just sent along a colorized page 5:



And, she's gonna go back and "upgrade" page 2. Can't wait to see what she does.

ACTION LAYOUTS

Here's a few more pages from Evelyn's introduction scene (pages 11-15).

Pages 13 & 14:



Page 15:

PAGE 11 CHANGES

In case you're wondering about how pages layout progress, here's an example of how we do it:

This is the page layout Bax sent me (based on the script below).



This is a condensed version of the page script (I took out the dialogue and some stuff that won't make much sense at this point).

PAGE 11, panel 1

Set amongst a nearly endless sea, is a futuristic maximum security facility. It looks like one of those off-shore oil drilling stations. The last part of dialogue from the previous scene carries over into the first panel of this page.

The caption is in the bottom corner of the panel.

PAGE 11, panel 2

Orson is standing in lobby/security office, The place is swamped with monitors and has a very military/prison look. There's a few ARMED GUARDS nearby. Orson is standing with the security captain, who does all that talking. They’re a large wall of monitors and security equipment by them (it comes into play later in the scene).

PAGE 11, panel 3

This is small panel that shows the guard's hand pointing at a layout of the building. It’s reminiscent of the big blueprint of the Enterprise that Geordi always referred to in ST:TNG. There's an underwater elevator that goes all the way to a complex on the ocean floor.

PAGE 11, panel 4

A big, wide panel showing Orson and the guard talking near the bank of monitors. Evelyn's "mug shot" is displayed on a large screen.

PAGE 11, panel 5

Evelyn is coming up in the elevator. She's wearing a wide electronic collar, thick electronic handcuffs (and there's a metal bolt on her metal arm - which is very exposed in her prison t-shirt and pants.)

PAGE 11, panel 6

Small close-up of Orson talking

PAGE 11, panel 7

Reverse shot close-up of guard, as he continues to insult everything that is dear to Orson.


And, here's the page that I sent back, after running it through photoshop - making notes and stuff:



Some excerpts from the notes I sent her:

Panel 1 - Im thinking that the prison building should be off to the right more, so we can make more room for captions...and it seems more cinematic...This panel is just a short introductory panel. It can be much thinner, since the rest of the page is way more important anyway. In the layouts, i kinda shorteneted it up (but acciendtly cropped out the space car). It can be even thinner than that.

panel 5 - this is the one that bugs me the most, but it's all my fault. I think that we shouldn't reveal Evelyn until the next page. The security camera shot takes the punch out her introduction. What do you think about making panel 4 bigger and I'll just pour the dialogue into that panel. This'll effect the layout of the page, so think it over and get back to me.

panels 6/7 - I made these horizontal. I thought they looked too weird back-to-back, and looking in opposite directions. If you kept panel 5 where it's at, but made it wider, then these panels should be fine if they were scrunched over a little bit to make room.

Here's the new layout she sent me today:



Bax wrote:

There goes the version wth the changes. I think the last two panels on page 11 work so much better this way! You have a great eye for layouts. I agree about avoiding centralizing things too. I´m glad you´re there to remind me. =)

Page 12's revisions were much less dramatic, but I might post them soon if I don't have any logos or colored pages later this week.

PAGE 4 COLOR

Sabrina sent me page 4 today, with colors:



Here's a link back to the uncolored version.

MORE PAGE LAYOUTS

Bax is working on one of the character introduction/action scenes in issue one, and she sent along the following layouts:

Page 11:



Page 12:



There pages are gonna have some slight changes after i send back my script-to-page feedback. Then, Bax'll switch-up a few things, and then shoot them back. And, then the pages get actually drawn.

When you see these two pages again, I'll post our exchange about what kind of changes we're making on them. And, I'll probably put up a script page for comparison.

LOGO PROGRESS

More progress on the logo design!

Lithium Pro wrote:

"Attached is the next revolution in the process. What I have done here
is expand upon your thoughts, and switched the bend in the film to a more
right to left wave, and added a bit more arch to the film strip. I also
incorporated the film into the font - I felt this just worked better
and made a stronger impression."

Above is a thumbnail of one of the samples he sent along. This will ultimately be what our logo looks like. After a series of color discussions - he sent this colorized sample.



He wrote:

"Here is a first pass at adding in some color. I tried to keep it simple, with some depth. I used a cool blue, but we can adjust that easily..."

There's a larger sample that he sent, but it wouldn't fit in the post correctly [check it out here].

COVER DIFFERENCES

Bax has been working on color variations for the cover.



She wrote:

I´m sending you new versions of the colors! The painted one is finished, and the cell shaded one I´ve played around a bit but would like to know if you think I should add more detail, change anything, etc.

Here are two, closer cut-sections of the color detail.

Here's a cut section of each different version:





I really like the cell shaded version, but the shadows and moody look on Lucy (the goth chick) are really detailed and moody. It's a tough call - both have certain strenghts. I'm playing with the idea of entering them both in the submission process.

LOGO SAMPLES

Bill Tortolini over at Lithium Pro sent me the following thumbnail samples for the book's logo.

There's several directions we can go from here. But, the first two samples are out, since Cinemascope has a trademark logo with a similar look.



Here's what I sent to him, after getting the thumbnails:

I like where you're going with the film strip look. At this point, my favorite one is the last thumbnail, with the film strip. I'm just not really hot about the font - needs to be a little more futuristic/techie.

I really like the other filmstrip logo too, with the perspective angle. Would it look weird to make it skew the other way? to the right?

And Bill replied:

Not a problem. I'll tweak the last two a bit and see if I can make them a bit more futureistic and sleek. I'll shoot some samples either later tonight or first thing in the morning. Then we can move to color.

Uh oh. I better start thinking of color schemes now.

COLORIST

We have a colorist! Her name is Sabrina Eras, and she's a perfect fit for our Anamorphic team.

I would've announced it sooner, but I wanted to wait until there was some samples to show off.

Here's page one:




And, here's page two:



I kinda squshed some of the detail/quality out of them when I scaled them down for the blog. And, I added the black borders, to give it a more cinematic feel (at least I think so anyway).