Inking for Phenomena 3 is done!

Time For Grey Tones

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

We’re getting closer and closer to the end of my time with Phenomena and I’ve begun splitting my time between it and what’s coming next to ease the transition. After all, it has been a minute since I drew pages for anything else other than Spike and Co.

More on that below, because first:

Inking is done!

It was on Tuesday that I finished inking, scanned and adjusted what are the last 13 pages for Phenomena Book 3 and the last 13 pages of the trilogy (I always work in order, for consistency sake). It was with satisfaction and the feeling of a job well done that I signed mine and Brian’s name on the corner of the last page:

Last week I had already shown you a few bits that I had inked, including a work in progress of the shot below, which you can now see completed:

All that is left now is to put some lovely grey tones into these pages, which I’ve already done a good chunk of. I always begin by assigning the right tones to each bit before adding all the effects, shadows, glows and scratches. Right now, most of the pages look like this:

This panel will have a glowing light inside the circle the characters are doing, which will cause projected shadows behind/around the group in a circular pattern. I’ll also add a gradient and other effects to the background, all of which combined will elevate the image above beyond its current flat feeling. Hopefully.

Other stuff

Between both things (inking and tones), I’ve been working on some of the many covers I have scheduled and I’ve been preparing my next book. I could press forward with Phenomena right until the end, but mixing it up allows my brain to do a more seamless transition between projects and prevents me from falling into the temptation of rushing things for the simple sake of wrapping it up.

Here’s a couple of sneak peeks of another Void Rivals cover (my 4th of a total of 6). I used plenty of black ink, brush and hatching on this one, to create dense smoke. Not an effect I use a lot of, but more to spot more blacks is an ambition of mine. Watch this space for more on that in the near future:

I also received my comps of some of the cover work I’ve been doing for the past few months. Seeing your work in print is a bolt of joy that never gets old, no matter how many times you go through it.

Colors on both covers by Chris O’Halloran

Recommendation

This week’s recommendation is the doc Grounded II: Making The Last Of Us Part II. TLOU parts I and II are one of the great creations in video games of the past decade and a massive enterprise. But what I love the most about these docs is that, wether it’s a big or small production, you’ll always see how there’s a commonality in the troubles and difficulties that comes with creating brand new, original stories. Every creator faces the same type of obstacles and there’s a certain comfort in seeing that. Particularly in such a well crafted final product like this game.

Though I have to say that having your pandemic heavy blockbuster story being released in a pandemic heavy Covid 19 world must have been especially scary. Give it a view, you’ll learn a lot. I know I did.

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I’ll leave you with the reminder that Phenomena Book 2 is almost here, (April 23) and you can preorder it right now.

See you next week,

André