Atonement comic

Atonement is a comic study project I started in 2013. It resulted in a thesis work for my comic classes.

The part I illustrated is a prologue to a longer story. The prologue is now 6 pages long.

For the presentation of this project I also did world-building. I made a map of The World and developed the species. A booklet was made to present it as a whole.

The final cover

1. Clean sketch

Anatomy studies were made to achieve a good running pose. Photo references used from yours truly running in front of the camera on timer. Also photo material from stock photo websites of running couples hand in hand were studied on to achieve the look.

2. Ink lines

Clean lines on top of the sketch. A thicker line is added around the regular lines to pop out the characters. I made 2 custom ink brushes especially for this comic.

3. Flat colours

Blocking in the colours of the characters. The colour choices are intentional: They are like fire and ice together, it shows in their colour schemes.

4. Shading and highlights.

Shading, highlights and bounced light respecting the light source.

5. Background layer 1

Gradient green-blue as background complementing the existing character's colours.

A halftone raster on top of it using a technique: black halftone raster coloured with a layer on 'screen', then merged and put on blending mode 'multiply' at low opacity.

6. Background layer 2

Blue border added around the picture to put a focus on the characters

Round shadings added underneath the characters to simulate their presence in the empty space.

7. Texture and lettering

Texture was added on the background on low opacity. Title, subtitle and credit added. Fonts are Cartwheel and Komika Text, both free comic fonts that can be found on fontsquirrel.com or blambot.com.

8. Final touch

Flower petals added to complement the spring feeling. A free flower petal brush I customised with jitter, angle, and min. diameter. An inner shadow was added to give more depth to the petals.

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Map of The World sketched out in Photoshop

Map entirely drawn in Illustrator

Playing around with gradients, dropshadow, inner shadow and transparency.

Offset path for the white lines in the sea and lakes. Trees copied and pasted in chunks.

Texture and border added in Photoshop

Text added in Photoshop.

Playing around with tranparency, fill and outer glow. Font is Almendra, a free font.

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The final 6 pages

you can read the comic on my smackjeeves

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The final printed booklet

Contains 16 pages: the 6 comic pages and extras about The World and species. Interior cover is the map and on the back the short storyline.

Information about the main characters Zezu and Lola

Exra information about wild and domesticated phits (dragon species)

Drawings made in Photoshop, assembled in Indesign

Information about the species: the Symbulaé

Back cover of the booklet with theshort storyline

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