After the small hiatus, I have returned and with plenty of production art as well so make sure you head over to that page and check out the new goodies. Today I want to talk a little bit about some of the hurdles I had during the drawing phase of the first fight scene in Cosmic Rage. As, I previously stated, I had the idea of drawing these images on separate pieces of paper so I can scan them in and then place them in the correct positions.

Once this was completed I had to make sure that I had all of the inked elements on their own layers as well as having each of the coloring layers on their own layer as well. This way once I get into After Effects for animating I can import the PSDs and then shut off the layers I don’t need.  This is the same process I have used earlier in the project, however, when I drew the original artwork I didn’t use the multiple layer process and inking became a little bit of a challenge. This is what sparked the idea of the current method.

As you can see in the production art 1 piece, I have the tracing paper taped only over certain pieces of art, so I had some cutting and taping to do. I did this for a couple reasons. One I like having the tracing paper trimmed down because it is easier to manipulate instead of moving a full page when you are drawing in a small area. I also don’t require all of the shots to have the tracing paper effect, so if I only have one shot where I need it I for sure don’t want to be having to maneuver around an entire piece of paper for a single shot.

I have another fight scene coming up soon so I will be back in action and working on mastering this technique and maybe finding some shortcuts. Believe it or not I have made some great progress and some other discoveries I look forward to sharing!