Graphic Novel First Steps Part II

As stated in the last post, I’m experimenting with photographic backgrounds with hand drawn characters to produce a graphic novel. For practice and fun I’m putting a recurring strip up on this blog entitled JUSTICE – DETROIT STYLE. I’ll show the tools I use, the process to produce the panels and I will also post the script so you can see how that works.

Here’s the first panel I’m playing with:

I took the photo earlier this week and used Pixelmator for everything. If you have a Mac, Pixelmator is the way to go. Here’s a post about it here: http://stefanstudios84.wordpress.com/blog/ If you don’t have a Mac, you can use GIMP which is open source and free. GIMP is a great tool for creating graphics and manipulating images. If you have Photoshop then you’re all set.

The main character is Rick Justice who appears like a normal guy but takes extreme justice into his own hands. The first story is worked out which will result in about eleven or twelve panels. After that I’m going to make it up as I go along. I’m working on the characters (bad guys, Rick’s girlfriend, victims, etc.) now for the first story and for future installments.

Graphic Novel First Steps

I started some preliminary work on a graphic novel tonight. I plan on making it little different than the normal graphic novel fare where the backgrounds will be photographs with the characters layered on top. I’m not sure how well this is going to work, but I’ll document the steps here. I’ve been wandering around Detroit taking background shots and started character sketches tonight. Here’s the first one:

The drawing is a candidate male character. Above are a couple of street shots in Detroit. Next to the drawing is a Royal Langnickel pencils set that I came to appreciate in about two minutes. If you want to do any reasonably serious pencil sketches, this is the set to get. I got it for $28.75 on Amazon.

My next post will be the first attempt at scanning a character drawing and layering it into a photograph, probably using Pixelmator.