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A little rushed this month, thanks to an early deadline, so I'm using this space to discuss a project I've started and hope to turn into a regular thing.
I'm sometimes seized by what I can only describe as "manias", powerful urges to do something. One such urge drove me to build myself a lightsaber prop. Another has made me construct various Green Lantern rings and even adapt an old (antique) coach lamp into a facsimile of the Golden Age Green Lantern's own lantern. That one, I'd put aside for months at a time, then get back to it. Recently, I more or less finished it, using duct tape, a really bright LED and celphone charger. Now I can shine a nice green beam across the room. it still won't charge my ring, though.
The same kind of mania drove me to draw those comic covers I talked about in an earlier article. This, however, is something different.
It started with the cover I did for my friend Jeff, of his ancient high school character Quasar. it got me to thinking, there must be thousands of people out there who, doing what fans do, have characters they created and thought up adventures for, but never got to put into print. Just looking at the fanfic that's out there tells me there are a lot of writers who are passionate about their characters, but for whatever reason, they'll never get to publish a comic with them.
I know what that's like and I really can't help get your characters published, but I can offer my services to create a comic cover for your character(s). A piece of art you can hang on your wall or use to show potential publishers a visual representation of your ideas.
I call this "Cover Op".
Standard comic covers, like comic pages, are drawn on 11 X 17 bristol board, with an image area about 10 X 15. The top quarter of the image area is usually where the title goes, along with other branding information. Modern covers are all art, with little or no lettering on them. Old school covers had most of the lettering pasted up. If you haven't seen original cover art before, here's a great source:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/original-cover-art
They have covers from at least as far back as the 1950s and if you browse the cover scans, all the way back to the beginning of comics.
What I'm offering here is a chance to see your characters on their own comic cover. Because my hand lettering leaves much to be desired, any lettering will be done as paste-up, as old school covers were done. You write up the cover blurbs, etc. You can create your own logo or I can work with you creating one. Believe it or not, on the Quasar cover, I used Microsoft Publisher to create the logo. I'm very much a "Keep It Simple, Stupid" kind of guy and I was at work, where my access to software is fairly limited.
Rates would be based on the complexity of the cover. The simpler the cover, the less time it takes me to draw it, and all that.
The main things you'd need to decide are:
- Who's on the cover?
- What are they doing?
- What are they saying?
- What am I saying about them, the comic, etc (cover blurbs)?
- What's the title of the comic?
- What else do I want on the cover (publisher-make up your own, issue number, etc.)?
For my own amusement, and so I would have something new to use as an advertisement, I did this cover...
The "story" here, is fairly easy to understand. There's a little action, enough scenery to give you an idea of location, and with the shattered glass and such, an idea that the fight is ongoing, not just starting. The foreground hero is meant to have a bit of Golden Age-to-Silver Age transition look to him. The girl zooming in from the background looks a little more late Silver Age or Bronze Age. The villain is more or less stuck in the Silver Age. I haven't colored this piece, yet, but I think Bombard's colors will have to be muddy green and purple-gray, like so many Marvel villains of the late 1960s.
Now, on this cover, I did the lettering on the computer, not pasted up on the artwork. That's also an option. That's how most covers are done these days.
Right up front, I want to say a few things that I won't do....
No explicit sex scenes, for one....Cheesecake is fine. Beefcake, too. I ain't hung up. I won't be aping anyone else's style, either. I can't do it, at least I can't do it well, or consistently, so I don't try. I don't like drawing gore, so I won't do evisceration-type things. I know it's popular these days for heroes to punch people's guts out, but I don't like drawing that stuff.
Things I can and will do...
I _CAN_ do a fairly consistent cartoon/animated (Justice League Unlimited sort of thing) style. So, if you think your characters would benefit from that look, I can work with it.
Just about any genre, I can work with. I especially enjoy super-heroes (of course), science fiction, fantasy, pulp adventure, old west, etc.
I plan to take these one at a time. So I will not be booking a bunch of work at one time. That's not just for me, that's also so I don't short change anyone.
I can't possibly cover all the variables in this article, even if I had a few more days to write it, there are things I won't think of that'll crop up.
Questions should be sent to me at cover-op@heroblog.com and I'll address them as succinctly as possible.
www.heroblog.com
Copyright © 2010 Joe Singleton
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