Canadian Joe Con Cover part II....

After I had the layout done and Mike approved it I was set to pencil this thing full size. My layouts are done on pre ruled paper and the little hash marks on it help me re draw it full size and keep things fairly accurate for the composition. I almost always make a few changes as I look at it more just to tweek the figures, or composition a bit.

Here was the pencils that I turned in for approval.

Canadian Joe Con - Comic Cover (pencils) - 384

You can see when compared to the layouts, the biggest change was repositioning Retrofit in the upper left. 

I felt he was a little too "flat" for the composition and it created a dead space above his head. By twisting his body and raising him up it also helped separate him from the foreground. Pushing him behind Black Ice also gave prominence to the main bad guy.

In this stage, most of my details are gestural. It might look "tightly" penciled, but you can see in areas like Retrofit's knife, The Hate Scout tank details and the mountains, I didn't need to make it exact yet. I leave that for the inking stage to save time. 

The pencils are mostly to make sure lighting is established, and the figures are proportional and the uniforms are at least indicated correctly.

The next post I'll show the inking stage and talk more about the process there.

For Questions and Comments email me at

Robert@RobertAtkinsArt.com