Settling on an artistic style that both of us can contribute to is a tricky thing...both artists have to like what they're doing, or else the energy in the drawings can suffer. We also had to put some consideration in what the finished product would look like. We already knew that we would be printing in a single color. Given the theme and genre of the book, we decided to print in a sepia tone. We felt that the sepia would give a great feel and look for a story that takes place in ancient China. Furthermore, it was something that was a little more uncommon in the comics industry.

The six images that you see are different variations upon the same drawing, with the first piece being the original. Computer coloring wasn't a choice for us for several reasons. First, it's harder to pull off an impressive coloring job in the computer using only black and white. Second, our computer coloring skills weren't to a level that we were satisfied with. Lastly, we wanted to have a more organic texture to the illustrations. Laurie's classical animation background played a very large part in how the book was going to look. Many animators work in a single shade, either in ink with pantone markers or in pencil, using col-erase or similar.

We experimented with different aspects of the ink overlay. The first was strictly an inked contour line. With the black and white version, all the characters and backgrounds are accentuated, but it was too much. In the second variation, we wanted the focus of the panel to be inked, which in this case was the girl and the thug at the table. It looked out of place. The third, had details and the contours of all elements. This was more to our liking, but it still needed some work.

One of the first ideas that we had for the "look" was to have the entire book illustrated in a Chinese watercolor style...but then we actually wanted to get the book done sometime this year. Maybe we can do that down the road...

Kandrix