The Final Project of Digital Coloring

The Sacrifice_Page 1

I was planning on saving this until I fix the second and third projects from Digital Coloring, but since this is the final blog entry of 2011 I decided to forego the original plan. When  I created this blog it was for the sole purpose to show off my art and how I think from thumbnails to the finished piece, but I was a bit secretive when it came to this project. I decided not to post my penciled pages or line art. I wanted the ending to be a complete surprise to everybody. I plan to revisit the pages later and add the suggestions that were made during the critique, but for now here's the original. I am going to talk about each page one-by-one, and so please, if you haven't already, read page 1 before continuing on.


The story starts off with Thomas Washington visiting the grave of his mother. Thomas is a superhero who goes by the name of "the Killer Bee," and he belongs to a group of superheroes known as "The Winged Warriors" alongside the Dragon/Peter Grayson, the Griffin/Jack Ripper, the Dragon-Girl/Erin Banks, the female Painted Bunting/Martha Rudebaker, and Victoria McDonald. He is considered the third in command behind the Dragon and Victoria McDonald, the founding members of the group. This scene takes place shortly after the murder of Victoria McDonald and Peter Grayson's self-imposed exile, leaving Thomas in charge of the group. When I was approaching this story I was writing the origin story of the Killer Bee, which was something that I hadn't yet established. I had stories that talked about his father and his two sisters, but never once did I mention what happened to the mother, and I knew that the death of the mother was going to be what motivated him into fighting the forces of darkness.


When it came time to color this scene I knew that the palette that I wanted needed to be depressing, which meant that I was going to use cold colors such as blue and purple. My main purpose when I approach a story is to pull the audience into the story and primarily through psychological means. I wanted the audience to feel what Thomas was feeling in this scene, and I think that the psychological element works better with this scene alone. I could be wrong. So aside from being depressed Thomas also feels guilty, and I wanted to illustrate that in the coloring, but it really didn't work out, and I wound up getting rid of that idea. I just didn't know what the color of guilt was, and I had two friends who mentioned green (another mentioned brown along with the green). Unfortunately when I colored it I didn't get the depressing, morbid results that I wanted, and that's where turning for help comes in handy. I wanted to keep this storyline a secret, but I was willing to divulge it to a friend or two. Nick Palmer was a huge help in capturing the results that I wanted for this scene. He told me to desaturate the background, and now...it looks downright depressing. Excellent!!! He also told me to darken Thomas' blond hair because it was way too bright, making it seem as though it was a comedy. I did not want anyone thinking that. I don't write comedies.


The story is about the mother's sacrifice, and nothing on this page says that more than the only warm colors in the scene. The bright yellow and red on the flowers were to draw the viewer's eyes to the grave to make that point. Originally, I was going to put down blacks on the sky like I normally do, but I decided not to because I wanted to use a glowing colorhold on the full moon since that was the only light source in the area.

The Sacrifice_Page 2

While page 1 can read pretty well without the lettering, which is something that all comic artists should strive for, this one on the other hand was completely different. The problem that I faced with this scene was that it's an exposition scene, which meant that it only could make sense with lettering. It was unfortunate, but I just couldn't see any other way around it. This scene is a flashback scene, and the original idea was that I would deal with the flashback in the coloring by either desaturating the colors or using a monochromatic palette. Of course, as you can see, I used neither. The present day scene was so desaturated that there wasn't any point to messing with the colors of the flashback scenes. My professor, Nolan Woodard had suggested the wavy borderlines, and that was done in the penciling stage. I decided to go a step further by turning the gutters gray, which kind of gives the scene a memory type feel to it. Though it was a challenge to switch back to present day on the third page.


The Washingtons date back to the 1600s, and in fact, one of Thomas' ancestors was a judge during the Salem Witch Trials. Jasmine Cartwright and her friends were falsely accused of being witches, and since they refused to confess they were executed, but Jasmine was able to break free and flee into the woods. She wanted revenge against them all, and so if the people of Salem thought that she was a witch then a witch she shall become. She made a deal with the devil and was infused with dark magic and immortality on the condition that she kill her accusers and their ancestors. The Washingtons were her last target, and she infused Thomas' mother with unstable dark magic that would cause Emily Washington to eventually explode and take out a large number of the population. So that's the background story for this scene. Mr. Washington wants to save his wife's life, but the doctor, who by the way was named Dr. Schweizer in the script, told him the bad news. The interesting fact about this scene was that I was having trouble writing it until I came up with the name for the doctor. I am known for putting names of people I know into my stories, and usually I combine two names to make one person. So for example, in the final script that I did for Comic Book Scripting-which was actually riddled with familiar names-I took friends Lisa Tolbert and RJ Thompson to create Lisa Thompson. Here, I just used the last name. During a Scripting class Prof. Chris Schweizer mentioned that he was considering going back to school to get his doctrine that way he would be called Dr. Schweizer. I was thinking about that one morning while I was having breakfast, and I came up with the idea for this page. It's a shame, however, that the name can only be seen in the script.


Please take careful notice that there's a gun on the counter in the second panel because it winds up coming into play later, and I'll talk about it then. As for the palette, I wanted a classroom look, and so I looked up classroom palettes to get the right colors. After having to hear the term rainbow palette described in my past projects I was determined not to hear it again that I asked Melody Ledford for her opinion, and unfortunately, I had a STINKIN' RAINBOW. So after I spoke with her I wrote up a color palette list for each scene, which helped immensely. Let's just say that during my final critique the term rainbow palette was never uttered. Boo-Yah!



The Sacrifice_Page 3

This was the most difficult page of the story, and it was the page that Nolan wasn't sure how I would pull it off based on how much information was in it. It's also where I return to what was so great about the first page in which it could survive without the lettering. It was this page that wanted me to keep the story a secret because of the shear shock value of it. The fewer who knew how it ended, the more shocking it would be when I unveiled it. That's why only three people knew the end. A great majority of superheroes or even heroes in general are created through tragedy, but most of them, perhaps all of them, were created because of the actions of a thug. For the origin story of the Killer Bee I decided to turn the traditional origin story upside down by having Thomas as the one who killed his mother. Although he was the one who had pulled the trigger the reason why this moment drives him to fight against the forces of darkness is his hope that he will come face to face with the witch who started it all. Perhaps he's hoping for redemption as well.
The top tier was the toughest because of how much information was contained in such a small panel, and the third panel was absolute murder. The problem is that my characters tend to talk a lot, and I usually joke that it's to make up for how little I talk. People want me to talk more, but they want my characters to shut up. However, I was able to make the third panel work when I decided to cut what was supposed to be a one balloon into two balloons. The brilliant part about that was that it also directs the eye to the gun, which is framed by the balloons. Perfect!

If you go back to the blog entry that featured the thumbnails you might notice that there wasn't a gun on the counter in page 2, and the reason was that it occurred to me a question may rise when Thomas pulls that gun out of his pocket in page 3. How did he get a gun? I decided to initiate what is called "Chekhov's Gun," which means that you introduce an object like a gun in a scene that it is irrelevant in, but only to have it come back in a big way later in the story. Prof. Schweizer also referred to it as "Chekhov's Boomerang." So in page 2 you see the gun on the counter in the second panel, but it disappears in the final panel along with Thomas. Now the only question that remains for the audience is why did Thomas decide to kill his mother himself instead of letting his father do it as was planned? The answer is very clear, love. He loved his father that he couldn't allow his father to carry around that guilt. Also, there is no stronger bond than a mother and a son. The story is called The Sacrifice not just for the sacrifice that his mother makes, but also for the sacrifice that Thomas makes. He sacrificed himself that day. He knew that he would carry around that guilt til his dying day, but he chose to do it anyway. As the final panel says, "Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good."  

SCAD Scholarship Gala



It All Started with a Mouse

I never get tired of showing this piece off. I have a SCAD scholarship, and I was asked recently to donate an exceptional piece of art to the SCAD Scholarship Gala that will be held in February at the newly built SCAD Museum in Savannah, Georgia. They didn't specify whether it needed to be an exceptional piece done for a SCAD project or not, and there have been some projects that I've been proud of, but nothing tops this. So I finally got around to printing it out, and it's being framed as we speak...well, not literally as we speak. I always thought that the Vampire Mouse mini comic would be my first sale, but it looks like this will be. I'll be interested to know what it goes for because I never could figure out a good price for it. It is essentially three 17x11s, and judging by the cost for an individual 17x11 it would be $20, making this $60. However, it could very well be higher than that.

By the way, call me crazy, and please do because I would be highly disappointed if you didn't unless you're a perfectionist, like me. I am actually redoing It All Started with a Mouse because the original was done before the Digital Coloring class, and I am redoing it to add everything I learned from the class such the flats, making sure that the anti-alias is turned off, backing my blacks, and using K-free colors. It shouldn't look that different, but I'll post it when it's done.

Sad Days in the Comic Book World

I would like to acknowledge the passing of two comic book legends this past week. Jerry Robinson, who worked alongside Bob Kane and Bill Finger in the early days of Batman, died on December 7th at the age of 89. He is credited for creating Robin, and it's up in the air whether or not he created the Joker or not. He also worked alongside Neal Adams to help Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to regain their recognition to the creation of Superman.

Joe Simon, who co-created Captain America alongside Jack Kirby, died on December 14th at the age of 90. Aside from creating the legendary superhero he and Kirby also created the first romance comic called Young Romance. The team of Simon and Kirby also created the superhero the Fly.

These two will be sorely missed.

Final Thoughts


As I said earlier, this is the last blog entry of 2011, and I look forward to the new year. There's just so much art that is still left to be created. So...

Aside from that I hope that you have Happy New Year! Until 2012, this is Billy Wright, wishing you all a good night. So long, everybody!