Comic Book Cover

"Stellor" Comic Book Cover

My Market research project was about finding the kind of illustration industry I want to work in. Representation matters to me, so I made a comic book cover with a Black main character who looks like me and walks and talks like me. I painted the background with pastels on paper, and made everything else digitally in Photoshop and Procreate. Along the way I learned cell shading, and how color shapes shadow and highlight. My Market 1 project used a simple illustration style, so I used this one to push myself on the things I found hardest.

Background and Illustration

Painted cosmic background: cerulean and cobalt gas clouds over deep black space turning into violet plumes, with a wave of orange and crimson across the bottom and white splatters like distant stars

Painted cosmic background with the graffiti-style title STELLOR in bright yellow outlined in cyan set across the upper third, above swirling blue, violet and crimson nebula clouds and white star specks on deep black

Finished cover illustration: a young hero with glowing eyes floating weightlessly in a lavender hoodie and camouflage shorts before the painted nebula, under the graffiti-style title STELLOR with A NEW HERO ON THE RISE above and Eric Grant Issue No.1 at the lower right

Character Sketches

Character sketch in pencil and coloured pencil: a heavily muscled hero flexing both arms in briefs before drifting rocks and debris, with the word STELLOR arched across the top

Full-body character sketch in pencil: the same man standing with both arms opened outward, wearing a drawstring hoodie marked with an atomic orbit emblem, patterned shorts, socks and slide sandals

Character sketch in pencil with red correction lines drawn over the same standing figure in the atomic hoodie, patterned shorts and slides

Character sketch in pencil with a red vertical centreline and alignment marks over the same standing figure in the atomic hoodie and patterned shorts

Rough Sketches

Rough colour sketch: an agent drawn in blue construction lines crouched behind a brick rooftop parapet adjusting red-sketched goggles, with a city skyline, a wooden water tower, a ladder, and the words AGENT 10 drawn in red across the wall

Rough cover sketch: an agent drawn waist-up aiming a scoped rifle straight at the viewer in extreme perspective, with purple smoke at the muzzle, the title AGENT 10 above, and the words CALVIN CROSS IN ONE SHOT ONE KILL at the lower left

Rough sketch: a bare-chested figure standing on the curved horizon of a planet with his head tilted upward, a cratered moon and a landmassed planet behind him, shooting stars arcing across the sky, and the word STELLOR drawn in large block outlines above

Thumbnails

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