Hulk vs. Bizarro: The Pants Cosmic

[mthemordant]

Here are the first three pages of "THE PANTS COSMIC!!", as well as the archive of "Season 1" of Hulk Vs. Bizarro! LINK (http://www.50footrobot.com/hulkvsbizzaro.html)

-M
50 Foot Robot Studios (http://www.50footrobot.com/)

[TroyCarlson]

Dude...this stuff is pure genius. And I LOVE the coloring effects you are giving to the PANTS COSMIC storyline! It looks wonderful!

How do you get that "old school" coloring effect? I've tried a million times to replicate that look with zero luck!

[mthemordant]

http://50footrobot.com/hulkvsbizzaro.html
Here are some sample images:

http://50footrobot.com/comics/HulkVsBizzaro/PANTSCOSMIC/PantsCosmicCoverFINAL.jpg
http://50footrobot.com/comics/HulkVsBizzaro/PANTSCOSMIC/PantsCosmicPG01.jpg
http://50footrobot.com/comics/HulkVsBizzaro/PANTSCOSMIC/PantsCosmicPG02.jpg
http://50footrobot.com/comics/HulkVsBizzaro/PANTSCOSMIC/PantsCosmicPG03.jpg

[TroyCarlson]

That. Was. BRILLIANT!

Dude, that was seriously laugh out loud funny. The origin of Starman was simply genius. And I LOVE the art.

Fantastic job, man. Checking out the rest of your site. Keep 'em coming, man.

[Kara Zor El]

Great stuff as usual. Very funny and well drwan. Your colouring has changed on this one I notice.

[mthemordant]

Thanks for the comments!
Glad you guys dig the PANTS COSMIC!
This has been a fun experiment in taking the Hulk Vs. Bizarro stuff to the "next level". It was also a coloring experiment that was an attempt to give it some old school personality and also streamline my process a bit.

Thanks again!! I appreciate it!

M

[TroyCarlson]

It was also a coloring experiment that was an attempt to give it some old school personality and also streamline my process a bit.

That was something i was wondering about...how do you DO that effect! It's beautiful! Can you give us a quick tutorial?

[mthemordant]

That was something i was wondering about...how do you DO that effect! It's beautiful! Can you give us a quick tutorial?

Sure I can run you through the process.
First I "ink" over my sketches in Illustrator with a brush tool and a WACOM pad. I also do lettering at that point.
I take my black lines then and paste them into a Photoshop document, set that layer to multiple and then start a new layer for the colors.
I do very basic, flat colors then; I try and use drab colors that looked faded, and I keep the palette very simple to reflect the limited colors that used to be achievable by old-school coloring processes.
Once that's set I convert the file to CMYK and the fun begins. In the CHANNELS palette I grab whichever color seems predominate in the image or that I want to focus on. Let's say I have a light blue or CYAN background that I want to appear very much in half-tones, I select just the CYAN channel, in the Palette menu select "Duplicate CHannel", then in the dialogue box select "NEW" from the pulldown menu.
Now that CYAN channel is copied to a new Black and white file. Now we simply go to IMAGE -> MODE -> BITMAP
Then select "Half-tone screen" and hit ok. In the next dialogue box you can set your dot size and angle at which they sit. The numbers are LPI - lines per inch or, so the lower the number, the bigger the dot needs to be to fill that space. I use about 25 LPI, the angle isn't important at this point, and the shape is ROUND.
Now you have your half-tones, you can copy and paste this back over the CYAN CHANNEL in the CHANNEL palette and BANG! Half-tones!
You can do this for all the channels if you like, I do one or two.

Does that make sense?
Thanks!
-M

[TroyCarlson]

That is FANTASTIC, M! Can't wait to play with that tonight! Thank you so much!