Oath Production Pages: Part V
March 26, 2008, filed under: Kid B., Sketchbook, by LexHere’s the final round of production pages on Blood-Bound Oath…it was hard to find specific pages to post that wouldn’t give away too much of the last part of the story, but I think these three will do.Click the images for better views…
This page introduces Emer and Ermlaf, a pair of Heathobards who will eventually be stalking Beowulf and Grendel from book to book. They’re the classic comedy duo and also a wink to Asterix and Obelix–though they’ve got no magic potion and get more bashings than they give.
Here Beowulf does his best Luke Skywalker impression.
In this scene, Grendel’s trouble with Unferth’s crew finally comes to a head. I wasn’t sure if I could pull off the rope-net, but I think it turned out pretty well.
DONE.
March 21, 2008, filed under: Studio, by Lex
I wrapped up the final part of Kid Beowulf & the Blood-Bound Oath late Sunday night and shipped the book off to the publishers the following morning. I meant to post this earlier, but I’ve been catching up on some long needed sleep. The next step is to produce some galleys which will be sent out for review and to go through the editing process for the book. The hard part is done though and I think it turned out pretty well. (Of course, I’ve been immersed in this thing for the last year, so my head is crammed way too far up my creative ass to be objective about anything).
All the pretty colors…
March 14, 2008, filed under: Kid B., Sketchbook, by Lex
As the book deadline draws ever closer the pieces begin to fall into place. Today: the cover for Blood-Bound Oath. And in short: it rocks. As with the prologue, I shipped my inks off to colorist Brian Kolm and he did a phenomenal job (and in record time too). Not only that, but he put up with all my tweaks and redos and produced his best work to date (okay, I’m a little biased). The image above is just a small portion of the full cover; it’s a gatefold image that extends 20″ across. Below are the different stages, from pencils to inks to the final color, click the images for larger views…
The theme of the first book is “family” so I wanted to make sure I got all the members of the twisted family tree on the cover. I love what Brian did with Hrothgar’s shadow at the back and how it envelops the mere in darkness! He did a great job on Edgetho as the ghost too. I’m pretty jazzed. I think I may eventually make prints of this to sell at conventions.
Blood-Bound Oath: Prologue
March 6, 2008, filed under: Kid B., Sketchbook, by Lex
These are pages from the Prologue I’ve been working on to Blood-Bound Oath. The prologue is a retelling of the original Beowulf epic; I thought it would be important for people who have never read Beowulf, to at least get an idea of what the original poem was about. So I went about writing up a shortened version of Beowulf in free verse, making it as dramatic as I could–it was a lot of fun to do (but it’s by no means a substitute for the original). 
To match the tone of the verse, I decided to draw the pages in a bigger, more traditional “comic-book” style. For the final touch, and to give it extra dramatic weight, I handed the pages off to my colorist Brian Kolm–who did a bang-up job on watercolors and really made these pages sing!
Interesting to note, the pages will be printed in B&W, but we found that doing them in color and then converting them to B&W gave us the best look.
The prologue was a big challenge, I’m not used to drawing in this style, but I think it turned out well and I’m looking forward to doing a separate prologue for each Kid Beowulf book.