The Kronos Process

Hi folks! We thought we'd post a blog outlining the Kronos City art process. Above is the base of operations for Lauren and myself. On the right hand side is our lovely little Macbook which I use to view the script and find the odd reference image. (Also, note the lovely comic page by Nigel Dobbyn hanging above my desk - a continuing source of inspiration for me).

Anyway, on this side of the desk I take Andrew's script and from that make a quick sketch (too shameful to picture) to plan composition, flow etc. Once this is done I rough out the composition on the actual page. Once I'm happy with the sketch, I neaten it up with a mechanical pencil, scan it and zip it over to Andrew for approval (see below image).

In this instance Andrew had a few ideas about the page.

"Can you add in a couple of different shapes, like hexagons and rhombuses, rhombusususes, um, rhombi? Apart from that, this is good to go!"

Good idea Andrew - the page looks much nicer for it! Pictured below is the inked up version complete with background shapes!

The inking is done with a Pentel Pocket Brush. This lovely little brush pen was reduced from £12 to £6 and I LOVE IT! It may not be the most expensive brush pen in the world but it does the job just fine! It's really nice to use - much nicer than the cheap disposable brushes I used to use at uni! The finer details like the bubbles and shapes are done with a 0.3 and 0.1 fineliner.

Once the page is inked, I usually scan it, arrange it on the digital page and then Lauren does her thing. This page however is set under water and the colouring technique for water in Kronos City is a little different than straight forward digital colour. At this stage we need to take a trip to Staples - which is actually really far away! Here we get the page photocopied onto heavy weight matt paper. This is so that when Lauren adds the water colour the ink doesn't run.

I'll hand over to Lauren to talk about the colouring.

In Kronos City I used two different styles of watercolouring, messy and neat. In this scene Sally is fully in the water so I use a style that I hope shows this. It's done in the same way that the first few pages of the book are painted, as here all the images are formed from the water. In other scenes the Kronos water is just part of the images, for example page five of Chapter One, so the water colour is quite neat and contained.
When it came to this page, I already knew what colours I would be using as this page preceded a scene I had already coloured. So the blue and yellow? So far I've been told that the Kronos City colour seems to be brown/red. As this scene and the ones after are set after a huge storm I decided to give the next seems some fresh colours, to show how a storm can really change and cleanse things. I like to layer up colours to create more depth in the picture, which is something that can be seem in the bubbles and shapes in the water.

Back to Alex.

So there we have it, from pencils to coloured page!

And on that note, I'm off to pencil page 6 of chapter 3.

By for now,

Alex x