ARTWORK TECHNIQUE

Some people have expressed interest in how I've produced the artwork, because I've not produced it through conventional means. (Conventional meaning pencilled, inked and then scanned into a computer and coloured.

For a quick walkthrough I'm using the bottom panel of page 35, when Charles and Rijuta are walking through Westminster. You can see the complete page below, with the panel highlighted:

First I would gather the required source material (in this case a photograph of Delphine, who plays Rijuta), and background material (in this case a photo of Big Ben viewed from ground level. The image comes from an online collection of photographs taken of the large anti-war protest march that walked past Parliament in 2002. In fact, despite making special trips to London to get the shots that I needed, many of the backgrounds featured in Falling Sky actually come from tourist photos that people have put on the web - or in the case of shots of Parliament, protest photos).

For the large part I would simply trace over the image, making the necessary adjustments to costume and background in order to fit the story and its continuity. (In this case Delphine's clothes are changed, and Big Ben is slightly simplified (although it remains fairly detailed). These are typical of the changes I would make.) All line work is done with a five-pixel brush at 40% opacity.

Once tracing is finished I will remove the source material and see how the image holds up on its own. In this case, pretty well, although extra work is often needed to make the image work in context, or add additional details such as guns and so on.

Next I would create a new layer, place it underneath the line drawings, and add the texture and shading. Using a charcoal brush at 30 pixels and at 40% opacity, I add and rub out the texture until I get the desired effect - this often takes several attempts. I also add the "halo" effect at this stage, using the charcoal brush to create a white outline around the characters. This gives an additional stylish element to the artwork, adds poiniancy to the story (ie it highlights the fragility of life and the fact that, for most people at least, it's about to end - or something like that, anyway), and also has a very functional purpose in that it helps to highlight the characters from the background.

Finally I add the background texture. In this case, the sky. (The pallette for daytime sky was always white on brown - for night, black with brown bits.) In the cases where there is no sky, I would add a moving background texture, inspired by the use of speed lines in manga books.

Finally I would flatten the image and transfer it over to Illustrator where I would add speech bubbles and lettering.

Well, that's it. If you have any questions about this technique then let me know, and I'll try and answer them as best I can.