The Baroness: Suit, Text, and Background

It's time to tackle the suit, I think. Using the gradients I added in Illustrator as a guide, I created a palette of grays off to the side.

And again, I used those gradients as a guide to what I'd built as a light source. I still do like the subtle texture of the original one above but it just doesn't have the spark I need for this concept. This happens to me with details on every project: I get an unexpectedly good-looking result that makes me question if I should go with the original plan. But, as always, I decided to give it a shot.

Well, it's okay. Some of it looks really good and some just doesn't work. The bright reflections work on her hip but not on her chest. Clearly, as a paperback featuring an attractive woman, I need to draw the eye but bright white lights on her breasts cheapens the effect. 

Because I'm getting to my February deadline, I'm going into Push Mode where I force myself to stop worrying over every single thing and get some of the other elements started. Once the major components are created an put into play, I can go back and stress out over things if I have time.

Checking the next item on my list, I get a possible solution for the suit problem.

Boom.

I was going to create an entirely new Cobra symbol based on the original anyway so I got this image into Illustrator, created a vector, and warped the hell out of it.

Already sexier.

Placing this vector image as a smart object allowed me to go make trips back and forth beween Photoshop and Illustrator, constantly warping and re-warping until I got something that worked.

The Cobra layer also has a linear burn on it to let the highlights and shadows come through, effectively recoloring it for me. I like it a lot but will probably need to work on the suit more before I'm done.

So that'll be the background next, then. I started with this really great blue that I'd seen on the box art for a board game I had as a kid.

There's a hell of a lot of things to like about this.

I painted in some cloudy dark blues and it looked great. Then I accidentally selected a negative photo filter and ended up with this:

And it's way better. I'm a little concerned that it looks like more like a a modern-day comic book cover than a 70s paperback but we're going to Push On and make corrections later. Next, I'm putting in a publisher's block and text. Oh, and I changed the name.

Making it look exactly like a comic book. God dammit.

Things are going to need to change to make this look right. For the next article, I'll be making some 70s-appropriate design changes to include adding new elements such as technology, a building, and, possibly, a giant face in the background, a popular design choice for the era.

And now, here's your Baroness cover for the article.

Maybe I need to add gladiators...

Baroness: Flesh-tones and Shadows

I've worked on this a little but I think I pretty much left off with this, which is kinda cool in its own right:

Cool in, like, 2002. If I were more hipster, I'd stop now and put this on a t-shirt.

One difference between this and the last image (besides her glasses, which I'm working with separately) is her suit is less shiny and more like a modern wet-suit; I did that by making the highlight vectors into a "Multiply" layer over the flat black layer. That's okay because I'm going to go back in and shine up the armor plates with an airbrush. What I'm trying to get right now is her face and hands: the flesh tones.

Who have some great album art

I've got two ways of doing this. Sometimes, if there's a lot of skin showing, I color the whole thing gray and shade over it using white. That way I can really see the values, plus, that's sort of just how I learned to draw was with just a pencil, so I'm used to how gray looks when shading.

In the case of my Poison Ivy, the only image I have saved is the flat green. But pretend it's gray...

So I had the first image in gray and painted over it using white, which I isolated just so you can see it. Once my values were correct, I turned the gray (first) image green (or some more human flesh color for another design) and duplicated that layer and set the duplicate to "Multiply". What that does is make the white layer burn into a highlighted value of that base flesh color. That's how you get those nice shadows.

I should make it clear that I have to do a few small test areas for each project to wrap my head around this concept; I'm not naturally wired to think this way. Because this is Crazy-Think.

Now that I've said all that: I didn't do this for our Baroness. I just went right in.

The reason I brought the whole shading-on-gray thing is because that's what I've decided I have to do for her spy-suit and it'll be an experiment that I'm hoping doesn't set me back too many hours but it will.

It always will. Better now than on a project I'm getting paid for, I suppose...

But let's knock out those glasses.

I went with the larger ones. I mean, it's what she's known for. Plus, the design is a 1970s spy thriller. The only people who wore narrow glasses in the 70s was your grandfather when he got ready to show you something scientific that you already knew. 

If you look at the right side of the glasses in the above image, you can (barely) see that they look pasted on because they totally are. I imported them from Illustrator and the branch is cut to what should be behind her hair. 

So I cut that part out and pasted it above the branch. Then...

I added a bit of a glow to the lenses and some shadow to the frames and also up by her forehead.

Then, I went downstairs to get another beer (Baltimore's own Resurrection Ale) and when I came back up I noticed a few things wrong. The glare on her glasses wasn't right with the light source and there was too much disruption in the lenses: I worked too hard on the way the eyes look to cover them up that much.

While I was correcting the light, I went ahead and added some crimson onto her cheeks to give her an additional subtlety to her expression. Then I cut her hair to shoulder length which has he added bonus of not forcing me to re-create some dynamic action where I didn't want it. Sometimes, physics itself is a limitation and you can work with it but I wasn't feeling it here. I may change my mind before the end but she looks really where I want her right now.

Notice that although I cut the length, I still had to actually add to the left side because if her hair is shorter, it'd bunch up as she raises her shoulder.

I'm going back in to do the hands now but we'll see that next time as I tackle that suit and the guns. I'll leave you with another one of these fancy book covers that I can never hope to equal. 

Is her preference of her men being one hundred proof 70s slang or does she like them drunk?
Those f'n dogs are drunk. 

Project January: The Baroness

The last few weeks I've been pressuring myself to put together a better portfolio, highlighting illustration over design and typography as there's a whole lot of Baltimore graphic artists who are better in those latter departments. But maybe they need illustration help?

Anyway, I've put about 7 hours into the drawing, 3 hours into learning some new painting skills, and another 2 in correcting stupid mistakes. It's not complete, of course, but I've worked out enough bugs in my workflow that  I can cut down the time put into getting this far. Hopefully, another 8-10 hours and I'll be totally finished (so lets add another 3 in there for revisions when I think I can do better).

What I'm going for is Cobra's intel officer, The Baroness, in all her dark, Soviet-esque spy coolness, making some sort of escape, guns blazing, on the cover of a mid-70s secret agent paperback. I'm not totally sure what the end result will be just yet: I have a few different designs sketched up, each with its own story to tell beginning with the Baroness, her expression, her pose, and the typeface. Let's look at that first.

Because nothing says this is a dangerous mission better than 'Operation: Massacre'.
Except maybe "Dangerous Mission".

The first two are golds and feel like spy science fiction, like Moonraker, so I'd add some satellites, a rocket, some cool Chesley Bonestell space stuff. The third hints at 1970s technology, with the green color of a Speak & Spell display, meaning an ICBM, a secret bunker, a briefcase maybe.  Same with the last one, which is an 'instruction booklet' sort of slab-serif with the color of old calculator numerals.

Or this bastard who haunts me to this day with his 'Math Fun".

None of the technology has been drawn up yet so we'll have a look at The Baroness herself. I drew her out, "analog", with the intention of scanning it into Illustrator, where I can straighten the lines on the guns and  smooth out some of those feminine curves.

Either I need help with perspective or she's badass enough to aim in two slightly different places.
We'll make the latter true.

This one was done in the Adam Hughes-approved Pitt pens and Copic markers. And while that's great when destined for a finished product on paper, it makes for a truly disastrous scan into Illustrator. So, lesson learned: don't shade or otherwise color a sketch if the bulk of the work is going to be painted digitally (unless someone knows a better way).

Also take note of how I obviously changed my mind at some point because some of the hair looks like it's moving with the action and some looks as though she's standing still. That's something I'll have to address at some point (+1.5 hours to correct that, I'm sure...) but I wanted to push on for now. Here's what I was left with after I deleted all the grays out:

I started with the face and hair painting first, hiding the lines you see above so I could work without the glasses in the way.

I always use a 50% gray background instead of white so I can make sure stuff like the shine on her lips are brighter white than her teeth and the "whites" of her eyes. Teeth and eyes look weird as hell when you make them white.

Again, you can see how much I'll have to correct with her non-dramatic hair. That's irritating.

In order to make this more complicated, I've got two ideas for the glasses as well:

Big 70s Glasses

Small, less distracting glasses

The glasses, by the way, were drawn in Illustrator so they'd be straighter & I could put a gradient on them. I decided to do the same for her super-spy suit:

Turns out, I can only add one gradient per shape. Makes sense. So, I use the Blob Brush to custom-create areas on different layers where other highlights should go. It should be noted that I'm just testing out whether the gradients will work for our purposes here at all; I may actually end up creating these with an airbrush instead.

Because I decided to depict her having amazing shooting abilities by aiming in two different places, I had to really lay on the perspective of her left arm by making it less transparent (appearing black rather than gray is just the effect of higher transparency on the other areas).

And here's the new areas placed over the original shape:

Those gradient areas look blocked in but that doesn't matter because I'm going to smooth out those types of separations in Photoshop anyway. Here's the suit with the face/hair layer:

All this is going over to PS so I can being painting. And that'll be what I'm writing about for next time...

EDIT:

I swear I researched this idea before I started it...

...and there's just no way I'm going to beat out The Baroness karate-chopping a Scot.