KOTOR #1, pg 9 redo

This is what we finally ended up with-- a nice big fat shot of the 5 Masters. Notice that Lucien is the only one with a blue saber. The other 4 are Consulars and it was explained to me that they have green sabers. Anyhow, its a much tighter show than the the original page and puts us directly behind Zayne's head-- Hopefully this will have amped up the tension a little and give us a feel of what it's like to have a lightsaber at our necks :)

Also, you'll see that in panel 2 I pull the camera out a little bit and now we can see everyone that needs to be seen. It actually would have made a nice double page spread, and it would have been easy to show all 5 Masters and all 5 Padawans and nice widescreen style shot-- oh well, live and learn.

KOTOR #1, pg 9 original

Here was the original shot for page 9 from the first issue. There were so many things to convey-- a large banquet hall with many patrons and droid servants. Plus, there were 10 main characters we had to show in this shot. This is what I ended up with. It gets the job done, it introduces all the characters and established them in our environment. The only problem is that it is so BORING. This was our introduction to the MASTERS! This was going to be the first time we'd see these 5 elder characters who would be the main antagonists of our first 6 issues. So in the end, I scrapped it and literally went back to the drawing board...

Art Supplies

I've gotten a few questions about the type of pencils, erasers, etc that I use for work. Some artists use #2 pencils and others use $25 mechanical pencils. It honestly doesn't matter what you use-- as long as you are comfortable with it.

1) Tru-Point Lead Pointer for drafting pencil lead. This thing works great! It's the best lead pointer I've ever used. It works very smoothly and always gives me such a pointy tip. The only drawback is that it's a bit of a pain to empty the graphite.

2) Koh-I-Noor Drafting Pencil. I like using these drafting pencils to get the variety of line weights. The line thickness changes as the lead dulls. I use H lead and I go through about 12-14 leads per month.

I think I got this from Top Cow years ago. They used to supply us with all of our art supplies. Anyways, I remember grabbing 3 of these from the supply room because I tend to grip the pencil pretty tightly and press down hard as well-- and I would break these every few months. I've been lucky with this one- it's lasted me at least 4 years now.

3) Alvin Draft/Matic 0.3mm lead mechanical pencil. I use this for really fine background detail-- the only thing is that the line weight stays pretty uniform throughout the drawing.

4) Sakura Electric Eraser. I picked this up about 6 months ago and wondered why I didn't do so years ago. This thing is awesome-- I can't live without it now.

5) Tuff Stuff Eraser Stick. Great at erasing really small parts of the drawing.

6) Kneaded Eraser. I can't live without this thing either. I go through about one a month.

7) C-Thru Ruler.


That's it. The penciler's supplies are pretty simple.