Rebloggerization

I've been better keeping up on Barbarian Lord's developments elsewhere.  Here's a new post to attempt to bring this blog up to speed.

The Barbarian Lord graphic novel has been completed and will be released by Houghton Mifflin / Clarion Books in spring 2014.  It hovers somewhere around 180 pages and marks the first full length story.  The following are mostly in-progress pages and sketches from 2011-2013.

Revised page, original on left.

The graphic novel began with the idea of 5-6 single issues under the name of Barbarian Lord: Outlaw, to be released on no fixed schedule -- planning to write it as I went along.  Some time after the first issue was released, the plan changed to release the story in a single volume.  This meant time put aside to concretely work out the entire story (hazy at best initially), write dialog and sketch it out.  Between drawing the first issue and really getting down to tackling the story as one whole, some of the character designs slightly changed and general stylistic developments came about.  Much of the original content of first Outlaw issue is in the beginning of the graphic novel, but slightly reworked and with some additional pages added in.

Another revision in progress.

Page progress.

Once the initial storyline was worked out, the book was sketched out in 2x2 thumbnails.  These were then scanned and used as the base for tighter "pencils" done in Corel Painter.  Lastly they were given final linework and graytones also in Painter or Photoshop.

With all that said, here are a few more images of the book as it came along...

Panel progress.

The boar riders.

Graytones pulling their weight.

Battle troll.

Skullmaster's farm.

First page of chapter 2.

Intial cover sketches.

Cover progress.