Rocket's Red Glare (Final Pencils)

David Peak, who last commissioned me for the cover art of "Ghost Factory Magazine," has given me a new assignment: to render the image of a city growing off the surface of a quarter for the cover of his upcoming novel, "Rocket's Red Glare."

In my intitial sketching phase I spent a lot of time looking at pocket change, but gave short shrift to the task of urban planning. For this go around, I decided to invest a little more energy in the architecture of Liberty City, and hopefully save myself some head aches down the line.

I used a new strategy (new for me) in the development of these drawings. I built up all of my perspective lines in my sketchbook, than did the final line work on a sheet of tracing paper. It saved me a lot of time that I would have spent erasing, and now I have these kind-of-cool "under drawings." (Maybe I'll post them later.)

I took low-res digital photos of these, then did what little coloring there is in photoshop. (isolating the vertical planes of the buildings with my polygon-lasso, then adjusting the levels)

Little City


Big City