Bill And Ted Are Doomed #1: Cover Process

As production started on the new series, editor Daniel Chabon asked me to get the first two cover sketches going before working on the first script. 

I was feeling pretty excited and anxious so I decided to limit my choices and keep things simple. To that end I decided I'd rough some ideas out on the 3" x 5" index cards I like to sketch on. I did both layouts really quickly on two cards, and I liked them, and was happy that they were both quickly approved up the chain so I could start penciling.   

(ABOVE IMAGE: index card rough for Bill and Ted Are Doomed #1 cover)

You can see here in the finished pencils above that I moved some of the characters around and tweaked a few details. Things flowed really well while I was penciling (starting with a Prismacolor col-erase light blue, #20066), the figures fell into place nicely and I didn't have too many hitches -- until I had to deal with the robots and the princesses' hair. 

I'm not comfortable with drawing women's hair as anything other than solid, cartoon forms, I've just never really grasped hows to construct a full head of hair without getting mired in the details of single strands/sections and creating a mess. As you can see, I went slowly and got a bit detail-crazy to get past that particular hurdle. I think it actually looks fine, but it was super time-consuming, especially to ink.  

The robots have always been a pain in the ass to draw -- especially if, like me, you tend to get very literal about these things and push yourself to be as "on model" as possible with established characters. But there's never really been adequate reference images for them -- when I did the Bogus Journey adaptation I was working from dark print-outs of set photographs and a few stills and lots of details were in shadow. I was always making things up for their designs so they'd make some kind of sense and I could get through a panel. And it turned out most of the reference we were given was of earlier versions of the robot suits. Fun Fact: I got so sick of drawing them in the ongoing series that I blew them up and had the Stations rebuild them only a few feet high so I wouldn't have to draw most of that stuff anymore. 

Anyway, when I started drawing the cover I was really surprised to find that the internet hasn't blessed the world of pop culture and Bill and Ted fandom with a ton of modern reference on the robots. There's mostly cleaner versions of those old dark set photos or new, dark screen shots, with both sets of suits represented. The robots didn't appear a lot and all of their scenes were at night or in the dark. Ugh. I went to look at what the artists on the BOOM Studios comics made of the designs, and no one drew them alike, everyone just made stuff up (and kept it all pretty simple). Because the designs are a pain in the ass! I ended up using what I could make sense of from the online images, pulled out my old comics to fill in some blanks, and made some things up like everyone else (myself included). I really need to get over the whole idea that you need to draw everything.

Above: Grayscale scan of the cover pencils. I like to see how things look "in pencils" if I use color pencils on the original. 

(PRO TIP: You don't need to pencil in the dark areas. You don't even need to ink them in, if you go digital at any step in your drawing process you can just fill everything in digitally. Me, I can't help it, I draw/ink the black areas 95% of the time. I need the assurance of seeing what it's going to look like. And sometimes I find myself filling in the empty spaces with a pencil or pen without even realizing I'm doing it. Compulsion!)

Finished, raw cover inks. The only note we were given on the cover pencils from the licensors was that Bill and Ted looked "too gaunt" and I should address that. I think they were unaware that you don't ink everything in the pencils, and they were assuming some of the construction lines -- and smudges -- were going to remain in the drawing.

I think the inks came out pretty good, but my inks are never as vibrant as the pencils. They flatten, dampen the energy of the pencils too much. But I know I ink a hell of a lot better than I did when I was working on the original Bill and Ted covers. I had zero idea of what I was doing back then.  

I think the movie Death came out pretty decently considering this is the first time I've ever drawn him. It feels so weird to not have the skeletal Grim Reaper from the Marvel series in the cast...

...which is why there's a skull image in the sky above everyone. I inked it off the cover pencils onto a separate sheet of paper, and then erased the pencils because I was afraid I was going to ink that as well for no reason other than the weird pull of compulsion. 

The skull's a typical cliched omen bit but I also wanted to put it there as a nod to the skeletal Death from the Marvel comics. He was my favorite character to write in the old series, and while the William Sadler version is fun to work with, he's a lot grumpier and a lot less lovable, especially in light of his lousy mood in the third movie. Cheer up, dude!

Final cover. Digital clean-up, dropped-in skull and colors by Sarah Dyer, design and throwback logo by DHC's Brendan Thome. I'm very happy with the way it came out. 

What I wanted for the first cover was to go with something fairly generic and poster-like that presented the main cast of characters, with some energy and humor provided by their cheerful expressions. Also, I wanted to get Death, the Stations and the Robots from Bogus Journey in there to let folks know they take part of the story. In the comic we've been able to do some things with the non-human characters that were touched on or not covered in the third movie. Just a happy, goofy cover that hopefully will stand out on the stands.

All, right. Back to work on the third script. It's late, and I don't have a time booth, so catch you later, Patreon backers. 

Be excellent to each other.