Hiya folks. Zombie Apawcalypse was originally envisioned as an animation. I knew I wanted to start it with a voice-over, so before I sat down to actually storyboard the thing, I figured it wouldn’t do any harm to create some backgrounds for the intro shots. Then while storyboarding, I realized just how crazy I was to consider taking an animation of this magnitude on all by myself. And, having no team to help, I decided instead to make it into a comic.
So, the opening shots, originally created at 720p resolution, were shrunk down into the comic, to a size where almost all detail was lost. As these were some of the first pieces of art made for the project, the style evolved quite a bit, and they don’t quite stylistically match up with the rest of the comic. But that sort of thing will happen.
1st opening shot – Aerial shot of town – Click on images for full size
This is the only image I actually redrew for the comic. I planned to have a slightly sloppy style when originally planning the animation, but by the time I’d gotten down to making the comic, I was leaning toward a much less sloppy style, and this just didn’t cut it anymore.
2nd opening shot – Main St
Trivia fact – One of the wrecked cars is supposed to be a Miata.
3rd opening shot – Saloon and park
4th opening shot – Bob’s Auto
One of the things that annoys me the most when working on art, is going into great detail on an element of an image, then realizing all of the detail has to be scratched and redone, because some major element of the image (perspective, layout, etc) doesn’t cut it. So I will typically start with a very loose and scribbly picture to make sure the layout of the background, or all the character poses are satisfactory, before doing the details. Here is the scratch art for Bob’s Automotive, followed by the final version.
5th opening shot – leading the reader towards the outskirts of the town
6th opening shot – edge of town
Stay tuned for more Behind the Pet Door…