Mike Maihack
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Stargirl Cover!
🕑 Added 2022-10-20 15:30:02 +0000 UTCHi all!
I don't think it's been shared anywhere else yet so wanted you guys to get a first look at the variant cover I drew for Stargirl: The Lost Children #2, which will be out this December (Diamond code OCT223388 for anyone who wanted to have their local shop order it for them).
Believe it or not, this is my first official cover for DC Comics. It was a lot of fun! Thought I'd share a little about my process working on it.
The cover came about because I guess Geoff Johns, the writer on the new series, recently saw this past Stargirl fanart I did:
He then asked his editor to contact me about doing a variant cover and, because getting paid to draw Stargirl is like a no-brainer to me, I agreed. I was also pretty much free to do anything I wanted as long as both Courtney and S.T.R.I.P.E. were featured on it.
STEP 1: CONCEPTS
The first step was providing the editor with a few ideas of what I thought would be a fun cover. Nothing complex, just some roughs. I spent a few hours scribbling up some concepts and the above is what I sent. We both agreed #4 would probably be the most striking one for someone to notice on a comic shelf.
I wasn't sure what logo they were using yet for the comic so I just grabbed one offline to use as a placeholder.
STEP 2: ROUGH PENCILS
Turns out the title logo wasn't necessary since DC doesn't even use them for variant covers these days. Haha. Good to know! And nice not having to worry about the drawing interfering with the title.
These were my initial rough "pencils" for concept #4. "Pencils" quoted because like most of my art, this was sketched digitally in Clip Studio Paint.
STEP 3: BETTER PENCILS
Here I've refined the above sketch, "penciling" over it on a separate layer. I've added the striped background back in to see how it'd look. I do these first two steps in blue because that's the color I used to draw traditionally and I just got used to looking at my underlining sketches that way.
STEP 4: INKS
Same process as above but refining the drawing even further. I still call this inking for some reason even though no ink is involved. For those curious, I use the default textured pen in CSP for almost all of my work. It has a great tilt that mimics an actual brush very well and I love the fuzzy line it creates.
STEP 5: COLORS
For a lot of creators, this is where you'd see the "FLATS" stage, where you simply block in the various shapes with solid color. For the most part, I've stopped flatting my work, shading and coloring as I go. I've learned this has been faster for me and helps to get a lot of tedious decision making out of the way.
I do however toggle on and off a flat colored background to make sure I'm coloring inside the lines. Usually this is a color that compliments but isn't actually used in the rest of the illustration.
STEP 6: BACKGROUND
You can see in my penciled stage I originally planned on some stars and stripes in the background (to represent both characters), but it ended up that the stripes were just too distracting with all of the other lighting and color choices I made. So I left them out. The most important thing was for Courtney to be the primary focus so that's why I opted for the sort of halo around her. Like a star!
STEP 7: FINISHED!
Lastly, it's just coloring up some of the line work, giving the whole thing a bit of color correction (in this case toning down those blues just a touch) and adding some texture. And ta-da! Finished cover. I then send it off to DC and hope they like it enough to let me to do another one. :)
Comments
Gene Cahill
I love this so much, Mike!!!!
Mike Maihack
Thanks!
Adam Willing
Absolutely stunning, love it and massive congrats on this massive step!!!
