Shawn Gaston already laid down the science in the previous two installments. Let’s see how he brings it home.

From Shawn:

Step 8: I scan in a very rough background image. This was actually drawn in negative, and then I inverted it. Originally all of the black areas were white and all of the white areas were black. It’s a trick I used now and then on Doors and Windows, and I thought could be fun here.

Step 9: I detail the background. This consists of two slightly contradictory steps, cleaning up a lot of the lines from the original, and also adding a lot of distortion/roughness to the whole thing.

Step 10: I paste in a distorted version of the cityscape from our logo in to the background. This will mostly get covered up by the figure in the center, but it’s a fun detail that amuses me. At this stage I also shade in the windows on the buildings.

Step 11: I widen things out a little bit, to make room for our hero. I also distort the background a little bit more here.

Step 12: I unhide Fallon, our Bulldog. You can notice a very obvious flaw here, where the black shadows on Fallon cause him to disappear on the black background behind him.

Step 13: I experiment with a few things, and in the end settle on a combination of adding a slight glow behind Fallon as well as a solid white/grey outline around him. Now all that’s left are a few details and slight tweaks, so I send the whole thing off to Jason to get his opinion.

(And I liked it! Shawn and I then discussed how to bring it home. — Jason)

Step 14: Final touches! I lowered the horizon line, to enhance the idea that we’re looking up at this as opposed to being at normal eye level. I also switched the side the store front window is on and added some posters to the walls and some broken windows to some of the buildings. I added a moon and stars to the night sky, placed so that when we have the red band across the moon will be mostly covered. The moonlight meant I needed a bit more of a highlight on our hero. I also tweaked the cigarette and gun smoke, and made a handful of other minor changes.

Shawn then sent it to me for final placement and trade dress. What he didn’t know is that I made a few changes to my original idea.

So what’s the final cover look like?

Stay tuned.