Traditonal art skills & Photoshop
PAINT A DRAMATIC COMIC COVER
Veteran comic artist Terry Dodson shows how he develops a strong narrative in his cover artwork for the comic ADVENTUREMAN
Artist
PROFILE
Terry Dodson
LOCATION: US
Terry’s been a professional creator since 1993 and is known for his work on Harley Quinn, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman and the X-Men. He’s now working on ADVENTUREMAN with Matt Fraction. terrydodsonart.com
Over the years I’ve created over 500 covers for comic books, so this issue I’ll be giving you a look into my tried and true method for doing this. I am working on the cover for ADVENTUREMAN #7, so will be revealing the processes I go through to create this cover.
The idea for this cover is to create a moody, spooky, adventurous feel. The cover features the main character, Claire, in the New York subways with gangster ghosts appearing behind her. What I’m looking to do here is set an eerie atmosphere and a heightened sense of drama to create the feeling of an eventful cover without any real dynamic action occurring in the scene itself.
There are some key rules to consider. For example, I know the main character needs to be forwardfacing so we can see her emotions. To add movement I decide to do place the ghosts sneaking up behind her in a crazy manner, having them rising above her to create a dynamic image. This way the viewer can see them clearly even though she can’t, and this adds a sense of narrative to the composition.