Time-lapse: From sketch to final page

Here is a time-lapse video of the creation of one of my graphic novel pages for The Dead City Lullabies.

It’s always a “naked” experience watching these playbacks - because you get to see all the little errors and fixer-uppers that I had to do to get to the final page. But it’s also really interesting to see all the choices you make along the way, little reference pictures I drag in etc.

I’m quite happy with the end result. The whole thing took about 5 hours.

This was the process:

  1. Draw a super-rough layout on a small notebook, take an iPhone photo and drag it into an A3 document in Procreate, and leave it there at about 30% opacity.

  2. Make a sketch layer and sketch over the top of the rough layout.

  3. Add more refined linework on another layer

  4. Add flat colours

  5. Add detailed colours

  6. Add several layers of multiply, soft light and colour burn with soft spray paints to achieve the various temperature “glow” and “shadow”.

I hope you enjoy! Below is the video and the final page.

X Aidan, February 2020