Creating Comics!

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Title: Insert for Captain Amazing-Lad DVD

Client: Knight Entertainment

Media: Freehand, Photoshop

© 2007 Knight Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.

Creative Process

In early 2006, Knight Entertainment entered

into an agreement with my studio, Quality

Cheese Productions, to distribute the Captain

Amazing-Lad DVD. The DVD contained the

pilot episodes, the 2006 sequel, and several

minutes of behind-the-scenes material and

bonus footage.

To capitalize on the superhero aspect

of the character, Knight contracted me to

produce a comic insert to highlight some of

the DVD’s bonus material. I hired a model

to pose for the character of Liz Lavender,

looking to give the female lead an authentic

but retro look. Later, I scanned the drawings

into my laptop and used FreeHand to ink

and embellish all the line work. Then, I used

Photoshop for the lettering and gray tones.

The finished product had a nice mono-

chromatic palette and was strongly in-

fluenced by two of the most renowned

illustrators of comic books, Jack Kirby, for his

dynamic compositions, and Neal Adams, for

his sense of realism.

K

eith Carter began his career in 1986 pencil-

ing and inking for SilverWolf Comics, a small

publisher out of Sacramento, California. Since

then, his work has appeared in such publications as USA

Today, the Washington Post, and National Geographic.

In 1993 his career took a new direction when he be-

came an animator with Washington, D.C.–based studio

News In Motion. While working with clientele such as

Disney, CNN, and Lucasfilm, Carter developed his craft

for animated storytelling.

Currently, Carter is an Emmy award–winning broad-

cast animator for various television studios in the greater

Washington, D.C., area.

Keith Carter

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Keith Carter

Title: Heroes illustration for USA Today

Client: USA Today

Media: FreeHand, Photoshop

© 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

I was hired in January of 2007 to pro-

duce this full-color splash page for USA

Today’s “Life” section. The editors wanted to

do something special for a story concern-

ing NBC’s very popular new series, Heroes.

NBC had decided to put the show on an

eleven-week hiatus in between storylines

to build anticipation. A week before the

series would resume, USA Today made

the decision to run a full-page graphic to

recap its readers on all the previous events

on the show. We intended the artwork to

resemble a comic book/graphic novel.

This assignment took me four eight-hour

workdays to complete. Each figure alone

took about three hours to produce: one

hour to accurately portray each character’s

facial expression, one to pencil and ink all

the necessary figure work, and one to color.

That works out to twenty-seven hours for all

related body art. Then add in another five

hours for the design of the page and the

production of the background paintings.

This project was so well received by the

staffers of USA Today and its readers that I

was awarded the publication’s prestigious

Hainer Award for graphic excellence.

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Keith Carter

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Step two: When the FreeHand art is finally

complete, I group the related art elements into one

large composition file and copy the final product

into Photoshop at 300 dpi in CMYK, if the art is

for print. For television, I use 72 dpi with the color

mode set at RGB. Once the art element is pasted

into Photoshop, I use the polygon tool with a

5 percent feather to place gray tones.

Step One: Once the pencil work/hand draw-

ings are scanned and copied into FreeHand, I use the

circle and polygon tools to trace and embellish the

original line work. All graphic polygon shapes are then

filled with 100 percent black with all line art elements

set at none. This technique produces a very sleek and

dynamic boldness.

Keith Carter

STEP-BY-STEP

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Creating Comics

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