Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Well a few days early but still. I started this print in 2012 around fall. Unfortunately it stayed at a rough sketch phase, mostly because once it started snowing I lost interested in it! Fast forward to 2013 (last year) and I started it back up, but this time I finished it. It was a few months after Halloween so I decided to wait to post it till now.

This print taught me a lot! There is a reason it took me around 5 months to finish it. But it pushed my limited and abilities at the time, and is probably one of the reason why I was able to knocked out the rendering of the Pirate Illustration in a week.

I ended up rendering this print three times! Three! The first time was how I use to render my art in RGB, the second time was with warm and cool tones in RGB, and finally the third time was in CMYK. I originally started rendering it in RGB Mode in Photoshop. Which is not a problem if you are doing things for TV, but for Print use, you are supposed to use CMYK. This was something I was aware of, but never really bother to deal with in the past. This time though, multiple things happen. First it printed out very dark, which I knew was going to happen but not to degree it did. Secondly, the colors showed differently from a PC monitor to a Mac. On the Mac, it showed way darker, basically everything but the lantern area was black. Which I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the RGB Mode, the colors I choose, or the monitors settings.

So I made the decision to try to salvage what I could of it. I converted the image to CMYK and had to do some color correction using Hue & Saturation, as well as Levels. But the sky, clouds, moon light and grass had to be done completely from scratch. Over all, it worked out actually better. I like the colors more in the CMYK version then the RGB. Also viewing it on a PC and a Mac the colors didn't change as much.

I still had a few issues when it came to printing, but apparently that can be multiple things. If the ink is low that will effect the colors, if the ink is warm that will effect the colors, depending on the printer itself that can effect the colors. It was a pain, but it was worth it! Needless to say, I grew a lot on this piece.

The cool thing was showing this print at Motor City Comic Con and getting complements on it. Its always fun doing fan art, but when its your own idea and people actually reach out to say how they like it, its a pretty cool feeling. Also talking to some of the other artist at Motor City that work in the comic industry and hearing how they have made the RGB/CMYK mistake before, makes it stings a little less. I guess we all mess up from time to time.

I'll try to post some process of the Halloween Print next week, along with all three color versions. Thanks for stopping by,

-Tim