Repaneled: Action Comics #544

Brainiac - "Rebirth"

Here is the original panel, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gil Kane.

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And here's my submission to the REPANELED site.

Brainiac is one of the great Superman villains (probably my favorite, offhand), and the robotic version of Brainiac was awesome (although, I also have a great fondness for the green-skinned alien with diodes in his head, so I was glad to see his return of late, as well).  I may have to do some more panels from this story in the future...  :-)

And, for those interested, here's the process:

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STEP ONE:  I pencilled the image on 6" x 9" piece of Stonehenge (#140) paper, which was attached to a 6" x 9" piece of 1/4" medium density fiberboard with some size/glue.

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STEP TWO:  Here's a start on the watercolor, after about one hour or so...

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STEP THREE:  Here's the finished watercolor painting.  I then scanned it into Photoshop.

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STEP FOUR:  Using Photoshop, I added an air-brush effect to make the birthing chamber look more like glass.  I also darkened the edges to put more focus on baby Brainiac.  I also made the eye flat red in color as I think it give more emphasis to that area and draw the eye in to that focal point.

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STEP FIVE:  Here's the final image as it was when I originally finished it.  I went back-and-forth, but in the end decided to crop a bit off the top,  as it seemed extraneous (and put even more focus on baby Brainiac), and submitted it to REPANELED.

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Done with watercolor on 6" x 9" Stonehenge Paper and digitally touched up.

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