Angel: Barbary Coast #3 – Studio Notes by Frank Stockton

Several months ago, I was asked to do a cover for Angel: Barbary Coast #3 at the last moment, because the regular cover artist was unable to get his image in on time.

Days before, I remembered having a conversation with Sam Weber, and he noted that a lot of times, tight deadlines lead to simpler and more powerful images than what we might come up with on a longer deadline.

Barbary Coast takes place in pre-earthquake San Francisco’s Chinatown, so I wanted to make that come through in the design. The first element of which was the border, which is simple and reminiscent of the type of mouldings you might see in Chinatown. Another was the color design, which I thought had to be a red and black duo tone, similar to the type of color printing that was most common around the turn of the last century.

After working up the pencil drawing, I felt that over-all the composition was strong, but it seemed like a lot of the story elements, such as the Chinatown rooftops and extra traces of the dragon in the background weren’t quite working. That’s when I remembered my conversation with Sam, and I realized that conceptually it was probably better off simpler — not every cover should be a movie poster montage.

The final drawing was done on toned paper with India ink and gouache, in an attempt to save even more time after bringing it into the computer.

This entire cover was done in about a day and a half from start to finish, and fortunately turned out pretty good.

I’m enjoying my cover work, and while I think it’s over-all pretty strong, I still haven’t quite hit my stride with it.

Thanks for reading,

Frank