Read the Orcs Must Die! Prequel Comic

Submitted by Rice_and_Eggs on Wed, 09/28/2011 - 08:00

Download the Orcs Must Die! Prequel Comic

Dying to know more about the Orcs Must Die! universe? If so, then check out this original prequel comic created by Robot Entertainment. This single-issue special comic tells the back story of the world and characters featured in Orcs Must Die! Click on the cover below to download the comic in PDF format:

Orcs Must Die! Issue #0 was created entirely in-house at Robot Entertainment. The comic was written by David Leary, lead designer on Orcs Must Die!, and Justin Korthof, the Robot Entertainment Community Manager. The cover and interior art was drawn by Bart Tiongson, one of Robot Entertainment's concept artists. For readers of our blog, Bart took some time to break down how he created the cover.

Making the Cover

by Bart Tiongson

Before deciding on the layout, composition, subject etc. for the cover of the comic book I first sketched out various thumbnails. I kept these very loose and didn’t pay a lot of attention to the details. I was just trying to get a feel for something that I thought would work well for the front of the book. Here are a few examples. In #1 I went with a basic heroic stance. Generic, safe, it was fairly vanilla. In 1B, I decided to spruce that same image up a bit by adding some graphic elements around the War Mage to make the image appear like a giant skull. I liked this image but I felt like it wasn’t clearly representing the mood of Orcs Must Die. I also realized that the cover could potentially be a “wrap around” image so that the picture would continue onto the back cover of the comic book. In images 2 and 3 I went with some ideas that catered to this idea more specifically.

Once the thumbnail was chosen, I decided to use some renders from our game to help speed up my process. It’s a tremendous advantage to have 3D rendered models to help create concepts and I did do that from time to time when creating the comic book itself but for the cover I wanted to just use them for proportions and style reference vs. actual detail specifics. By grabbing orcs in different poses and positions and just roughly pasting them onto the page, I was able to get a general silhouette that felt good to me while at the same time maintaining the feel of the orcs in our game. I wanted the cover to have a unique look and not just be a “paint over” image so I purposely kept the pasted orcs very loose and gestural.

Now I tightened up the image using the renders as a point of reference. The most important thing at this stage is to make sure that I’m happy with the composition and detail specifics of the piece because from this point on there will be little or no changes in these areas.

Next I digitally inked the light colored lines. These became the final lines for the painting.

After I was happy with the inks, I put in some quick tonal values and started to color the piece. I tried to keep a solid foreground, mid-ground and background so that the painting didn’t appear too flat even though there isn’t much depth in the scene. I also kept in mind that the right half of the painting is the actual cover and that is where all the attention should be placed. The action and interest is all happening on the right side so I want the entire image to convey that even when the left half of the painting isn’t seen.

Orcs Must Die! Comic - Cover Development - Color

Here is the full colored image with some effects and debris flying. I wanted to make it feel as action packed and chaotic as possible. This is the War Mage’s last stand and I wanted to give the impression that he was fighting for his life. After all, the game is full of moments just like this one.

Orcs Must Die! Comic - Cover - Full Color

And this is how the cover appeared for the San Diego Comic Convention.

Orcs Must Die! Comic - SDCC Cover Alternate

I hope you guys dug my blog entry; stay tuned and come back soon!

-b

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