In another evolution of my coloring style, I’ve decided to try loosening up the colors to see how it looks. The overall effect is slightly painter-ly, with splotches of highlights and shadows scattered around the page. I can’t decide whether I like it or not but without a doubt, it saves a little time over precisely laying down highlights with the brush tool in Photoshop. I’m going to keep experimenting in this style for another page or two and then decide whether to keep it or revert to the cleaner style I was using before this point.

In this page, you’ll notice lens flares. I heart lens flares. I’ve been searching for the right lens flare brush in Photoshop for ages and finally found one that gave the effect I wanted. One of the things I’ve wanted to incorporate into Variables is depth of field effects. Blurred backgrounds, lens flares, that sort of thing. You’ll probably notice that I kind of went hog-wild in the fourth panel with lens flares consuming the entire background. It was an experiment to see what it looks like if I constructed, say, an out of focus city background at night. It’s definitely something I will continue to explore in the future as scenes permit.

That’s all I gots for this morning. Click through the image below to see the entire first issue of Variables 2002.

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