Author: Sean Michael Wilson

The 3rd volume of our book THE STORY OF LEE arrived with me today from NBM. I’m very glad to see it.

One of the good things about books taking so long to make is that when you received the finished book its often a year or so since you wrote it, so you can read it fresh, almost as if for the first time. I think volume 3 is excellent and the artist, Pirelli, has done a very good job on the art – especially as its her first book!

Thats the last in the series and a good way to wrap up the story of Lee, Matt and the others.

Check the book out more on the publisher’s page HERE

Or my  WEBSITE

More from Piarelle about how she makes her art:

“Next step, I’d print out the rough drafts to A4 size and trace them one by one (borders and speech bubbles included) onto Bristol board using a mechanical pencil and a lightbox.

Once I’ve added more detail to the page, I would then go on to inking the page using Indian ink and a ‘maru’ dip pen. Once the page is inked and dry, I would then scan it into my computer, clean it up and begin to screentone it digitally.

After screentoning, I would then add the text and after resizing, etc. the page would be complete. I wanted to make sure that I’d meet the deadline on time so at one point, I decided to screentone and complete one page a day – and thankfully I made it in good time!”

The Story of Lee is in December’s Diamond Catalogue and out Feb 2019.

Check the book out on the publishers page HERE

Or Sean’s  WEBSITE

The artist on volume 3 of The Story of Lee, Piarelle, tells us a little about how she works (p1 of 3):

“Before working on the Story of Lee volume 3, I needed to get a sense of the story and the characters, so I decided to read the first two volumes. The first two volumes were worked on by two different artists, so the visual styles were quite distinctive from one other. To me, the story itself made me think of ‘josei’ manga as it had a mature, realistic feel to it so I thought to take that approach on the third volume.

There is a process I went through in creating each page for the Story of Lee, volume 3.

First I’d start with thumbnailing the page layouts. Sean pretty much wrote on the script what he’d like in each panel, so I worked with that. I’d read the script, get a sense of the atmosphere in the scene and compose little page layouts on scrap paper. I like to plan pages in a way that enhances the story’s flow, so I usually plan where the speech bubbles should go at the same time I plan from what viewpoint to draw the images. I try to make both the words and pictures work in harmony together.”

Check the book on more on the publishers page HERE

Or Sean’s  WEBSITE