Designing The Strain Inside Front Cover by David Nestelle
You want to be scared? I mean, really scared? Well, you've come to the wrong place. This is an article about designing The Strain's inside front cover, which isn't very scary. Rather fun, actually. When a project like The Stain comes along, it's a blast to work on it. The imagery is so dramatic; it practically designs itself.
With comics there has to be a place for the creator credits, staff credits, legal information, and so on. Some companies leave a blank space in the artwork for that information to be set. Dark Horse, on the other hand, uses the back of the front cover, otherwise know-as the inside front cover, or as we call it, the IFC.
When I start a new IFC, I read the first issue to get an idea of what it's all about. I then pull out interesting pieces of art that might make an interesting—or, in this case, dramatic—FC. I wanted the Strain IFC to have a movie-poster quality, so I pulled up two images that would work in that context.
I thought this image was about as creepy as it gets and would make the dramatic splash I was looking for.
This second image would be used below the first to add a bit of story, something for the eye to go to after seeing the dominant image above.
On the left you can see the combined images with the color adjusted, and then tons of blotchy noise added, both to unify and add to the creep factor. On the right I have added the text and logo keeping with the movie poster look.
That's all there is to it. Thanks for reading, and until next post!
David Nestelle
Senior Graphic Designer
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