In The Life After, the Oni Press series by writer Joshua Hale Fialkov and artist Gabo, things can get a little complicated -- not only in the story, which involves religion, purgatory and even a dead Earnest Hemingway, but also in the construction of each issue. After all, this is a comic whose debut featured a 50-panel two-page spread.

But what does it take to create a cover for the series? Glad you asked! We're pleased Gabo has shared with ROBOT 6 his cover process for The Life After #9, which goes on sale in April (in more immediately news, Jan. 28 sees the release of a direct market-only $9.99 trade paperback).

Check out Gabo's step-by-step process and commentary below:

Step 1 – Sketches: The process typically begins when [Oni Press'] Ari Yarwood and James Lucas Jones remind me that a cover is due the following week, and so I rush to the kitchen and start drinking coffee straight from the pot. Often Ari, James and Josh [Hale Fialkov] will chime in with ideas on what they'd like to see on the cover, and more often than not the ideas vibe with what's going on in the issue. For Issue 9 we really wanted to include Essie and The Consultant duking it out, for obvious reasons you'll come to discover once y'all get your hands on the issue! I usually do anywhere from two to four super rough sketches of ideas that we've all come up with. I like to add the logo of the book on top so they can get a better feel for how the art will sit under or on top of it. For the sketch on the right, I had suggested that the background should be tessellated rabbits in full gallop, M.C. Escher-style.



Step 2 – Sketch Revisions: The gang decides that the sketch on the right is perfect, but they ask that Essie is a little more combative. I had originally imagined her dominating The Consultant to the point where Essie is able to break her and turn her into a battle horse of sorts, but that was me getting ahead of myself. A battle is what we want, so a battle is what I sketched out. And they approved!



Step 3 – Pencils A: I very often do all my pencil work digitally. It saves me time and a metric butt-ton of erasers. I try to keep the trade dress on while I'm working on the pencils so I can see how the piece can play and react with the title. I positioned Essie just right so that the credits read LE FIALKOV.



Step 3 – Pencils B: The tessellation was probably the most nerve wracking and wrecking, mind-numbing thing I've had to do on this project to date! I used Adobe Flash to work on it; the line tool let me bend the lines and keep everything super clean. After many hours spent trying to figure out a pattern that worked, I settled with what you see below. Not quite a complete tessellation, but enough to make yer eyes go crossed!



Step 3 – Pencils C: I export the rabbits and import them into Photoshop, where I have to duplicate the pattern once more to cover the entire cover, I won't go into how grueling that was—let's just say I didn't do a perfect job of matching things up, tessellation is tough.



Step 3 – Pencils D: Realizing that keeping the rabbits flat as they were is going to make the cover look odd, I decide to add a bit of perspective to them, as though Essie and The Consultant are duking it out on some sort of rabbit pattern carpet in some magical rabbit room. Happy with the results, I print out the pencils on an 11x17 paper and proceed to ink the piece by hand!



Step 4 – Cleaning Inks: Some people prefer to ink digitally, but I like inking by hand on paper, I can't seem to achieve the same feeling digitally as I do traditionally. That and I need to take a break from staring at that computer screen! Not to mention I then have a lovely piece of original art people can frame and place over their fireplace. After I scan the page in, I desaturate the piece to remove all color and then play with the levels in Photoshop.



Step 5 – Flat Colors: Here is the most grueling part of comic making, flatting. Grueling because not only does it take forever, but you have to figure out what type of color palette to go with. In this case, it's a fairly simply composition with no real setting to have to worry about, so the color choices for the background won't be too hard to pick. Initially I felt some warm earthy tones would work well—I wanted Essie's purples to really pop being that she's so small and is in the foreground. Also I wanted it to have that feeling of a jungle hunt!



Step 6 – Noise: One of the first things that my mentor Moritat (Elephantmen, All-Star Western) taught me was the use of noise as a base wash for my pieces. He explained it as if we were working on canvas, and adding a light winsor blue or burnt sienna wash to it will help set a tone to your piece, the grooves of the canvas soak up more paint, so you get those little speckles! This technique helps the colors sort of melt together, they blend a little so they're friendly. I usually refrain from using this technique on skies, I like to keep my skies nice and crisp.



Step 7 – Shadows: Next up is shadow work. I like to go with a nice desaturated purple or blue for shadows, and I usually drown the entire scene, or in this case, just the characters in it. I choose to exclude the background from this process for the moment, I want Essie and The Consultant to be the main focus here. Also I make sure to add a cast shadow on The Consultant's shoulder, from Essie. I know most people will just add their shadows to areas that ask for it, but the way I go about it, this pulls together all the colors so they sit under the same tone, much like the noise is doing already.



Step 8 – Warmth: It might be a bit hard to see the subtle warm color I've added to The Consultant and Essie, I do this to sort of “warm” up the areas where I'll be applying stronger lighting. It gives the eventual lighting I add more oomf, and creates a nice gradation to the forms, which adds volume!



Step 9 – Lighting: And now we get that strong lighting! The form begins to take shape, you see the bulge of The Consultant's muscles, the puff in her hair, the roughness of her bone elbows! Using rough brushes for The Consultant's hair and bones, and softer brushes for Essie's clothing and face provide you with a sense of what these creatures would feel like. To push the sunrise/sunset feel of this lighting I've chosen, I put some subtle blue lighting under the beast and Essie. Doing this pushes your eyes around, so you get a full feeling of volume.



Step 10 – That Background: Now comes a problem, it's all too orange. My original idea of having the background be warm to let Essie's purple dress pop gets drowned out by the bright orange lighting on her, so I decide to take a different route and color adjust the background palette to match Essie's palette. I do this in part because she's dominating the beast—The Consultant might be bigger and obviously stronger, but Essie is bound to be the victor.



Step 11 – Ground The Beast: At this point I felt The Consultant wasn't heavy enough. There was something missing, she needed to be grounded to something. So I added a nice rough shadow below her; now you get that sense that she's really huddled to the ground, waiting to swipe at Essie!



Step 12 – Bloody Mess: It's not a proper battle without some spilt blood right? A couple scratches here and there, some blood in the mouth, and splattered blood on the floor to really help ground this beast!



Step 13 – Glare: Some more subtle lighting touches, I add a gradient to the top left of the piece, pulling the background further back.



 

Step 14 - Atmospheric Perspective: The final step here, I drown the upper right in an off white to create atmospheric perspective. This method helps push the background even further, giving the floor even more depth and length than before while bringing Essie further towards us. Also, I add a bit of sun glow to the tip of her spear to really make it pop.



Step 15 - Complete: Now the magicians in production at Oni Press pick the appropriate color for the title to tie it with the rest of the illustration and boom—The Life After issue #9 cover is born! Mazel Tov!