While I always enjoy working on the Minimate posters we create, there’s an initial overwhelming feeling when sitting down to a blank piece of paper. With this round of posters, it was up to me just to handle colouring duties on Uriel Caton’s line work. You’d think it would be less intimidating to have the lines available before me, but all that white background that needs to be filled is just as daunting.

With the Dark Reign poster, I began with Captain America because he was one of the main focal points. Despite being taught to start with backgrounds in the past, I always figured if I didn’t get the main focal points right, then there’s no point in continuing until they were.

By the time I had finished Captain America’s base colours, the feeling of intimidation wore right off, as it does on all other posters. I then get into some kind of zone, where I just colour like mad. I usually come out of the zone hours later, wondering why it’s now dark out, and curious as to why I’m hungry. At least at this point, there’s a great poster coming through on my screen.

After shading Cap, I moved to repeating the process on Iron Patriot, and the background elements. I then made some layers of lighting effects to help mimic the reference, but something was missing. It just didn’t have the same feel as the original. The flatness of the background colouring, despite the shading, just didn’t feel quite right.

I realized there was no real texture on the background elements. Fortunately, my parents were considering a renovation on their kitchen at the time, and had many samples of various counter top and floor tile textures handy. After some quick snapshots of marble, granite, sandstone and others, I had a library of textures available. Some Photoshopping put them in place and I think they really helped add that little extra to the piece.

Later, moving onto the Secret Wars poster, I had that same daunting feeling when I got the line work of not one or two but sixteen characters. There wasn’t really one specific focal point here. So, I went with a personal favourite and began with good ol’ Spider-Man.

While I do so on all of my work, this poster really hits a huge point of basic Photoshopping. Use layers in your work, and label them intelligently! You might have to move some elements around after you’ve begun working on them, so it’s best to create separate layers for as many items as you can. I may go overboard, but each colour on a character gets its own layer, in its own character folder. I can then move them around freely, or change colours at will without affecting the others.

It always makes me groan to see files with “Layer 1” through “Layer 186” listed, all out of order, with no rhyme or reason to what’s on what layer. Need to change that green tone to Hulk’s flesh? Good luck finding it. In my file, I would look under Characters > Hulk > Colours > Flesh. Maybe it’s a bit much, but it’s a lot less frustrating this way. Especially if months later if a revision is needed and it’s not so fresh in your mind around what number layer that green flesh was on.

For Beverly Hills Cop, I used the same colours I’d chosen while picking out colours for the actual Minimate as a basis, and then tweaked them to my liking. Since I had recently worked on the Marvel posters, and there was only one character and a background to focus on, it was a lot less intimidating to work on. Still, the initial pang of “where to begin” was present.

In the end, I’m really proud of the works Uriel and I were able to create. As mentioned above, I really do enjoy working on these posters. It’s always great to see them used in advertising material, or on the packaging themselves.