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The Blind Banker Cover Process
Cover for Sherlock: The Blind Banker #2
Published: February 2017
Client: Titan Comics
Media: Digital art
A cover commissioned by Martin Eden, editor at Titan Comics, for their series reprinting a manga adaptation of the Sherlock episode, The Blind Banker. Yes, that’s right; a cover for an English translation of a Japanese comic adapting the British TV series loosely based on the Arthur Conan Doyle character Sherlock Holmes. The brief was fairly simple: it could be something from the TV show or a generic Holmes or Holmes and Watson. The only complication being that everything had to be approved – not only by Martin and the higher editorial personnel – but also by the licensors (which may have been Hartswood Films, the BBC, Benedict Cumberpatch’s image rights agents or the Estate of Conan Doyle; it’s a contentious issue).
The first thing I did was to watch the episode (fortunately, and probably illegally available on YouTube at that time) for research and take some screen grabs for reference. Titan also sent through some generic Sherlock images. From that and other reference material, I created about half a dozen rough layouts (with dummy trade dress) and sent them to Martin.
He chose two layouts for me to work up into more detailed roughs, and then once the final choice was made, I started on the final artwork, created entirely digitally, using Photoshop and my new Cintiq tablet. Some of the various stages and layers of the Photoshop document can be seen in the gallery below.
Some changes, including some adjustment of Cumberpatch’s likeness and making his coat and scarf a bit more ‘billowy’ was required by the long chain of command, but it was quickly approved and finished in good time for the publication date of February 2017.
Click on the images below for an annotated slideshow.
Process Video
Below is a short process video I made around the time of publication.
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