How to Cook "Dinner"

Normally I would make a joke like "I've received hundreds of emails asking how I did this..." alluding that my geekblog here has legions of readers. Now ironically, I have received a couple of a peeps asking about it since it was posted, how I did it, if I did it (umm, yeah, I did, duh), and the like. So here's a behind-the-scenes-look.

It was this pic that I posted in a 40k report way back in November that got me thinking about the idea, notice the caption under pic in the actual game report also reads "dinner". That's what the Tyranids do; they eat everything.

Thinking about the "why" armies go to war, not just the how, usually isn't a factor in miniature games, but I still like to ponder the notion as part of the hobby. Why do the Tyranids fight? For food. How do they view the enemy? As food. It was a pretty easy concept, and not too far of a stretch to put two and two together. Shortly after I posted that game report I sketched a quick cartoon as seen above, nothing special, and it sat there forever.

I finally got around to doing something with it about a month later. Using a #303 Prismacolor pencil, I sketched out the pic in better detail. I also used a couple of guard models on hand in order to get the equipment just right. Using a model for reference trumps going from memory any day of the week. All of this is shown above as well. Next I went in with some fine tipped, permanent black markers, drafting pens actually, and went over my sketch. I use a bunch of different sizes, for line thickness, and then erase what blue I can when I'm done. The light blue pencil doesn't copy or scan, but I still like to erase as much as possible, just to clean it all up. When that all done I can either use my art markers, and color it by hand, or I can scan it and color it digitally. I opted for the latter, this way if someone has a non-Cadian scheme for their army or something, I can go back in and give the chicken leg that scheme instead. For digital coloring, I use a trial version of Adobe Photoshop I think I downloaded from their site. That's it, it's just some point and click with the paint bucket tool, a lot of patience, and there you have it, a nifty little 40k cartoon. It's not a web-comic like many have suggested I do, but it's a start in that direction.