Okay, the graphics for the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment are finally done, and I couldn’t be happier because I don’t think I could come up with one more bad pun for a blog post title.
In order to get this scene done, I brought in Fabio Redivo, who provided the lettering and graphic design for my first comic, Adrenaline. I gave him the notes I had on it and explained I was looking for something that had that “touch screen” feel to it. I sent him a few screen shots of menus and App designs for the iPhone and iPad, as well as a quick design I came up with in photoshop that I posted last week.
Here’s my design and what Fabio came up with:
I liked the look of the top part of the file and the “+” button was a nice touch. Because of it, I figured we could loose the text for “Additional Information” as it was self-explanitory. However, for the list of information, I wanted something that had more of a menu feel to it. I used an image from the comiXology app (since our comics are on that app) and place it on what Fabio had.
Here’s what he came up with,as well as a second version following my instructions to bring the left margin in, add a scroll bar, and some arrows for even more information:
So, now for the real test. What would this look like on the page. Here they are on page 1, first on a white screen, then trying it out with a backdrop on the screen:
I though this looked really cool, just a few problems; he forgot to put in Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, he put in the logo for the Department of Homeland Security, which is not the department these agents work for. The other thing, was that seeing these files on the page, I realized how hard it was to read the names. Here you can see a panel to panel comparison on how we fixed these problems:
We had a similar problem with the second page where it was hard to read what button Director Scheffler was pointing to. Fabio fixed this by reversing the text and background, which gave a highlighting effect, and enlarging the pressed button. Also, I felt the forms didn’t look enough like medical records. I just did a google search and found these form documents. If you could read them up close, they just say “John Doe” on them, so I’m not using someone’s real records for this.
Alright, so that pretty much covers it. The only thing left to do is have Matt reapply his colors to the new versions of these pages and tweek some small things to make it all come together. Here’s a run down on the process:
The original black & white pages:
With the graphics added:
And Matt’s colors, which he’ll reapply to the new pages:
You’ll be able to see this all put together and read the story when we post American Terrorist #4 next week. See you then.
