The making of Peak Oil #5: evolution of the artwork

This is the fifth in a seven-part series covering various aspects of the Peak Oil comic’s creation process.

Peak Oil: the comic I drew twice

As I mentioned in The making of Peak Oil #3: snags and delays, I encountered several problems when creating Peak Oil.

Some of these snags were technology-related. Others were related to me rushing to produce half-baked pages of artwork, and later deciding to re-draw at a higher standard of quality.

Interactive Peak Oil slideshows

I have uploaded some interactive slideshow presentations, which allow you to skip forwards and backwards in time.

This allows you to imagine the illustration process that I described in The making of Peak Oil #4: my step-by-step process.

Use the slideshows below to see how some of my pages evolved over time.

Page 1: [1] [2] [3]

Pages 6 and 7: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Pages 26 and 27: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Pages 30 and 31: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Pages 32 and 33: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Pages 45: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Pages 50-51: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Pages 52-53: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Pages 56 and 57: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Page 67: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Pages 68 and 69: [1] [2] [3]

Pages 72 and 73: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Pages 86 and 87: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Page 94: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Pages 102 and 103: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Page 106: [1] [2] [3]

I think the page 56-7 and page 86-7 scenes are the most vivid examples of how I re-drew existing illustrations post-July 2014 to make the artwork look more detailed and convincing.

In hindsight, the July 2014 versions of p56-7 and p86-7 look crude and crayon-like. This is largely a consequence of my malfunctioning graphics tablet. The final versions have a greater refinement and flair.

A call for patrons

As the below video describes, I am currently drawing three other comics in a similar vein to Peak Oil.

Can you ‘pay it forward‘ toward your next stuartmcmillen.com comics-reading experience?

If so, please become a recurring monthly supporter via crowdfundstu.com. Thanks in advance!

Other ‘making of Peak Oil‘ articles

This is the fifth in a seven-part series covering various aspects of the comic’s creation process. Next in the series is The making of Peak Oil #6: deliberate artistic decisions.