Teen Titans Collaboration Fan Art with Eric Ninaltowski [Process Drawing]

One of the artists that I follow is named Eric Ninaltowski. He has illustrated several published graphic novels, including Hand of the Morningstar, Monomyth, Samson the Nazarite, and more. If you want to see some of his art, you should go and check him out. For this specific collaboration, Eric provided the black and white line art and I added my coloring to it. It's always interesting to how two different styles can mesh together for a more unique look.

Eric's style is definitely embraces the Western drawing techniques made popular by American comics, specifically the superhero genre. Where anime uses color and cel-style shading to provide detail, superhero comics use the lines for texture, shadows, and depth. The definition of muscles are a staple. High contrast between light and dark help to define shape and shadows. It's not uncommon for comic books to have such detailed line art that the entire comic is black and white, no coloring required.

Because the line art file was provided to me rasterized, and unlayered, I couldn't use my go-to method of coloring using the paint-bucket fill tool. Therefore, I had to go back to my old technique of using the polygon lasso tool to create each shape and color on a separate layer. Setting the line art blending mode to "multiply", the color would show through underneath.

It was odd adding the shadows and highlights while having access to the original version where Eric colored it himself. I didn't want to do the same thing, so I decided to change the direction of the light source and have the shadows cast to the right. I also wasn't able to color the lineart (well, not easily at least) so I left it black. I stuck with cel-style shading instead of something softer and more subtle, another way to differentiate it from the original artist's version.

I love the Teen Titans and I actually have a poster print of the original artist rendition of this image hanging on my wall at home. Eric Ninaltowski is a very talented artist and I am a big fan of his work. I like this more mature take on these iconic heroes, a far cry from the Teen Titans Go! series. I am excited about the new crossover movie coming out later this year, Teen Titans vs Teen Titans Go!