SCOTT HAMPTON: I settled on this overhead shot of Hellboy walking through a river of blood with the small coffins all around him. Simple, direct. The blood river suggests the vampire apocalypse in the story, the little coffins the childhood element. On a subconscious level, I think I signed the cover with the swirl that looks like an S. If so, it’s the biggest signature I've ever done.
SCOTT HAMPTON: Once I started drawing the finish I realized there were a lot of those little coffins. After drawing six or seven I wimped out and cloned them to make the rest.
DAVE STEWART: It’s a different process to color ink-wash art. I have to consider what is under the wash and how that affects the ink density. We have limits from the printer that can’t be exceeded or the ink will flood the press, oversaturating the cover. Usually we avoid that with a backing color under the blacks that brings the total ink density to an acceptable tolerance. That works fine with the darker washes in the image, but if you allow backing colors to appear under the lighter tones then you can see that. It muddies up the colors. So to avoid that we make some adjustments to the line-art channel, clearing out the lighter tones but strengthening the darker ones. Just a little more to consider than the regular ink work.
And there you have it folks, the finished product! Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead #1 is in stores now!