When Kurt Busiek started his Astro City comic book series, he asked me to do an illustration that would be the background for his 'letters pages'. What was suggested as a spot illustration on the top of the first page, turned out to be my suggested 4-page spread illustration, muted down in tone to lay underneath the printed letters and information at the end of each issue.
Essentially, I was the first to be able to establish the actual full look of Astro City. Just a baseline design from which to springboard to the absolutely amazing work Brent Anderson has done over the years, illustrating this incredible comic book series.
Kurt sent me (at that time, I think it was by fax... you know, back in the 'olden' days) a drawing of a map, delineating the various sections of Astro City. I did 2 passes on it, the first one being the rough concept sketch posted below the Astro City logo, above. The second was the design you see at the top of this post, which Kurt liked because it looked as if you the reader might be flying above it.
The only Absolute Requirement was to have the Atom symbol atop the tallest building in Astro City be in the very spot that would follow the logo atop the first page of this 4-page letters section of the comic book.
The final piece was penciled & inked, approximately 18" x 47" on a single board. This being the first ever previs concept design I had done, it was a daunting challenge. Since I had never worked on something so large before, this piece took me a full month to do, what seemed to be forever and a day to complete. It didn't help that I really pushed my job up to (and a bit beyond) the deadline, which frustrated everyone. Especially myself.
With years more experience, I'm definitely a lot more efficient than I used to be. However, this piece felt like it almost did me in.
