Wacky Reference Wednesdays, No. 441

Wacky Reference Wednesdays, No. 441

Wednesday, November 11, 2026

GODZILLA VS. X-MEN #1 (variant cover). 2025.
Ink on bristol board with digital color, 11 × 17″.

It may be work from last year, but I'm still going strong! The main reference for this cover was yet another cover. (Art by Herb Trimpe, pictured below). Whenever Marvel asks me for an homage, I usually say yes — it's one of the easier gigs out there, and always a lot of fun.

Dumb comment

Most of the hard work was done for me, but I needed to swap out some characters. Even though I know the X-Men well, I still like to have costume reference. For me, the best reference is usually toys and figurines, which always provide plenty of angles, if not full turnarounds.

original inks (available here)

I thought doing the energy effects in paint would make the computer coloring process easier. I was wrong. There's definitely a way to do it, it just didn't go as smoothly or as quickly as I had hoped. Part of the reason is just me — I like having a bit of the traditional texture show through, which just complicates the selection process in Photoshop. Will I ever learn? Probably not.

digital pencils in Photoshop

As usual, I color code my layers for each element using Layer Styles. This makes it easier to tweak positions, select parts of a figure, and just keeps me from drawing on the wrong layer. I have a bunch of saved presets, mostly set to Multiply. If a layer needs to be opaque, I'll tint the whole thing with a 30% opacity color. You can see this above with Jean's pink effects and the yellow railing.

Total hours: 30.25

roughs: 3 

color study: 1 

pencils: 10 

inks: 8.5 

flats: 2.5

colors: 5.25

digital roughs in Photoshop

⊡ 5:00:00 AM