2019 Fan Expo Boston Invincible colors by Sid Ven Blu

It's funny, because I'd read the first trade of Invincible and a few odd issues besides, but it wasn't my bag, so he was the character of least personal interest at the time of commissioning Tom Yeates. Since then, I've watched the first season of an animated show that probably wasn't in production in 2017, and am now much more informed and enthused about that property. Anyway, the core art for the jam was done during a weekend stay in North Carolina, and finished out of state. Once I got the original art back, I wanted to try to maintain a non-Texas approach and get the colors done on a road trip. The first new color job ran into problems, so I was apprehensive about the second, but how could I just have two characters done and stop?

So at the piece's third show, I was on the lookout for a color artist, and stumbled upon Sid Ven Blu. To my knowledge, she was an unknown at the time, so I only had her color originals at the table to judge from, but was impressed. It's also a really unusual request in my experience to have one artist color another's, at least in the realm of commissions. As I recall, Ven Blu generally worked in water colors, but that would have warped the paper and possibly interacted with the ink. I think she had some markers, or got some on loan, but still approached the project with trepidation. Thankfully, everything worked out swell, and she has since gone on to professional coloring work on IDW's Transformers (with the accompanying fan wiki stub.

"Isadora Venturini Blu, alias Sid Ven Blu, (born 1992) is a Chilean artist. Born in La Serena, Sid Ven Blu initially graduated from la Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago to study digital illustration. She later attended The Kubert School of art in New Jersey, USA, to focus on coloring by hand. Sid Ven Blu enjoys drawing mechanical designs both traditionally and digitally." My girlfriend was especially pleased to see a fellow Latina done good, and I really enjoy the subtle colors with cool lighting effects (the scan doesn't do it justice.) This pass made me much more confident that the coloring would turn out in the long run, but like the Butthole Surfers, we'd be doing it in Texas (with Daniel Dahl!)

Sid Ven Blu

• sidvenblu-art.com
• Deviant Art
• Twitter

Image Comics 25th Anniversary Jam Julie Winters & Friends process detail by Evan Dorkin

"Hey, just wanted to let you know I've been working on the piece. I wanted to know if there were any Image characters you might have wanted thrown into dead spaces as I fill things up. I can find reference online, but if there's a specific look/era/costume for a character, I'll need to be pointed in the right direction."

"I can connect the lines where needed on other stuff, no problem. We can talk about coloring when the inks are done so you can make decisions based on that."

"I wanted to check up on characters to fill it out with, because I have some space. As you can see so far I've included The Jungle Queen/Julie, She-Dragon, Boof and two Bruise Crew members, Bomb Queen and Trencher."