Tailypo

This past fall, my wife, brother-in-law, and I were hanging out at a friend's house. We were telling creepy stories to each other, and our friend asked if we had heard about the Tailypo. I hadn't heard of it, so my friend proceeded to creep us all out with the story of a creature that seeks retribution after a hungry, hermetic old man chops off its tail and eats it. The story is an old Appalachian folk tale that has many variations and endings, but all have the same basic elements. When I heard the story, I knew that I had to illustrate it somehow. I wasn't sure if I wanted to make a mini-comic, or do a series of illustrations. I ultimately decided to go the illustration route. It allowed me to be more detailed in the images, while still trying to capture the moody atmosphere and mystery involved around the mythical creature.

I started out with a pencil drawing and then inked and toned it in Manga Studio EX. If you haven't used that program, I highly recommend it. It is an amazing program for creating digital artwork, but especially comics.

Here's my rough pencil drawing that served as a basis for the final inks and tones. A few revisions were made during the process. I also had to stitch this piece together in Photoshop because my scanner wasn't quite big enough to get all of it.

Here's the final version of the image. Some compositional elements were improved as well as adding more depth with the rendering. I had a lot of fun working on this and got a little absorbed in the details.