Illustrating a Twilight Zone Gag (for Jim Horwitz’s WATSON)

My friend, cartoonist Jim Horwitz, had a Twilight Zone gag in mind for his 3-times-weekly strip, Watson, and he wanted me to illustrate it. I accomplished this entire project in Clip Studio Paint. From roughs, to inks, to toning. Below I’ve posted some of the process steps. I also recorded the whole thing on video.

Based on Jim’s initial rough, I sent him my own rough. He approved this, so I moved on to the tight pencils stage.

At this point, even with tight pencils done and approved, Jim was still working out which direction he wanted to go with the gag. He had a few ideas and wasn’t sure which way to go. But that was his job. Mine was drawing. So I moved on to inks.

Now the inks are done and I’m about to move to the greyscale tones. The goal was to make it feel/look like an original Twilight Zone. The props and items you see scattered about the room are all from key episodes of the Twilight Zone.

This is what the final piece looks like, right before Jim sent me the final version of his gag. The entire thing, start to finish, completed in Clip Studio Paint. This was a fun project and I got to re-watch some of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes for reference. If you wanna hear Michelle (Run Red Run) and I discuss the Twilight Zone, Jim Horwitz, and the collaboration process, you can watch the video below. -v