Inking Godzilla Minus One

I don’t know what you guys did over holiday break, but Michelle and I just kept going back to the theatre to see Godzilla Minus One. We weren’t even necessarily huge Godzilla fans before this movie. I mean, of course he’s a ton of fun. He’s a monster. But this movie? It stomped us flat and left us breathless. Best movie we’ve seen in a long time.

When I was a kid, when I saw a monster movie that got under my skin, I’d spend days lying on the living room rug filling my sketch pad (and any other random piece of paper I could lay my hands on) with drawings of the monster. So it seemed natural for me to do the same thing with this new, powerful, terrifying Godzilla.

Big difference is that now I have better tools at my disposal. So I lightboxed my sketch onto heavy cotton watercolor paper, and went at it with Black Star inks and Micron fineliners.

My plan was to set up three distinct values — lights, mids, darks — and set up the composition so that they frame each other nicely, and lead the viewer’s eye where I want it to go. I wrestled over whether to render this in inkwash or hatching — each have their benefits — but chose to go with a very measured, hatched linework for the midtones to contrast with the chaos of the subject matter.

I had a lot of fun working on this and practicing my brushwork, hatching, and monster doodling. If you want to see me put the whole things together, Michelle and I recorded my process for this week’s video and talked about our Godzilla Minus One experience (no spoilers).