This is actually a drawing I completed of Okto back in 2009. I completed it on my spare time and had planned to use it as an advertisement for the comic series, but ended going with some other drawings. Now that the first issue is available on www.comixpress.com , I thought it would be cool to come back and find a way to use this as an ad after all. I scanned the image into Photoshop and created a channel layer for the line art as usual, then I decided to lay out a color scheme for the background. I wanted to experiment and attempt to hone my skills a bit, so I decided to depict a sunrise. The gradient tool helped me create this, and I added the stars in the upper sky to invoke the sense that the sunrise is happening before the viewer's eyes. From there, it was simply a matter of laying the flats, shadows, and highlights of Oktopus' body--making sure that the colors reflected the atmospheric change taking place. I really enjoyed exploring this, just as I did creating the rain and lightning effects for Issue 2's cover.