Night of the Little Dead - Halloween illustration and process

Every year, when October rolls around, I get the opportunity to do a few Halloween illustrations. This one, Night of the Little Dead is for a project I'm currently working on and it was a lot of fun. Below are some of the process steps, and if you'd like to view the piece just a teeny bit larger, I have it posted on my children's art site, vincedorse.com. 

This was the rough sketch. Some of it was done pencil-on-paper, and some of it was roughed in digitally. It didn't have to be too precise, I was just placing objects to see where they'd fit best in the composition. The cat, for instance, used to be where the zombie is, and the zombie was, apparently, trick-or-treating on another block.

These are the final pencils. I'm always experimenting with the way I put images together, and I thought this time I'd bring the pencils almost to completion before scanning them for color. It's a good way for me to work out values and contrast and it gives me a much tighter map for my colors.

After the pencils are scanned in, it's just a matter of laying down color digitally. I cranked down the intensity of the pencils a lot because I knew I'd be doubling up on the lines with my brushstrokes. Then I just went in with loose, layered strokes of color until it was finished.