Visualization of Mephistopheles Theater/The Old Opera House, where the story takes place. I decided to take the story out of Paris - and the Paris Opera House - and set it in a nonspecific old city. This allows me a bit of freedom when it comes to visualizing what a madman like the Phantom would make had he more art history to take inspiration from and a limitless budget.

Detail of the theater door. In my humble opinion, there are not nearly enough Art Nouveau buildings.

A panel from the webcomic, showing some of the interior of the theater.

Another iteration of The Phantom, and another digital watercolor test.

Another digital watercolor test, this time with the main character, Christine Daae.

A digital watercolor study I did in preparation for the final webcomic, after I decided to switch from traditional inks. Erik/The Phantom went through many, many changes and iterations throughout this process, this was just one of them.

This isn’t an illustration, this is just me at night.

Another challenge I faced (and still face) is depicting music in a decidedly visual medium. I played around with the idea in many iterations, but this one I found the most effective. I have synesthesia, and it proved to be helpful in this context.

When I decided to continue the project, I immediately knew that the expanded story I wanted to tell would not fit comfortably within a silent format. So I spent a great deal of time figuring out speech bubbles. I eventually scrapped these pages and started the whole comic over again, but they were a valuable learning experience.

Since I don’t enjoy using speech bubbles, I decided to lean in to the silent film inspiration and try adding captions instead, with a decorative flower distinguishing which character was speaking. It turned out being far too convoluted, confusing and time-consuming, but was ultimately a very educational experiment.

The ornamentation I came up with to identify who was talking what I still thought I was going to do captions.

I started the comic purely with traditional inks and watercolors, and I learned a lot about the medium - as well as its limitations when it comes to comics - as I went along. This is a character illustration I did for the main character, Christine, while I was still in this phase of the project.