Here's a more detailed account of how I basically go through each page..if I'm using direct stills. Some of the stuff I just have to make up--But, the general process goes something like this:
Step 1: Find a scene/still that I want to use for the story..Or, see a still that I make fit into the story. Either option is open really. Here I have Megatron from the movie doing his "Such heroic nonsense" line..and I wanted to use that but with Prime. Well, because of the shots they used, there wasn't just one full on Megs shot--so I had to pan 2 frames and then splice them together into one.
Step 2: Megs is now one single image, but now I have to get rid of Ironhide and recreate some of Meg's leg. I don't just paint over--although, I guess with the final version I could, but no, I use the clone tool to match the texture of the original still when I fill it in..
Step 3: I wanted Prime to be under the gun, and saw this shot earlier on of Prime on his back after being blasted, so the angle worked well enough so pop that in there..
Step 4: Rescale Prime as his head is directly in front of camera, needed to be much larger.
Step 5: I wanted to get his face more in line with Megs gun, so just flipped him over.
Step 6: Begin relining/redrawing Megatron. One advantage with photoshop is the straight line tool. I vary the thickness of the line at different angles etc to give it different weight depending on relation to the camera. One of the things I try my best to do is not leave out details, which was so prevalent in the G1 cartoon..
Step 7: Place Prime back in, extend Megatron's legs, begin lining Prime some as well.
Step 8: Detailing. Using the circle tool, made Meg's barrel a nice sharp circle instead of hand drawn.
Step 9: More detailing..I think?
Step 10: As I got closer to being finished with it, I was noticing that the perspective on the original gun was off, so working with layers and vanishing points, I decided to redo the gun and make it a bit more balanced.
Step 11: More detailing..trying to get it as accurate as possible.
Step 12: Detailing..connecting the dots..or, well, the circles, to make it one complete piece and connecting it to Meg's arm.
Step 13: Added finishing touches to Megs, on the gun, his mouth..and got a line in my head I thought of using for this.
Step 14: Start Prime, added detail, gave him his chest lamps, etc..made his lines much thicker as he's closer.
Step 15: As stated previously, I try to make these guys as real as I can, and I noticed Prime's head was drawn poorly in the original still from what it should be, so, again made my own correcting some errors.
