Clouds, Shiny Bowl, and Snow!

Our latest project in my Advanced Graphics class was a book cover series project. We each read three stories and did a series of three book covers for it. Simple, right?

Wrong. The difficulty lies in making the covers similar enough to be recognizable as a series, but different enough to make them individually interesting as well as not making the series boring. Basically you don't want your series to just be a fill in the blank template. I made them similar by using the same style and organization of the type (same fonts, put together the same way, separated by three lines, etc.) as well as by making the illustration be a mix of a photograph and a drawing. They're made different by the placement of the text (this is a big thing that it's flexible), using different media for each drawn portion (Top: Ink, Middle: Charcoal, Bottom: Graphite), as well as just having different illustrations.




My favorite is The Snowfall.

Come One, Come All

This time, I display the circus poster done for my 3D illustration class, made via paper sculpture and photoshop. Enjoy!

Not too bad...

...for not having digitally painted in a while.

Just a quick (1 hour) digital painting to keep myself from getting too rusty.

The Faces Watching Me

Haven't had much time lately to draw for myself - or to sleep for that matter - but have some more faces I did using myself as reference.

Snow White and Rose Red

Not to be confused with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. No relation other than the name.

This was an assignment for my 3D Illustration class. We picked a fairy tale from the list, found a model and had them pose for us and then adjusted/aged the image and created a page layout for a collectors style book.

So without further ado:


And this image by itself in all it's fake aged glory:

'Eh Goggles?

Because I've been neglectful in the past with updating, and because it felt so good to just draw.

With a Flourish, Part 3

See, I said I'd keep going.

This is a continuation of my discussion/explanation of the why and how behind my design at this blog. (Part 2 is here, Part 1 here).

Today's discussion? Vectors.

Most images you see around the internet (if not all) are what's called bitmap images. These images are composed of, essentially, a map of colored dots, or pixels, that all form the image. The way that bitmap images are composed means that when you enlarge them, all you're doing is enlarging the pixels, so the result you get is a blocky, or 'pixelated' image. Vector images are different. Instead of creating a line by putting one pixel after the other, after the other, vector images create a line by using math, an equation, which tells the program that this line should be so wide, should start and stop with this length/proportion and should be this color. Because of this, you can endlessly enlarge vector images because the equation stays the same, you're just proportionally increasing the numbers in the equation. Okay, so thats how I understand it to work, anyway, but I haven't had math in years, so I'm a bit mathematically challenged at this point.

Anyway, the point being that vector images can be much sharper at every size than bitmapped images because it's relying on math instead of a colored sequence of pixels.

Because of this quality, I wanted to create the swooshes and swirls for the background design as vector images, both so I wouldn't have to worry about the rough edges from my pen marks, and I could make sure it was much more even. I wanted my circles to actually be circles, instead of my shaky hand's approximation of circles. It also allowed me to have consistent line widths where I wanted it - and over all, just have much more control over the forms.

Unless people are curious, I won't go into the intricacies of how exactly I created the image via vectors. Lets just say I made use of lots of circles and ovals as guidlines for myself.


The headline was also vectored - but for that, I wanted to incorporate Art Nouveau typography (which was very flowing and hand done. Made to fit the specific area) But I also wanted to tie the background into the header to make them relate to each other - but I didn't want it to just be text stuck inside a border.

I tried several sketches before coming up with one I could work with.


I started off with only partial borders, encorporating the same kind of swooshes and spirals in the background, but they weren't quite working for me. So I tried again.


I found this one to be more in the direction I was looking for, so I decided to run with it. I had to change the dimensions from my sketch in order for it to be the right size for the header, and some other changes and additions were made during the vectoring - but that tends to happen anyway.

Here's the final header:

American Proverbs

The assignment? Take an "American Proverb" and illustrate it with found objects.

The result? Take a look:

Studies

Just a couple more sketches and studies from the Twelve Dancing Princesses project. This time using marker to help with making the sketches more readable.

The Original Invisibility Cloak?

The train derailed again, and this is me trying to get it back up. Part three of the blog design stuff will come soon. But for now, have this. It's a motif-thing to go with the story/Fairytale The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Displayed are the branches with the silver, gold, and diamond leaves, as well as the goblet from the dance.

Yay for quick photoshop jobs! There should be more to come on this, possibly with an explaination.

(Read the story here)

With a Flourish, Part 2

In my last post I mentioned the work that went into the graphics of my design here, at Laura's blog. I also mentioned that I'd go into a bit more depth about it.

This may become a few part series.


I started out doing a good amount of research, looking at different styles within Art Nouveau. For each one I found that I liked and though might work, I sketched it down in my sketchbook, both to keep it in my mind, and so I've have everything in one place when I needed references. This way, I could also have all the different styles all there to look at so that I could mix and mesh the different things. The sketches with stars and arrows pointing at them are the styles I thought would work best. I wanted something more flowery, flowy, and less geometric.

Once I had these images in my head, I mulled them over, turned them around, mixed and matched them in my mind. And sketched. A lot. On whatever was available when the idea or urge came to mind.

Like my arm, for example.

Soon, though, I was working on finalizing a design I liked. I started here.

I wasn't quite satisfied with this, it seemed a bit too much, too involved. So I tried again.

This one felt much better, the trapped flower worked well, but it didn't quite have the feel I was going for. I thought maybe something between this and the first one.

My third attempt was better, but it just didn't flow nearly as well as the first two.


This was my last try and the final inked design. This is the one I ended up vectorizing. It had some of the more flowery aspects of the first design, while also being a bit more open and simple like the second, but still flowed well, which fixed the problem of the third.

Next up: Vectoring! And possibly the header.

With a Flourish

I've mentioned it a few times this summer, but in the void of work that was this summer I had a wonderful friend, Laura, who hired me to redesign her blog. As a French major, she writes her blog in French -- anything from translation tips to information about the internship she did in France a couple years ago. Amusingly, this didn't help me much, because I don't know a lick of French, but thankfully she was there to translate for me when I needed it.

The blog started out with just the Blogger Minima Template. Two columns, black and white text, and that's about it. Laura wanted a more open layout, one that didn't squeeze the text of the blog space into a tiny little area like the template had it. She also wasn't big on the one column of text being the only thing that made it to the bottom.

So, my directions were to un-squeeze the text, to make said text seem not so alone on the bottom portion of the page, and, lastly, to give the blog an Art Nouveau feel. Otherwise I had almost complete freedom.

(For those that don't know, Art Nouveau is a style/time period of art and design in the late 19th, early 20th century. It focused on very organic, flowing forms. It was VERY decorative, and quite frankly, it's my favorite period in art. Read a little more about it on wikipedia -- also, if you know who Alphonse Mucha is, he was one of the more famous artists for the style and period.)

This is the finished result.

I started with the layout, and once I got that fixed up I went onto the Art Nouveau portion. I did research, sketches of that research, and sketches of my own for the background image - and then for the Header. The sketches were vectored (A vector image is one that can be resized without losing quality) as a way to give them a clean, crisp look. But the thing I had the most issues with was the transparency/opacity behind the main portion of the blog itself - the coding was a bit difficult to figure out and find.

I'll be posting again soon to show a bit more of the thought and process that went into the design and graphics of the blog.

Past Due

Remember that children's book illustration for The Giving Tree? Well, I've been saying for a while that I was going to show the character design sketches for that. Now that I've finally dug that sketchbook out of the box it was in (I'm one and a half boxes away from being completely unpacked!) I can share!


So here we have the typical character turn around on the top of the page (And on a few of them, you can see the base shapes and forms I used to make the character), but what made this one interesting is having to design him at different ages. The age difference is so vast, that I was worried about not being able to recognize the character as the same -- So, to prevent this, I made an effort to keep some of his features similar. For example, his head-shape doesn't change through the years, and though his nose gets somewhat bigger, it stays the same basic shape. I also kept his eyes the same.

Oh! And for those wondering, I have found a job! I'll be working at my campus bookstore - yay minimum wage?

Practice, Practice, Practice

Just a relatively quick coloring of a drawing of an old character of mine. Practicing my coloring and trying to find a way that works well for me.

I've discovered I find coloring much easier when I use one of the shadow colors as the flat base color, and then chisel out the lights and highlights from there. For some reason the shape just forms much easier and much quicker that way. (I had previously been using a mid-tone for the flat base and then applying the highlights and the darks - and for some reason this took much longer and didn't look nearly as good. Maybe because of a lack of contrast?)

Brother Wart

So while working on the graphics for that blog I'm working on I was reminded of an old assignment, one from a couple years back, an avatar project. We were to pick a person - living or dead, real or fiction - and create four avatars, or representations, of them. These avatars had to represent different aspects of that person.

Obviously I chose King Arthur, British legend, king, and hero. I chose, also, to use birds as the avatars, partially because according to some versions of the legend he was turned into animals by Merlin as a child as a way to learn lessons. I also really like birds (This reason outweighs the first). The songbird represents the fact that he was loved by his people, the eagle represents his power, the owl his wisdom, and the heron his nobility.



The originals had all the bird with little crowns, but I thought that looked silly and unneccesary when I looked things over today, so I took them out. However, the owl still looks pretty keen with his crown.

An Update

So, that was a nice break.

The summer has been a bit wacky. Internship woes turned into job woes, I moved back to Springfield into my first apartment, spent two weeks cleaning the kitchen and working on getting internet set up, I've slept on the couch until Friday, when my Dad was finally able to come down, build my bed, and bring me my desk -- all while woefully unemployed.

This means I should have plenty of time to do art, right?

In a sense, yes. Sketches and doodles, mainly. Though I have been hired/commissioned to do the formatting, graphics, and design for a blog belonging to a friend of mine, so I've been working on that as well, and I'll share that as soon as it's done.

What else have I been up to?

Well, things like this:
One video

And this:
Count 'em. Video two.

And random makings of silly, such as this:
My attempts at being witty

Hopefully, now that I have furniture, I can get myself fully unpacked and I'll be able to find my other sketchbooks and be able to post something worthwhile soon.

Comic Character Designs

As I said in that last gigantic post, here are the character design sheets for that comic.



The goal of these was to get a feel for the characters before actually drawing the comic. This way, when I started drawing the panels, the characters would come more easily and naturally, and they wouldn't look stiff because I hadn't thought out how they would look from each angle and how they would move. Expressions are important as well - without them, a scene can seem very flat as all characters need to be able to interact with their surroundings both visually and verbally. The visual is even more important when there are no words in the comic.

End of the Semester!

It's finally here, the end is in sight! Just have one more project to turn in, one take home test to do, and two finals to show up for, and I'm done. Exciting, is it not? It also explains why I'm a week and a half late on my post.

Well, this one's another doosy, so get ready.

The first thing I'm showing today, is the comic project I just finished for my Image Design class. We were to choose a childhood toy (technically our favorite, but any would do), and draw a comic about that toy. I chose one of the stuffed animals I've had since I was little (Ok, littler than I am now at least): Piggy, my stuffed pig. Now, Piggy's a bit beat up, he's had some adventures in his day (entirely innocent, I assure you), and so I thought a comic on one of his adventures would be a great story.

Now, I decided, through the course of making the comic, that it would probably be best to leave it without any dialogue (You know, the fact that the dialogue I had planned was more a tribute to my geekdom, than anything else had absolutely nothing to do with it. ) The story told itself without any of that, and I felt that adding in the speech bubbles and words would just clutter the design up - so I left it free!

Also, when I was working on the comic, I wasn't sure if we were allowed to use greyscale or not, the assignment sheet specified black and white, but nothing else. So, in order to get greyscale without breaking the rules, I found some screentone patterns and used those, which I discovered to actually be really helpful, because it limited me and kept me from going overboard. It also made it much easier to keep my greys consistant between panels and pages.

The way I put the comic together was panel by panel. After laying the story out, thumbnailing, and then laying the panels out in a computer program, I printed the panels one by one, and did my pencils and inks straight into that panel. When I was finished with that I scanned everything in, toned all the panels individually in photoshop, and then put them all together into the pages. Each step (pencilling, inking, toning) took anywhere from 6-14 hours. It was kind of crazy.

Anyway, enough of me babbling on that. Just read it!






As I promised, here's the children's book (Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree). This was done with cardstock hand-cut and glued together. The 3d effect is given by separating the pieces into layers by using small pieces of foam core. I made the paper for the tree, itself, because I couldn't find a texture I was happy with; so I took a brown paper Kinko's bag, wrinkled it up until it was soft, and then sprayed spray adhesive to one side of it, and glued it onto a piece of dark-brown cardstock.










Up next: Character design and sketches.

That time of week again...

End of the semester stress and craziness is starting to kick in -- A.K.A. for some reason, I picked the most busy time of the semester to do a project that, by it's nature, would take up all my time (and my paycheck, for that matter).

We're doing illustrations for Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, and I've decided to do a kind of 3d-like cut paper style. I saw it here and just couldn't resist (And if you check out the example, you have to check out the rest of her work, it's simply amazing.). It may be time consuming, but I'm absolutely loving working on it, it's so different from what I've done in the past, and so much fun.

I should be able to have pictures up on it next week.

For now, though, I have what I was attempting to scan last week (Still don't know what was wrong with my scanner, but it's working, so I'm happy). It's nothing too special, just more practice, this time more realistic. Done from the image Josiah by brandonwitzel on Deviantart.

It certainly isn't perfect, the face is a little too narrow to match properly, bu it was good practice and it felt good to do something more realistic for a change.

Next up

Well, I was going to post up another drawing I did this week, but seeing as my scanner has decided to rebel...that's not quite possible. So, instead, have some photos!

These were taken at McConnell Springs in Lexington, KY. I'd love to go again when everything's green, and not just the water plants. The second image has been colorized for fun.

It's about time

So, I've been missing for a while, school (or lack of it as was the case during Spring Break) has gotten me off track. Waaay off track.

So, since I've missed so much, I'm posting much more. I won't be explaining much in this post, so feel free to ask if you have questions! (I like answering questions)


Inspiration comes in the strangest places sometimes, and can induce attempts at world-building. Like this, the idea beginning at some clouds I saw outside of the window of a plane I was on.
More sketches for the same world-building attempt
Sketches of some characters of mine. Ignore the bad attempt at a gun. I'm working on that.
Hand done type assignment for my Illustration class. It's an invitation to come see a documentary that's being shown at a film festival in Rwanda.
More fun with those grey markers on brown paper. Also white gel pen this time.
Quick mermaid sketch.
Character design sketch.
Practice at drawing poses, dresses, expressions, and fabric, done from the stock photography of Faestock at DeviantArt
Practice at drawing expressions, done from the stock photography of Faestock at DeviantArt.
First of three illustrations done to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
Second Metamorphosis Illustration. Tatting shuttle, a pen, and a needle and thread
Last image of the Metamorphosis illustrations. This is the final version of the one from previous posts.