Wednesday 25 February 2009

Weird-wolf - Process

I'm doing some illustrations for Cambridge University Press in Madrid.
The illustration below is one a of a group going into a book called Tasty Tales which is part of the discovery readers range aimed at teenagers who are learning English.


I thought it would be interesting if I showed something of my process for an illustration like this.
It all started with a nice, fairly specific artwork brief and a proof of the text layout for each of the illustrations. I went back with a couple of rough pencil sketches to show different approaches for the illustration.


The design team and the author decided which option they would like to progress with and I produced a tighter pencil at 150% of the final dimensions.


After comments on the tightened pencil - I blocked in the rough colours I intended on using and started getting the forms defined... I tried to iron out anything that seemed obviously wrong at this point - and I also made the minor adjustments that had been asked for.


When I was happy I'd got the basics roughed in - I turned the whole document into blue-scale and printed it out.


I then did a quick bit of pencilling over the top of the blue - lightly picked out the things I did't want to miss or that I thought still needed a bit of defining - then I inked the sucker in.


I scanned my inks back in and used the channel mixer to remove ALL the blue - this left me with some inked lines that I could then re-composite with the original coloured version... I tidied up any stray bits and mucked around with some effects until I was happy!


Then I just cropped it down to the correct dimensions.

I hope that was interesting for the lovely people who follow my blog - and not just me wittering on about my bonkers approach to making pictures.

Friday 13 February 2009

Valentine's Day

Did this for my lovely wife's Valentine's Day card.


There's not much to say except that really.

Other than this marks the first whole year of being self employed as an illustrator...

That's cause to celebrate!

Thursday 12 February 2009

Magic Beans

The current DrawerGeeks topic is Jack and The Beanstalk:


Didn't have much time for this again...
I was going for a "not much more than a hill of beans" and a "credit crunch" - bad deal thing...
In the end I went for this cheap Deal or No Deal gag. You win some, you lose some... I think I lost this one!

Thursday 5 February 2009

My Font

I found this great free online font generation service via Mark Cardwell's Bad Librarianship blog. I'd been thinking I'd like to have a go at getting my own block capitals done as a font... Well I think there's a lot more potential than simply that with this fab online service.


I got this workable truetype font as an almost instantaneous result of uploading a template page and pressing a button. I know there are some problems with a bit of the kerning, but with a bit of fiddling, I think you could get a great font as a result.

I don't normally big-up things like this, but this one was relevent and useful to me.

Tuesday 3 February 2009

Judge Dredd - Costume Concept

Since the end of last year there has been a lot of discussion on the 2000AD forums about the new Judge Dredd film that's in the works. Danny Boyle's DNA films are producing it, but he's got nothing to do with the actual filming.

I thought the 1995 film was poor and I am hoping for so much more this time around.

I've curbed my enthusiasm until now and have just done a quick little doodle of the sort of direction I hope they take Dredd's uniform in the film.


Nothing too drastic or original, a twist on the established look.

Just a bit more 'riot' style padding in the body suit - a gunslinger holster ala Han Solo, then, all black; kevlar, leather, carbonfibre & thick rubber on the pads & accessories etc.

With the uber-cool looking Watchmen on it's way, and the bar being set I think by Batman begins, the Dark Knight and the first outings of X-men and Spider-man - Dredd has some big boots to fill!