TDAW and Proprietary work

The corporate proprietary work I've been doing for a while now has prevented me from having samples to widely show. What I will show is something similar, "Trapdoors and Whores".

 The story is from a germ of an idea I had several years ago of a librarian/investigator who goes after a rare book about Tacoma. So, like the paid work, I was doing I had only hints to go from, leaving a fair amount of room for interpretation.

The notions of the Tacoma Tunnels and Dashiell Hammett was pretty cool, so those were tossed into the pot to boil. I wanted to play around with mixing up truth with fiction in a way that was hard to tease apart. That's why the characters are real-ish. To quote Denny Eichorn, about his auto-bio comics, "It's true enough!"

 I did all my research on the fly, while doing each frame. I say Frame because, again, I wanted to work in the way I am doing storyboard work. Working out frames at a top speed 50 per day. I set a time limit of 30 minutes for each frame. I forgot to account for writing! That took the bulk of the 30 minutes. This was also an experiment with Sketchbook Pro, to see what the program could do, and delve into other areas that the proprietary work had no reason to go into.

 I mentioned the story and that I was thinking of doing it like the  corporate proprietary work, "storyboards", to one of my clients. He replied, "Do it. Start today, no roughs no character sketches, just go." Why not!?

Some frames were good, 

some, not so much.

So for 59 days (nights actually, I wound up doing them just before bedtime!) I carried on this nonsense. It showed some strengths and weaknesses. It also helped revitalize the corporate work I'm doing now.

These are a few of the 59 frames, sort of randomly picked.
I feel it's time for another romp!

2012 February

Isn't it nice when blogs have recent updates?

So, what have I been working on lately (or since June!) well…

Top Secrety Storyboard Stuff: Shhh…trust me it looks cool!

Mogo Charms: Two waves, (a wave being a group of charms.) The charms are for pre-teen/tween-age girls and boys. I did about 12 sets of three. Including a commemorative set for the Royal Wedding. It's the smallest art I've ever done, one quarter inch in diameter! Most people would not know I've done quite a bit of work for the tween-age girl market!

Morty G. Filtercat for Filter Talent: I was brought in to do ideation, character design and assets for Filter's Holiday website, I wound up doing the animations as well. There were nine animations each about 12 seconds long, one for each cat life, and a resurrection animation as well. Plus the cool cat skullz icon. This is the kind of stuff people think I do. Blowin' up cats, tons o'fun!!

Friendly Neighborhood DrawVatar: Worked two events drawing live for Filter! Geekwire Launch Party and the Seattle Interactive Conference. I designed and illustrated the DrawVatar logo, which got me a free lab coat! "Don't forget to tip your illustrator."

Masque of the Red Death: Added color to the black and white version of the story I adapted for Graphic Classics. Also illustrated the back cover. This adaptation was originally in black and white, so I made the black work as red and all the compositions are based on positive and negative space. It was quite a challenge to come back to it and add color, without screwing it up.

The Negro: Two page adaptation of the famous Langston Hughes poem for African American Classics. This was and experiment in completing the art as vector, textures and all. Developed this as an in-class demonstration while I was teaching Design at Pierce College. The challenge was in using this to show off various tools in Illustrator and not have it look all "vectory". I wanted to show my students how to make subtle use of some of the more overlooked and powerful vector tools. I created patterns, imported textures, and adjusted attributes to give the pages a natural African art look and feel.

Fart Proudly: Another adaptation/experiment (!) this time of Benjamin Franklins letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels. Taking into account Franklins wit and sarcasm, this was done as if he had his own daily political comedy show.  Again, I was making use of some under appreciated tools in Illustrator. Also showing how carefully setting up a file at the start can make working quick and give the art a cohesive and distinct look. This is to be published in "The Graphic Canon" from Seven Stories Press. 

Also started and completed (yeah!) a little experiment, "Trapdoors and Whores" on my Facebook page. It was quite a fun experiment using the methods from my storyboard work. Many thanks to the people who liked it. More on TDAW soon in my next post…really!

On-Model, a philosophy of line

I had a good start for this post but, well… Anyway there are few challenges more exacting for a cartoonist than staying on-model. Sure it's one thing to draw your own character consistently. That's more like getting your own signature right. But staying on-model, whole different thing. It's more than just imitating a style. Often you are tasked with creating art with the character in a new pose or setting, that doesn't yet exist.

I've had the great fortune to work on at least there cool on-model projects.  (These illustrations being one.) Cartoony characters are the toughest. You can't hide differences in a field of lines (or "hay" as the old times used to call "hatching".) like you can with comic book characters like Batman, Superman or Hay-Bale Man. There are fewer lines so each misstep is apparently out of line.

There is lots of information on breaking down characters to their basic shapes so you can get a better understanding of them and how they work in 3 dimensional space. But, I think it also helps to understand where the character comes from, it's ancestors, what the original cartoonists were trying to do, and how they worked.

Some things that help keep you on-model are mistakes made early on, short-cuts taken by previous cartoonists and just plain effects from they way they are drawn. Like the character said, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

For me staying on model is more about getting into the head of who (years of other cartoonists,  a current cartoonist, or a model sheet) and trying to let it flow from there. Like a cartoonist profiler! This goes beyond shapes and form because you want the art to have some life.

When the drawing is done, it's fun to look at and see a favorite cartoon character, in a new pose or setting that you created and realize you made it from scratch. And it looks like the real thing. At least that's my philosophy.

Illustration Robot

Illustration Robot's Arron Petz asked me to do a little show and tell. Sometimes talking about my illustration work is like living a re-run. I like it, remember I liked it the first time around, and so this time I might seem a bit bored, but I'm actually thinking about other things that might be out of the obvious in regards to the illustration. Like a robot with two heads.
Here are seven illustrations I think will show an arc from conventional airbrush to digital airbrush. No matter what I do or what application I work in (Painter, Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, or Sketchbook Pro) I try to make the concept/idea most important and not the technique.

 Nora Jones: This was for No Depression magazine. A lot of my editorial work was black and white airbrush, which I really love doing. Well, monochromatic to be really honest. So this is typical of that. I work at a low pressure setting on cold pressed board so there is a nice organic texture to the work in the sprayed areas and in the line work. While working for The Villiage Voice (printed on not that great newsprint) I learned to keep the work to three values, basically. This prevented the image from becoming muddy when printed. I love the graphic nature of working this way.

Holiday Art: Full page newspaper illustration for a Holiday Arts section. This was sprayed as black and white, then I added the colors digitally in Photoshop. Just basic layers set to multiply, nothing fancy, yet. Still playing with how hue affected values, shifting the compositional focus.

Brandy (w/ Timbaland): Florian Bachleda at Vibe gave me a pretty nice playground for doing my conventional airbrush stuff in color. Interesting subject matter and he gave me a lot of freedom, but also pushed a bit to make sure the concept and execution were spot on. I have a so-so color sense. Airbrush required a lot of planning and sometimes working almost blind because of the frisket. But it was like Christmas when it came time to remove all the frisket and see what I got. This is one of my better color airbrush illustrations. Again, mostly one color and the value/shape range is low. I always set it up by shape/areas. Like, "skin", "dress" and background". Each area basically one value with slight variation within. Timbo's face was sprayed in originally, but Florian and I thought he looked to fat. So I sprayed another face and added it digitally, along with the color.

Beth Orton: Grant Alden at No Depression is another wonderful art director. Plenty of great assignments and room to experiment under a helpful/watchful eye. I'm really pleased with the concept on this, which extends into the execution. Her transparent fingers sort of shy and not quite covering her mouth, suggesting how she veils her meanings in her song lyrics. Again this was sprayed with black ink and colored digitally. I made a few adjustments to the values after scanning so the color would show in the darker areas.

India Arie: Vibe magazine. This is again, sprayed conventionally, but there is an equal amount of digital work done. Tweaking the value areas, adjustments to the face and line work. And a lot of layer manipulation to get the color right and allow the texture to show through. Actually did this illustration over from scratch! Got very comfortable manipulating the texture in photoshop.

Ray LaMontagne: So I loved the Beth Orton piece so much I copied myself for another No Depression illustration. If you look you can tell. The difference is that this one is all digital. If you look close you can see tell tale signs, but this is a big leap for where I was heading!

Tracy Morgan: And we arrive back at the start, sort of. Some of my first black and white editorial airbrush pieces were for The Village Voice, and here is a recent one, but this time digital. I created my own texture, and worked in Illustrator, Photoshop and Painter. My goal was to provide my client with art in the style they wanted, but with the speed that a digital work-flow allowed. Ta-da! Some of my oldest art director friends couldn't tell the difference. "The android had successfully replaced the human!"

On editorial work like this, I try to come up with a strong concept, that doesn't rely on style, but takes advantage of it. Like Norah Jones's body being a piano shape. That concept could work in another style, but I like to think that is shows up well in the style I used. Same goes for the depiction of Brandy as a sort of Egyptian Queen/diva, or the happy, glowy, pop feel to the way India Arie is rendered. Even the Renaissance approach to a simple portrait of Ray LaMontagne. Style is subservient to the concept. Or at least that's what I'm aiming for. I welcome any and all comments from blog readers and other Illustration Robots!

HIDDEN: Full Color Storyboard Process: Built for speed

 

Working fast can have it's advantages. It's great practice and a good way to get familiar with streamlining work-flow and working methods. It frees you from getting bogged down with application tricks and techniques, forcing you to rely solely on basic illustration skills.

These images are part of a project I worked on in December. All secret and copyright protected, so forgive the lack of details, but, there were over 30 images total. Backgrounds and characters were done separately. I was able to devote attention to each. Most anyone who's done backgrounds will tell you its best to think of them as characters. What you put into the backgrounds, how you light, draw and color them, defines their personality. I've found that a well considered background helps define the other characters in the scene. Sort of like saying where they come from.

When it gets to the characters you can really go, they have a rich setting to react to, crammed, stinky cabin, hot dry desert, calm blue stratosphere. And if you've developed the characters fully from the start it's that much easier and fun.

 Technically speaking there were all done this-a-way…
I did a rough breakdown for all 30 plus images in InDesign. Set up a page format containing the frame outline and written notes/script. Then drew the rough concept with the pencil tool. This way I could easily rearrange the frames and add or remove frames and notes. Once that document was approved, each frame pasted into Sketchbook Pro and did a detailed rough for client approval. Finished line art was done in Sketch book Pro and I spit me out a psd file to color in Photoshop.

In P-Shop I set up two brushes, with opacity overrides in the toolbar, and one eraser. I worked with as few layers as possible for speed.  I remember a friend saying, " layers are for pussies." I had a separate layer acting as a palette, so I could use  the eye dropper (accessible by quick key) to swiftly change color. It also allowed me to see how the colors would look in the composition which was useful.

I had a plug-in I installed that allowed me to email directly from P-Shop. So I did that for quickly sending art to client for approval. This again was all part of my putting in place every step of  the way things that smoothed out the work-flow without compromising the quality…too much…hopefully.  In the end the client was happy and I was happy with the look of the art.