- Cynthia

Originally, they were going to be heavily outlined vector toons, but that’s not really what I was feeling. I wanted a rougher, grungier feeling, and I just wasn’t getting it with vector. So I painted.

There is ACTUALLY one more, but it’s at my parent’s house on a thumb drive I left there. I have to go to a class in a few minutes (I’m at work still), but then I’ll try to run over there and grab it asap if the class gets out early or something.

Anyway I hope you guys dig em. Hope finals went well and happy holidays to all of you!

I plan to e-mail you the actual Illustrator files if that is alright with you, as they are small enough to go by e-mail.  If I export them 300ppi into a TIFF, they become much larger files.  So I’m not sure what you want me to do there.  Currently, I’m having problems with my disc drive opening – basically it won’t.  So CD making is not happening there, I’m afraid.  Hopefully we can work something out.

Alrighty then, onto the finals:

My newly-named “Ellen Degeneres, Fishing”

Again, this was originally named “Boy Fishing” but I recently changed it’s name when overhearing a fellow’s comment at the Art Hop.

…I can see it…

My 2nd Illustration:I think this turned out well enough as it took many hours, yet I feel it falls a little flat even though the action is great.  I think it really needs a border of some kind.  I had a terrible time with the hair and trying to make it all mesh-y like the rest of the illustration.

3rd Illustration: FishflyI’m very, very happy with how this turned out.  90% of this was done with the Object/Blend tool in Illustrator and I feel I have that tool well-honed now. I had much fun experimenting with it.  When I set out to do this piece, like usual, I thought this would be much easier than it was and had no idea just how intricate fish flies can get or the amount of high scrutiny they fall into in the fly tyer’s world.  It borders on insanity,  truly.

All my Illustrations were done in Illustrator CS3 exclusively.  I had plans to play with them in PS, but I just can’t seem to stand losing the vectors.  It really bothers me on some weird art level.  I will be sending you the e-mail shortly.  And then, I sleep.

Alright, all five of the final images for Schooners.
Done wholly digitally, which used to be something I refused to do on the premises that a pencil and paper are rather good tools to know how to use (and to use often), but lately I’ve been drawing straight into my computer for final images. I still, however, do thumbnails with a marker.

I rather like the look of these, especially the colors in the them. They’re somewhat dreamy and nostalgic, which I think goes with the nature of this story rather well. Carrying the same sets of colors throughout each image helps to tie them together – I think this is especially true for the boy’s clothing, the color of the fish and so forth.

Using outlines gives it a cartoony look, which I often associate with youth (and anime, but er, whatever) and the sketchy linework was done for a couple reasons: 1. because it was quick, 2. as a means to further illustrate that it is a memory, where details can be blurred and the edges a little ‘sketchy’ and 3. because I like the look of it (I don’t mind admitting this…).

There is a strong use of light in these images, again there are multiple reasons for it and its largely due to something I simply enjoy tying into many of my illustrations. It’s also an interesting challenge to incorporate such heavy and obvious lighting (a challenge that as often as not I fail to live up to). However I also use it as a means to draw the eye through the image and into the focal point. Sometimes this is the fish, at others the boy. There are both radial, spiral and linear patterns in the light for these images. I rather had fun playing with the lighting and different patterns in it.

There are some anatomy issues in these… I especially notice them with the grandfather (and more so in image 1 than the rest). I am aware of most of the anatomical issues with these drawings, though you are welcome to point them out to me if you like. I left them because I didn’t fully have time to fix them, and because the non-perfect-ness of the images helped to keep them childish.

There were two more images in my set of thumbnails (image #3 and 5) which I did not finalize. This was done because there were no people in them. While the story describes the locales with great detail and prose, I wanted to focus on the people, specifically the boy and secondly his grandfather. So I did not use the last two images, which left me with a total of five rather than seven. This shortening of the amount of spreads I have makes the text rather difficult to fit, however, a problem wich I have no solution for at the moment.

Hmm… what else, what else?
Ah, they were done in Photoshop, with a tablet, and I pretty much only used the brush (and eraser) tools in conjunction with layers (and some layer properties). Very simple use of the program, really. Each are 17×11 at 200 resolution. They are each about 60mb each.

Overall I’m rather pleased with these images, despite how quickly I whipped them out and how much I’d have liked to spend more time with them. Even though they were done very quickly, I still really like the end result, I think they are appropriate for the subject and mood of the story – where nostalgia is prevalent.

Voila, and enjoy!
Pam

Well Done! 

All the work that has been posted is very nice. Because this is an “Independent Study” class my role as an instructor should be to only give comments if directly asked. You can e-mail me regarding questions and asking for my comments at: lrzoska@kvcc.edu.

I believe that all of you have the talent and organizational skills needed to achieve the objectives of this class and its assignments. You are working well together – please start taking on the role of team members – ie: making specific comments and asking specific questions of one another.

Jonas is the first one to post near final production pieces – the rest of you should be providing him with your feedback.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of you develop your work toward the final artwork stage.

Remember that the final due date is December 17:

All Final Illustrations: complete, scanned at 300 ppi, posted, and 300 ppi full scale illustration work delivered to me (either e-mail or on CD).

All comments and critiques welcome.

- Cynthia Garcia

Some very very quick color comps using my thumbnails (ya ya, I know, I’m lazy). These were mostly to explore some of the color and what the page spreads would look like in color, rather than my sketchy linework.

Overall I think I’m liking the direction. Spread 7 is a little different from the other (less blue) so I’ll likely bring some more of the browns and greens into spread 1 to round them all out (give me a bit of a book-end look). I’m also debating darkening spread 2 (the dream scene) to make it clear that it’s nighttime, but then I’m afraid that I’ll lose some of the continuity. Let me know what you think.

I think my next step is to throw the text in there and see if it actually all fits where it should (and see if I need more spreads – or less) as I’m not convinced right now that it will. It’s a bit of a long story… Then again there is always the possibility that I have too many spreads…

Alright. Any critiques/suggestions/etc would be much appreciated. And let me know if these don’t make any sense at all… cause I know what’s going on there, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve portrayed the scenes well enough in these horribly quick sketches that anyone else can make sense of them (though I’d argue that they only really need to make sense to me…). Ah well.

Cheers – Pam.

Oh, and everyone have a good Thanksgiving! God Bless.

Alright, so here are my thumbnails for Schooners. Some of them are obviously duplicates of each other, the same scene just done in a different angle or done better. Sorry if they look scribbly – they are thumbnails (so maybe I’m not so sorry) done with a marker, and drawn rather quickly. Numbered, and mostly in order of the story. They focus more on the subject and placement of the objects in the image/on page rather than the tonal variations that can occur.

I laid this out as if the story was being published in a magazine publication (perhaps a young readers one), rather than as a book. There is also a rather heavy focus on the illustrations rather than on the words/story, which would take more of a second place focus with this sort of layout, but by no means would be left out (obviously).

I’m still debating on the style I would like to use for the final images. I could go with a more adult look, using watercolor-like appearances and realistic drawings. Or, (and this is the one I’m leaning more towards) I could turn it more childish, developing a sort-of children’s illustration look (which would likely go along with the layout more aptly). I would then focus more on the emotion and colors of the images rather than their realism, letting some cartoonish features in to highlight it all.

Color comps coming soon.

Pam

I have plans for two others which I hope to finish by next week.  There’s going to be a lotta magic happening this Thanksgiving Break!  I hope!

Oh the hair, and ears and the reel aren’t finished yet either.  That elbow part of the jacket is one object/with mesh – so don’t say anything bad about the jacket – it’s just too soon!