Heya Guys,
Hope everyone's doing fine and dandy out in the bloggerverse.... or whatever we call this network of artistic goodness. First off, I'd like to thank all you guys that dropped by and left comments on the last post. Ideally I'd love to thank you each individually, but unfortunately I haven't had the chance. Despite my lack of response, please know that your posts of kindness and encouragement are very much so appreciated and again thank you all for taking the time out to stop by.
So Abz had asked me to post some process stuff and give a small explination of how I work, so I figured I'd take an image and try to do just that. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I find it kinda tough to explain why I make the choices that I do, so if what I write below doesn't make sense, I apologize ahead of time :)
So this generally speaking is what my roughs look like for a project like this. I very rarely ever thumbnail for this stuff or do a rough pass that's just shapes, but instead I rough out one character going mainly for expression and attitude, and work around that intial character building the illustration from there. I suppose the goal in working this way is that the mood or acting in the illustration is what really helps inform the other decisions, hopefully making that aspect of the image more prominent from the very beginning. With this image I began by roughing out the teacher and worked straight across from there. The pose for the teacher was intended to imply a great deal of confidence showing that this guy is well studied and worth taking the time to listen to. That well edjucated nature is further supported by his larger forhead and preppier dress. All stereotypical of course, but hopefully it's stuff that the viewer can relate to on some level. To help further support this knowledgable teacher as the focus of the image, the kids are posed/composed in a way that shows their willingness to take in and absorb what the speaker is saying. Each is looking at the teacher leaning slightly towards him, very attentive and interested. But to add a bit of humanity to the group, the girl on the right isn't as convinced as the boys are.... her pose and expression should help to support this idea, so unlike the boys, her arms are behind her back and her expression is more surprised or questioning. In an attempt to make the cluster seem more unified, the shapes of the kids heads are handled in a way that sort of "jigsaws" them together... almost like a puzzle or something. Not sure if all of this comes across or not, but hopefully it's close anyway :)
So once I'm happy with the rough and I feel like I'm looking at something that has a bit of life and humanity to it, I'll move on ahead to clean up and tones. When I first started doing this project, I worked entirely in Illustrator. If you look back at some of the very first posts on this blog you'll see what that stuff looked like. Although the lines and shapes were as crisp and clean as I could possibly have wanted, the over all feel of the images were cold and flat. To help counter that overly computer generated feel, I eventually stared "inking" my lines in Flash with the brush tool and then exporting them as an AI file, opening them in Illustrator and then finalizing the images there. I still use this process for some of my clients, but it's quite time consuming and not exactly fantastic for deadlines. Now-a-days, my program of choice has become Photoshop, and that's what I used to clean up and "paint" tonally the image above. I'm fortunate enough to own a Cintiq, and the combination of working with it and PS really allows me a ton of flexibility visually, while still making the process deadline friendly. Ultimately I feel like images like the one above, are hopefully more lively because they have some indication of the artist's hand in the final product.
I don't know about you guys, but to me something that is done well, by hand, just seems like a better product.... richer, warmer, and of better quality. Now I'm not saying that there aren't a ton of fantastic digital artists out there that produce work that far surpasses anything that I could ever hope to produce myself, but what I am saying is that there's something very nastalgic about an illustration that feels handcrafted. If done well, it hints back to what I consider the best part of american illustration history, the 50's. For me artists back then were the real deal.... the genuine article, ya know. One day I hope that my work will be as good as theirs...... I still have a long, long, long, long, long way to go, but it's always great to have something to aspire to.
So Abz, I hope that helps answer your question. Take care guys, and happy illustrating!-
Miah
