First Finished Illustrations

 Today I finished up a few illustrations for my final book! As I've now decided on a final look for my characters and a storyline, I can now set out to create the art that will fill out the picture book! I hope to have a good mix of single page illustrations and double page spreads, and have drawn out a plan in my sketchbook so that the style for the drawings alternate as the week goes on in the story.

This is the final art for my characters juggling. In the story, the man and his dog juggle on a Friday, after the man buys his dog a red ball. With the money they make from their performance, the man buys his dog a collar!

This is the double page spread showing what the man and his dog get up to on Wednesday, drawing a huge illustration on the pavement in chalk! The man buys his dog a bag of treats with the money they make from this.

 The book ends with the man buying himself a guitar, as he enjoys playing music. On Saturday in the story, he plays music with a broken guitar, so this part of the story ties in to the happy ending.

Sketching Ideas in Watercolour

After planning in my sketchbook how my story will read through, and what activity will happen on each day, I have started sketching in my sketchbook some ideas for final illustrations that will feature in my book. I have coloured them with watercolour in order to get a better idea of how my proposed colour schemes will look.

I'm happy with these little experiments and feel I've got a lot to work with when I return to ProCreate to make my final illustrations.

Character and Story Development

As I progress with my Major Project, I have been creating more images on ProCreate to showcase my characters. As discussed with Joel, the story will follow a week with the man and his dog, showing how he loves his dog, and ending with him buying himself a guitar. As I created more images, I sent a sample to Joel.

I included these two images - the man and dog juggling and the man playing guitar

Joel liked the concept, but asked me to change the mans eyes, as they looked 'alien' to him. In response, I went back and made a few different versions. I tried to keep them similar to that of the dog, as I didn't want them to look like characters from two different universes.

Here are the three images I sent to Joel - each with the man having different eyes

Joel told me that any of the three worked, so I went with my personal favourite, being the simple black and white dots. I went through my imagery and changed the eyes, and found that they worked a lot better than the ones I was using previously.

I also made some rough page designs on ProCreate. Starting out with a rough page spread layout, I doodles some scenes to go with the guitar and juggling images, and sent these to Joel for feedback. I kept in mind what Bridie had told me when designing these spreads, and tried not to make anything central.

First page rough

Juggling rough

End scene rough

The next step will be to make some finalised illustrations for these scenes, now that I have the go ahead to use these layouts in the book.

Personal Work - Butterfly Dragon Book

Alongside my Major Project I have been working away on a bit of a personal project. 

I ended my PreMajor Project with a few scenarios and an animation of my lovely little butterfly dragon characters, but ultimately didn't have to time to do with them what I wanted - create a picture book. So in my free time as I work away on my Major Project, I've been doing a few drawings here and there to see if I can maybe pull a book together by the end of the term.

The theme for this book is a food adventure. My dragons live in seclusion on an island with only fruit trees, so this book follows them as they travel the world to taste the food of different countries.

Unlike my MP, I am using my tried and tested process of Adobe Photoshop for this project.

My process involves:

Creating a sketch of what I would like to illustrate.

Converting that image into Photoshop line work by importing a scan and drawing over it.

Colouring the Dragons and the food.

Adding in a background - depending on what scene it is in the book.

The sketches for this book are being done in my PreMajor Project sketchbook - as this project is a direct continuation of that storyline. They do not count as part of my PreMajor Project submission however, and I will submit the sketches with my Major Project work.

Ohh Deer Papergang Competition Entry

Today I submitted my entry for the 'Ohh Deer Pitch a Papergang' Competition. The brief was to design a subscription box, consisting of a box, greetings card, pin, gift wrap, coaster and memo pad. 

My idea was to create a design based around vintage and retro cameras, including various film and polaroid cameras, some of which I own myself. I started by drawing each camera on ProCreate, and then began to use these as the basis for the other aspects of the design. I am very pleased with how it turned out and hope it is liked by the judges!

This is my design spread as I submitted it to the Papergang Competition.

This is a close up of my camera pattern used on the box art.

This is a close up of the polaroid pattern used on the gift and the coaster.

Front Cover First Design

Today I drew up a cover design for my story using ProCreate, using the title for the picture book that I had pitched to Joel; 'Man's Best Friend'. I also played around with a hand drawn font and am rather pleased with the outcome.

I plan to work on the background, I added a blue colour just to show the dog. I will import this into photoshop and work on it further. I also need to decide on a page size and alter the design to fit. I hope to keep the text and characters the same for my final version.

Personal Work - Animating for Portfolio

Today I decided to get down and make a start on some more portfolio pieces. I began by fixing my PreMajor Project animation, which had one scene which I was very unhappy with. I made what would look like a minor adjustment, but to me it makes a big impact.

The minor changes I made to this animation include.

I added dark and light tones to the wings as well as darkening the outline.

I also fixed the outline on the little dragon's face and antennae as well as adding a little shading.

I also began working on a short animation which I got the inspiration for last year but never got around to making. This video will be a short dance number featuring my three dragons. It begins with the green one going solo but he is then joined by the other two for the chorus.

I got as far as doing the motions for the green butterfly dragon, using a sketch in my PMP sketchbook to get the motion perfect. I put a lot of time into getting it right so I can copy it for the other two characters, and I am very happy with it. I rendered it with music to showcase the motion best.

Finalised Character Designs

 After meeting with Joel yesterday, I decided to do some character reference sheets for my two main characters of my picture book, being the homeless man and his dog, who both remain unnamed as I believe it is better for the story to have them anonymous.

Joel said that he was happy with the designs and believes my method of drawing them on my tablet is very successful, so I went ahead and refined them on ProCreate. Now I can begin illustrating scenarios and storyboards using them.

Here are the two reference sheets for my characters:

Character Designing with ProCreate

I began the character design process by looking at my dog character, as I began with studies of homeless dogs. I began by testing out the app, then started out sketching ideas and then turned to ProCreate in order to bring these ideas to life

On the left is the first drawing of a dog character I did on Procreate. It is quite realistic and very similar to the dog it was based off of. On the right is the simplified version of this dog.

 I then began working with a white dog idea, based off of another one of the rescue dogs. I did several versions of this dog and none I was happy with.

I then decided to return to colour after sketching some more ideas in my sketchbook. Using the same original white dog design but with brown as the main colour.

I then turned back to my original black and white design after I grew fond of a sketchbook drawing, and this is the design I have chosen to go with.

I then began to focus on the character of the homeless man. As I am able to picture more in my head what I want this character to look like, I was able to come up with a design quicker.

I wanted this character to not look too rugged, and wear big oversized warm clothes. These two initial ideas utilised these design concepts.

I decided to test out this character by placing him next to the dog, and I am rather happy with how they look together. I can now move on the refining my character, as I still need to finalise the designs for his clothes and make a few adjustments to his facial features.

Pet Portrait Commissions

I started up a business in the New Year selling small size pet portraits on my Facebook page. These portraits were illustrated in ballpoint pen and Prismacolour pencils, with the base outline being drawing faintly in pencil.

I was selling each for £15 plus shipping, or £25 for two, and saw a quite a few offers coming in when I initially began offering the portraits for sale.

I invested in some card back envelopes and plastic protective sleeves to protect the portraits when they were in the post.

Below are a few examples of my finished pieces.

Personal Work - Dragons in ProCreate

As I have recently acquired the means of using ProCreate - a great app for digital drawing, I decided to do a few little experiments with it using my PMP characters. I did this to give the app a little test run to see if it is viable for my current Major Project as well as personal work involving the development of my Dragon characters' story.

These were my first few experiments. I was very pleased with how they turned out!

Another experiment - Dragons and dragonfruit!

I was so pleased with how vibrant my illustrations were, that I went on to do a comparison image to compare my drawings to how the characters look when illustrated on photoshop.

The left is ProCreate and the right is Photoshop.

I put these illustrations on my Instagram page with a poll asking which was preferred, and the results came back 50/50. This meant I had the casting vote. After a discussion with my flatmates (fellow AUB students) I came to the conclusion to stick to my roots with these characters. As much as I enjoy the new feel of the ProCreate drawings, I do love how the characters look in Photoshop. I will save ProCreate for use in my new story!