Teaching a Boy to Fish...

My uncle recently passed away, and as I was reflecting upon my time with him, one of the memories that stuck out was the time he helped me catch my first fish.  It was a catfish, and I still can remember him scaling it and cooking it up for my dinner that night.  It's a cherished memory that inspired this illustration:

 Here are some progress images to show you how it all came together.

Initial thumbnail (originally done on a scrap of paper, then digitally redrawn in Photoshop)

Color palette chosen; drawing refined.

Rethinking acting of the adult character and details on boy.

More rethinking.  Also adjusting the composition and size of boy.

Final pose on adult; recomposing the scale of the figures and the dock to more realistic proportions.

Finding photo reference.

Applying photo reference to drawing and locking in color.

Adding color detail and reworking sky background to better balance composition.

It's always a good idea to check your illustration as a black and white image to make sure the composition is leading the eye and your colors aren't muddying-up your illustration.

The Wizard and the Mason - Development Sketches

Some digital sketches to show my process as I designed the characters for my "The Wizard and the Mason" story from the previous post.

Advanced Perspective - Final

The last five weeks of my Advanced Perspective class were spent working on our final project, which was basically visual development of a story of our choosing.  The final presentation need to include: 3 characters, 1 environment design, 90 thumbnails, and 5 compositions.  This was great news for me, as I hadn't been able to work on my thesis project at all this busy semester.  Jumping back in where I left off, I continued working on Fuzzy Fury Rescue Friends!  I'm pretty pleased with the progress I've finally made on this story over the past several weeks.  The characters are much farther along and just about where I want/need them to be, the world is now fleshed out, and (perhaps most importantly) the sequence I'm boarding is finally starting to come together and seem like it's going to work!!  Here are the final presentation boards as I presented them last night to my class:

As I've often mentioned, the class was instructed by Brandon Luyen and was quite enjoyable.  Be sure to check out his blog, as he was photographing everyone's final work and posted it for all to enjoy.  There's some real talent in that class.

Jack & the Beanstalk - Pièce de Résistance

Talk about bittersweet endings...below is the final presentation for my Visual Elements of Story class here at the Academy.  Nicolas Villarreal has been a phenomenal teacher, and I can truly say that this class has, by far, been my favorite that I've taken yet!  The final is basically two presentation boards, one for compositions and one for characters, that show the progression and culmination of everything we've done this semester!  *phew.*  Lots of work to compile, let me tell you!  Each of these are actually 20" x 30", but Blogger only allows images to be so large (1600 pixels, I believe), so you'll have to use your imagination as to the size.  Sorry if any details are lost, but all these images can be seen in their larger forms elsewhere on this very blog.  I do still have every intention of coloring that third composition (lower, right corner of the composition board) this summer, so stay tuned for that.  Otherwise, it's likely the end of the road for Jack and Co.  It's a shame, as I was just starting to get into the characters and the story.  Seems a waste...who knows.  Good characters never die, right?...

Jack & the Beanstalk - Jack Poses

One of the last things we had to do for our story in my Visual Elements of Story class was to create 10 facial expressions and 5 full-body poses for the character that we've been developing, coloring one from each.  We also had to redraw the character turnaround to represent any changes to the character.  Below are my results with Jack:

Jack & the Beanstalk - Composition 2 - FINAL

Wow!  I've been so busy with my finals that I haven't posted anything on my blog!  Well, it's time to make up for this neglect--I can't leave all four of my followers wondering what's next!  First off, here's the final version of my second composition:

Yes, this has been Nicolas-approved.  By which, I mean he told me to stop working on it. :^)  Definitely much more pleased with this one than I was with the first one, though I still see plenty of room for improvement.

Jack & the Beanstalk - Composition 2 Progression + Character Line-Up

Two things this week: a character line-up and 90% of Comp 2 finished.  First up is the line-up, complete with some character sketches I did:

And then there's the second composition.  I've made a lot of progress on it.  Lots of changes, both big and small.  I think it's really coming together, but it's just not quite there for me.  I'll be sure to post the final, once I have it..

Jack & the Beanstalk - Composition 2 Progression

As previously posted, I'm currently working on the second of two compositions for "Jack & the Beanstalk" for my Visual Elements of Story class at AAU.  Here's what I had last night:

Today in class, we got to work on the project, so here was about 4 hours of additional work (redid the foreground leaves, started on the characters):

Then my teacher, the brilliant Nicolas Villarreal, made a few [amazing] modifications:

So now I have a ton of clean-up work to do.  But, it's going to look SOOO much better now, once it's finished.  This is definitely why I'm paying the big bucks to go to school. :^)

Jack & the Beanstalk - Compositions 2 & 3 Color Studies

Continuing my work on the next two compositions for Jack & the Beanstalk.  Based on review of my previously posted line art, I made a few changes to the layouts, first.  Then I developed black & white value studies in Photoshop, which were then colored via a "Color" layer on top of the value studies.  It was a nice, quick way to keep my values but add color.  Below are the results:

I like the second one down in both cases.  Really digging that "Red October" sky.  At some point, I'm really going to have to scratch this itch I have to do a night scene with stars...cause stars are just awesome.  Supposed to have about 30-40% of the finals for these done by Tuesday, so check back for progress..