My Work Process

        When I was a little kid, it was always so hard to understand how people finished artwork. I knew being a lover of Pokemon, comics, and cartoons that I loved drawing. I just never knew how to get to the final product. Most of the time I just copied things from my Pokemon video game guides. I'd look at the Sonic the Hedgehog cover art and copy Sonic line for line. Then I had access to a computer and started drawing in MS Paint. I still never knew how to finish a piece. So, I thought I'd show you that I've finally learned. While this is a way for me to assess my abilities and work flow, it is also me putting myself out to the people who don't know how to finish a piece of art. Maybe this will help you be able to find a way for you to finish your own piece. I figured I'd start with a piece I mentioned in my last post.

The sketch phase

        This is a playbill piece for the Broadway Theater in Pitman, NJ. The play is titled "Monster Mash". To the right is my initial sketch (after many little sketches and a few failed thumbnail sketches) for the final piece. I guess I'll just jump right in. After looking at it a bit, my teacher and I agreed that Frankenstein's monster was a bit too short. He needed to tower over the others to be a bit more believable. I was trying to go for a more family-esque looking team of monsters. This was for a children's theater show after all. I tried to make them all buddies, and even tried to make the wolf-man into more of a wolf-boy. So, after the sketch, I took it into Photoshop and cut out Frankenstein's monster and moved just is upper half up. I figured I could just paint in the rest.

The underpainting phase

       
        To the left is the second step, and then some in most areas. Here I am showing how I block in colors, and textures so that I can get a good sense of what the darks and lights will eventually be. What I mean is once I establish the middle green, then I know to make that green darker or lighter in the instance of painting Frankenstein's monster's face. It helps to keep the whole piece and its parts cohesive. This is also the step where I finalize a lot of key fixes from the sketch. I noticed that I actually didn't like the point on top of Dracula's head so I smoothed it over in the painting. There were also minor fixes done here like the bolts on Frankenstein's Monster's neck.

Final choices stage

         This is the stage where I make all lighting decisions and color decisions final. I make sure that all the colors are filled in, the linework and shapes are solid, and that everything is painted to the same level of completeness. I drop in a background color too. I knew from the start that I wanted them to be in front of a night sky with lightning striking behind them. I needed to find a dark blue color that I liked enough that wasn't too dark or too light and that worked with the rest of the colors. I felt this was a pretty solid blue with a hint of purple (a very indigo color) since my reference photos of night skies had hints of many cool (temperature) colors. With all character choices finalized I move on with the background.

The final image

        To the left here I've added some clouds, lightning, and the moon. Textures are all finished and established. I referenced about 20 different pictures of lightning before I got the look and feel that I wanted. In Photoshop, I just added a glow effect to the lightning to help bring it out in the sky. Same thing for the stars and the moon. It helps to reinforce the lighting of the characters in the front. They are lit up a bit too much, but the lightning has a pretty good ability of throwing light and reflective light around.

        While this image was not selected for print by the theater, this was one of my more favorite pieces of the three that I did. I feel I am starting to evolve my style into a more digital workflow. I am pushing painting concepts that I otherwise had a hard time doing with real paint. While this piece doesn't deviate too far from my normal work, it helped me to open up to a new way of digitally working. Don't believe me? Just look back through this blog and you'll see what I mean. Thanks for reading if you've made it this far. If you have any comments or questions, leave them in the comments section. Also, if you have an idea of what my next blog post should be, leave that in the comments too. I'd love to hear some people's ideas!

Animation: A Huge Help

        I've always been a fan of cartoons. From comics to Saturday mornings, they've fueled my desire to learn art. I've always preferred the still-image, but recently (thanks to school) I've dabbled in animation.  

        
        The animation above is a pencil test that I've done recently to illustrate a character walking into a room, opening a box, and reacting. This is the sort of thing that I grew up wanting to do. It has gone beyond that now. I've reached a point where animation wasn't a means to an end, but rather the beginning of something new. It helped me to harness a few different abilities; like being able to draw something consistent and quick, and learning to harness motion on a still piece of paper. These I feel are key traits to any comic artist. 

        This kind of animation work lent me a new skill: cartooning. I've never really had a fine art ability. Things like painting always evaded me. That was until animation (and my instructor Matt Novak) opened my eyes to how it could help enhance my other skills. Take the digital painting on the left. It showcases both my love of illustration, and my skills learned in animation. Along with all of my illustration teachers, I have been able to hone my skills at painting, cartooning, and drawing in general.

A playbill illustration for a play titled "Monster Mash"

        Comparing the illustration on the left, the Dracula character essentially is the grown-up form of the kid in the animation. This was a way for me to carry over characters and even re-imagine them. It ultimately does what I want to do with my art...tell stories. 

       My whole point to this post is to do anything you can. Don't worry if it has anything to do with what you want to do, it will certainly assist you and give you skills you never thought it could. While animation is all about drawing a lot, I never thought about how it would push my illustrations even further. I thought it would just be another avenue that would have a dead end where I would move on and keep doing still images. I didn't realize it was a hallway with an open door.