For some of you this illustration may look vaguely familiar. A little under two years ago I created the original for illustration friday. The idea hit me hard and quick, as some great ideas do and since then it has been receiving a bit of recognition on my Deviantart account. In reply I wanted to bring it up to my current specs. Instead of trying to update the old version I recreated the whole thing starting from concepts and thumbnails, but this time I designed it for a children's magazine (such as Highlights, or Jack and Jill) where a poem could easily fit inside it. Don't think of it as replacing the old illustration, however think of it as a new and different one.I've also noted that a lot of my pictures are STILL turning out dark...so today I experimented with a helpful method:
Take your "completed" picture >copymerge and paste. >desaturate it. >duplicate the desaturated layer and then either manually mess with levels, or try the Equalize option. >Adjust layer opacity until the right moderation of lights and darks. >Copy merge the greyscale layers. Paste as top. Turn layer blend mode to Overlay. >Take original color/final layer and place under that layer then adjust the greyscale layer until it looks almost right. >Can also manually adjust brightness of greyscale layer by HUE/Saturation -colorize. Turn off saturation and then move brightness up or down until right. Finally copy your original color layer place over to get rid of the BITE that levels/equalize gives to your colors. Adjust the opacity until satisfied.
As a side note my wife and I came up with a 5 year plan for our future...I graduate this semester and with that comes a lot of planning. You should hear more about it in the future as we hammer out the final details.
Looking Great, I really like the colors, very vivid.
ReplyDeleteI think the technique is way better in the new one, but I still like some of the stuff better in the old one. For instance how animated the characters. They just feel a bit stiff in the newer one. And some things read better in the new one- like the fact it's a love letter from a boy. I didn't quite grasp that at first in the new one. Or why the cat was freaking out- in the old one is much more apparent that the girl is squished it. But your technique and style is way better in this one. It still shows vast improvement.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jeff.
ReplyDeleteKelly,
you got me. I admit it. No matter what I did, I ended up still loving the old one more. It frustrated me...and I think it has to do with how spontaneous/perfect the original one turned out. I was also highly bothered with how the colors turned out...So I spent all of Saturday exploring new/better options that would lend more control on a different mini illustration (soon to come). Also as a little defense regarding the visual narrative...I made this to be in companion to a poem...so the poem would tell the bulk of the situation...though the cat turned out more ambiguous than intended. Sigh...
thanks for your comment. ^_^