Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!

Evil Shirt mini Illustration.

Ok...despite my insanely busy schedule I HAD to do at least one Halloween pic. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and fall is one of my favorite seasons, so they go hand in hand when it comes to illustration.

So I am still toying with using full lines in my illustrations. If I do, the key is to spend more time finessing and getting it JUST right as I did above. The other key is to make the linework thinner and let the color and value do most the work.

Regarding my senior show, I am mostly on track. Tonight and tomorrow morning I finish the last 2 of my 13 in total illustrations being displayed, and then wednesday I get them printed, thursday trimmed, and then have them ready to hang by monday. Whew. If that was all I had to do life would be ok, but add my full load of other classes, and homework, and my job, sigh....

Have a great Halloween!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Final Semester- Germs 2 AGAIN!


Just so you know that I am alive, I am doing a post to show of the great things to come. I have been HARD at work touching up all my old work...and making new illustrations. If this illustration isn't enough of a hint of the great things to come, check out the updates for my website: http://www.jerbl.com/monisawa/ This semester is getting pretty crazy, so I don't know if I will post for the next two or so weeks.

Also in the way of news, I did not win the short story contest, but got a prize anyway. Amelia ended up doing a illustration of what my story WOULD have looked like if it had been made into a manga/comic. Go check it out: http://flossandchaos.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=90 my picture is the one titled "Click, Click".


Friday, October 14, 2011

"Wolfe Jr. Mystery" illustration, random sketches, and a short story.

Wolfe Jr. Mystery
illustration

My wife loves the murder Mysteries of Nero Wolfe. After watching some of the Dramatized versions, I realized it is almost impossible not to fall in love with Nero Wolfe and the cast of characters surrounding him. I wanted to portray a hypothetical novelization of Wolfe cast with children.
Regarding the illustration itself, it opened up the final pathway I needed to gain absolute control and stability for future illustrations. It seems in the past I have had to relinquish some aspect of my illustration creating process to chance, but no more. I found a way to work totally greyscale, and on a separate layer work on my color a little bit, and then go back to my greyscale at any time to further render. Ultimately if I broke it down I had 5 layers:
Layer 1: linework/sketch
Layer 2: Value/greyscale painting
Layer 3: Ambient color fill. Layer set on Soft Light.
Layer 4: My actual colors. Layer set on Overlay.
Layer 5: finalize/sync/freepaint.
They are not necessarily in the order they are arranged in my file, and to be quite honest I probably have over 20 layers, but you get the idea.


Bonus "Sketches"

I loosely use the word "sketches", because they are essentially mini illustrations (minus the pencil scribbles at the top). The purpose of this scanned and edited page from my sketchbook was to show the different types of illustration processes that I prefer.
1.The striped hoodie is my current process, the one I used on Wolfe Jr.
2.The beach scene was done using my old digital illustration line-art process.
3.The girl in the pink shirt is a style I want to explore/get better at. I love using black and simplified color that way.
If I were to label in order the time it took to create each of the sketch illustrations from longest to shortest, it would be 1, 2, 3. I'm contemplating on spending more time on illustration process type 2 as a secondary style, but for now type 1 is my prima donna.


Finally, I recently participated in a short story contest over at FlossandChaos. Go ahead and check it out: http://flossandchaos.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=90#p153 If you can't figure out which one is mine, it is the one titled, "Click, Click."