As of this week I've officially began progress on the second page of my novel, although, due to how short this week was I've gotten done less then I initially wanted. Regarding the first page, it still hasn't been completed however I have recently purchased a new laptop so I have no doubt it'll be finished soon. The first page of the slideshow belong is my base sketch of the page, if not obvious already obvious it's perspective is pretty messed up so my main priority this last week has been to fix that. Tuesday, the first day I began working on this page, may seem unproductive however this isn't the case as I was experimenting to see if I could fix the perspective without changing a large amount of the original sketch, sadly this proved unsuccessful. On Wednesday I approached to solve the perspective problem by creating two vanishing points to draw all my horizontal lines from resulting is a very noticeable quality increase. Since this method turned out so well I continued to add more detail the next day by redefining the bar area and adding a decent looking railing. I caught a cold at the end of Thursday which meant I couldn't attend school on Friday but despite this I've been planning what to do with this page next. The first thing I plan to work on this upcoming week is the stairs, I've only recently realized that they actually don't give the illusion of going upwards but rather sit on the floor. There is no easy way of fixing this other then to just delete all of it and start from scratch but it's a necessary sacrifice of time. After that I have to finish the railings on top of the page then draw out the poker table which shouldn't be too difficult. Finally I'll need to draw out of the two basic figures sitting at the bar, I don't plan to put too much detail into them since they aren't significant characters so they shouldn't prove to be too troublesome. These first two pages have taken longer then expected and as a result I may have to end up adjusting my schedule to allow for a catch up period, this will only be if the upcoming pages end up taking just as long or longer.
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This week has been especially productive! Since I already had most of the background completed in the image by Monday I decided for the rest if this week I should focus on the character himself since he was looking a little dull to say the least. In terms of shading and effects Adobe Illustrator doesn't offer much so on Tuesday I took the line-art for the character into Adobe Photoshop and have completely redrawn him in more detail. The following days I began to experiment with various shading techniques and came up with something that is surprisingly consistent. By creating a new layer with the same colour of what needs to be shaded you can go into the blending options menu and add a colour overlay of black at about 30% for a decent shading colour! You can see just how effective this technique best by looking at how the hair is shaded on Thursday, the last slide. Aside from this, I also began to mess around with a variety of different eye designs since they are one of the most important features for when illustrating a character and I personally have next to no experience with drawing eyes in digital programs. Eventually by Thursday I came up with a technique to draw eyes that I'm happy with and will be using to draw the eyes of the character, Ryan. Since my time schedule is one page per two weeks I must move onto the next page, however, I will continue to work on this page in my spare time until I finish it. Before school ended last year I made a proposal to all of the academy teachers at my school for a new independent project that I could do for an entire semester this year. It was none other then my graphic novel Soul Loopers, I started it last school year and after developing a greater desire to continue it I thought why not continue it this year? I wanted to be sure I had plenty of preparations done before I begin working on the novel this school year, I completely revised the entire story, plot, characters, and point of view of the story. Although this was a long process, in 2 weeks I was able to almost finish the first chapter's text and sketch out 4 pages worth of illustrations! I did this because because now I can invest all my time into the digital art aspect of the project and not have to worry about anything else. I started the first page illustration on Monday, I decided to use adobe illustrator since having vectors for the buildings in the background would be beneficial in terms of quality. The first day was very successful, I managed to complete the main character's line-art and almost finish the line-art for the buildings. This also provided to be a great day in getting myself re-introduced to adobe illustrator as I hadn't used the problem since last school year a couple months ago. Tuesday proved to be just as successful as Monday, I finished the line-art for the buildings and began to add the more finer details onto them. For the protagonist part of the sketch I filled in some of the base colours and made some minor touch ups to his base line-art. Moving onto Wednesday, I imported my concept character from Gacha Life to use as a colour palette for the protagonist in progress as well to keep track of the finer details on the character's design. I then began to resume my work on the buildings, this time around I added some more details to the wall of each building to the right to show just how old and damaged the buildings had become in the story. Next I began to mess around with colours I could use for the buildings and filled in a few spots to see how they'd look, these wouldn't be the final colours as later on I'd change them. On Thursday I removed the background sketch as it was no longer necessary, I continued where I left off on Wednesday and messed around with more colours for the right buildings, of which, on Friday would later be modified. Afterwards I filled in most of the base colours for the protagonist and fixed some of the flawed line-art. On my final day of work, Friday, I managed to complete quite a lot. Starting off, I changed the colours on the right upfront most building again and this time they look even better, along with that I applied the base colour to the road, alleyways, and sidewalk! I made some minor adjustments to the details in the walls then proceeded to add the base line-art for the sun and finish the base colours on the protagonist's clothing. Overall, this has been a super productive week and I've learned a great deal of new, useful tips and trick to help me as I progress further with my illustrations. I'm excited and looking forward to finishing this illustration next week where I'll update you next. |
AuthorJonathan Heidbuurt Archives
December 2019
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