Thursday, December 8, 2011

brigade

This is the final scene from a story I'm working on for the picture book class.  Here, Captain Cluck's brigade of pigships brings back their farm animal captors and sets them loose on their own version of paradise.  Check out the corn river and mud fountains. . sweeeet.

During the past few weeks, this illustration went through several iterations:
I first roughly mapped out the composition in pencil.

Here was my color study.  This basically helped me figure out my palette and saturation levels for the piece.

This was my first painted draft.  With feedback, I ended up taking away the sun and moving the background scene lower because they were pulling focus away from the middle and foreground.  Also, the monitor screen and font were in an awkward position and style, so that was also changed.

I can't emphasize how important it was to have my classmates' feedback throughout this process.  They really helped me tighten up the composition.  My friends at the Illopond helped me many times as well.  I'm still not sure if it's quite finished, but I definitely think the illustration has come a long way.

So I guess that's my picture book tip for the week: revise revise revise. . and in between, get feedback from people you respect and trust!

6 comments:

  1. I think you're onto a winner! Looks fantastic, Charlotte!

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  2. This is great! I love the idea, particularly. The progress pics are great. I like how it's a chicken who is setting free (mostly) other chickens. The buildings are really neat, too, and the pedestal thingies.

    [Not to go off too much, but if people knew how the animals on their plates lived their sad, short lives, many more might be set free. Unfortunately, most prefer the gruesome details out of sight and out of mind.]

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  3. Wow Charlotte its looking fantastic now with the revisions.

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  4. the revisions are great. I like space in the sky with text. I am wondering if you want to put a slight room between captain's feet and frame. So, he doesn't touch the frame. I love your chicken world.

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  5. Thanks for the feedback guys :) Sansu, I'll try and move the captain up. . it'll depend if I have enough time lol!

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