Finishing The Big Sleep

I have completed my task of getting my book cover design for this year's penguin/puffin awards done. I don't think it is portfolio worthy since what I submitted was rushed and I didn't experiment enough in emulating the effect of the stain glass look, until I create a revised version where more texture is on certain details and lighting/tone is used cohesively I won't put it in my portfolio, The use of fonts also haven't been experimented on. Overall the composition and the whole look of it in general is satisfactory and shows what I originally intended, I do hope the judges like it and instead of seeing it as a finished design they see it for the possibilities it can become.

Dissecting the elements you can see I use a typewriter font to evoke a sense of the time the book is set, Marlowe's hat is another signifier. The stain glass and the image of Marlowe catching Carmen is (to me) extremely iconic when you ignore the usual cliche's of the private eye image. I chose this image as a subject because it's one of those moments in the story where your attitude towards it changes by the end of the book. I had to make a decorative pattern but the shapes had to represent something, A chessboard is too obvious and looks repetitive so I chose orchids and made it look like a jungle, a metaphor for LA is a steamy jungle like the green house where Marlowe meets his first client. The tone of the cover the use of black spots corrupting the colours and the idea of Phillip Marlowe being this illuminated figure like the old knights on the stain glass windows was inspired by this qoute I found printed behind another Phillip Marlowe Novel.

The majority of the cover was done in photoshop, images were scanned for the purpose of texture, this included pencil shading, smudges and acrylic paint brush strokes on paper. My only regret is that I wish I had done more stuff so capture the stain glass look since I know photoshop air brushes is not the only way to go about it.

Takato Yamamoto... A Man With Mechanical Hands

I recently found this interview from one of my favourite artist, Takato Yamamoto, (the link is here: http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/takato-yamamoto) What surpried me is how painterly this man's technique is, when I see his art it looks very tight and mechanical due to the look of woodblock prints, even when I tried to emulate people like Aubrey Beardsley and Vania Zouravliov I always found my ink being badly coagulated since I was basically drawing and not using any print techniques... so in future I have got to try printing! He also has an interview with Yoji Shinkawa in the Art of Metal Gear Solid 2 book. It's rare to find an interview but it's great when I find one.

Another thing that I will do is practice more in my free time with digital techniques, maybe using a computer can help me emulate Yamamoto's technique too or maybe I'll have to do it the old fashioned way, what ever it maybe I have to try and find what works for me.

Digital Painting Studies

I have been finding it hard to motivate myself so I wagered a canned drink to get my work done tonight, competition is also a good motivator so I may as well throw in a mini risk/reward structure for an extra motivating push for both me and my peers. The work I've fallen into doing in the past week is more a study of me practicing this digital painting craze with my new wacom cintiq. I practice by drawing beautiful women and pin ups (Holly Valance and Chisato Morishita being the most recent), it's a very productive form of calming my nerves but not as addicting as sweets and cigarettes I guess.

 

I like how quick and precise using photoshop for painting is, the digital practice lends itself well for idea and concept communication, as a sole work of art to be valued on it's own not so much but as a design process for a product that needs instant travel and communication I would say there is something valuable with this method.

VideoGame Development = Amazing

Having recently took a break from the usual stuff I had friends over for the weekend to play some early 90's videogames. It was really just my attempt to show them things that I couldn't years ago as a kid. They were impressed with the level of ideas and creativity the old games had over over today's releases which do not have the technological limits that were on game creators back then. I think this stems from a complete beleif I have in that limitation does force us to be creative.

Above: A game that has more going in it for the first 5 minutes

than modern games today have per hour of theirs.

Some may not know this but I originally planned to take a game design course before I went on to do Illustration at Stockport instead. The reason I opted out of this is because I knew my path to this sort of dream job lies elsewhere, I am in my heart an artist so that's why I am an illustrator, illustrators can do many things and I can think of some such as Yoji Shinkawa, Ayame Kojima and the creator of Tomb Raider's Lara Croft  (Toby Gard) along with Kev Crossley (who I interviewed in a previous post, herehttp://artofjimfitton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/kev-crossley-interview.html). These are all illustrators who have helped in the art direction and iconic visuals of the videogames they worked on.

Also a thing to note is how these things have their own visual language, look at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to see how videogame tropes come into movies (aswell as comic book tropes).

So after a gaming session with friends I tried to list and research nearby game developer companies/studios in my hometown of Manchester, UK. I could only think of 4 and the closest of them I can get to by a bus ride is the indie company 'SmashMouth Games' http://www.smashmouthgames.com/Webpages/Home/Home.html. It's a company that has been successful for developing games for the Android platform and education for future game developer employees. I'm gonna be keeping my eye on how these companies grow or diminish in the chances of gaining a career opportunity. In the meantime I gotta get back to my illustration work!

Below: This visually strong and beautiful videogame dominated my childhood.

Animating an Image

It's been a hectic week as I've buried my head in my work, from the recent Age UK (Dialouge ignites Change) project I've chosen to do a continuation on that brief where this time I'm animating the image that I made for it. Because the original image was not planned to be animated at first and since I lost the work files I've had to redraw and paint the image so that the background acts as a matte painting for key frames and cel layers to go on top, in essance I've divided the original picture into layers so that they can move freely.

I recently bought myself a wacom cintiq pen tablet and display to help me work a little more precise and efficient, ideal for doing hand drawn animation and I gotta say it's comfy to work with. With this I've drawn the character and key frames quicker than if I were to scan, clean and trace.

Things that are to be animated have been redrawn and although they aren't perfect to the detail of the still image I've worked from they are more clean, bright and fluid looking. This will be my first animation so I hope to show it off before Easter and to a nice quality that reflects my skill level with the new software and techniques I'm using. The new software I'm using is Adobe After Effects which can make for some amazing results. My classmates tend to go for a puppet like animation where as they set a program to move the segments, it's a neat way of getting to grips with the software but I'm trying to avoid that. Hand drawn animation has a warmth to it and that's what I want to see, it's what I bought a cintiq for.

Starting the Big Sleep

Before I came up with a look to be reviewed by my tutors I made a catalog of what I call "thumbnails" a term for short rough sketches made to communicate ideas to work on. I did this because I wanted to avoid making the mistake of doing an illustration with a hefty amount of effort and work only to slap on text that didn't gel well with the illustration. So as you can see both the text and images are made togeather so to fit eachother. Elements such as texture and gradation are relegated to be worked in at a later time since I draw and paint very much like sculpture at times.

Each Thumbnail was voted on by those closest to me, then I uploaded the chosen few to facebook so to gather more opinions and feedback, The final thumbnail (or rough) was a response to people from facebook and made by merging the best traits of what people seemed to favour.

"Private Research" (a.k.a going for a coffee with a friend)

Oh hell, I forgot about the blog since I buried myself in the projects. My status report today is gonna be simple in order to have more quantity of future posts. Anyways I recently went out and did some first hand research for Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep book cover competition. The best place to learn how to make something is to observe it, so I went straight to Waterstone's book shop and WHSmith to see the books there and observe their designs so that my design can be responsive to these designs and basically fit in context as both a product and an impressionable image. If I create a cover that looks anything like the ones that are currently used for Mercedes Lackey's work then I'll be happy.

I also forgot my memory card so it was just pure luck that my friend was there to take phone-photos and email me them. (To me a phone should be just a phone but now I'm beginning to see the benefits of a good quality camera phone). I really like these Charles Brokaw books with illuminated and glowing text, it suits the theme I'm going for.

...To be continued!