Welcome to week two of my comic-making adventures! Thanks for sticking with me for another week!
This week, I took a page from James Gurney's book. This one to be exact.
My anatomy book is great, but only got me so far. People are different shapes and sizes and the body types included in anatomy books are certainly limited. Plus, I found that the positions I needed my characters to be in would be difficult to recreate accurately, unless I had a good reference image.
I usually use myself or my wife as a reference, but I quickly realized this also wasn't going to work. Mostly because I don't want all of my characters to resemble two specific people. So, I asked one of the most beautiful women (inside and out) I know to model in a photo shoot for me. My lovely cousin volunteered to give me a hand. Let it be noted that my sweet, and wonderful wife also participated in said photo shoot. (Thanks, honey!)
I used my quick sketches as an indication of the poses and facial expressions I needed for each frame. I don't have express permission to share photos from the shoot, so I'll share instead some of the results created from the reference photos.
While not perfect, these drawings came out more consistently and accurately than they would have if I had drawn them off the cuff with no reference.
I also spent a great deal of time listening to and watching the McKay & Gray Youtube channel.
This channel is amazing and I will be listening to it a lot more in the coming days to reap more wisdom from these talented young people.
I also went in search of other artists' work this week to see how different artists handle color, light, and storytelling. My favorite example found just happened to be the personal work of Matt Rhodes, an artist who also worked on the concept art for Dragon Age Inquisition. To any of you who know me, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise because I am a rabid Dragon Age fan. However, let it be known that I didn't actually know he worked on DAI until after I found his personal work, Tellurion. I've included an example of his work/process below. Follow the link to check out his full YouTube channel. It's amazing. You can read his full work here.
Matt's use of visual storytelling is so compelling you get a sense of character and plot with zero use of words. It's gorgeous and maybe someday I will get there.
If I had done anything differently this week, it would be to dress my "life" models in clothing similar to what I was intending my characters to wear. I struggled with how exactly the fabric would fall or stretch over the forms.
Where I plan on going next:
1) Finish sketching out the pages this week.
2) Diagram the space
3) Plan a color palette and light source
4) Very tentatively get ready to apply color!
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