HAPPY 2016!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Thank you to everyone I have met and spoken to at conventions, online and other events in 2015 - here's to continuing in 2016! May it be full of creation and good discoveries.

A lot is coming up quickly... my husband Matthew Sparks will release two independent comics in the first half of the year, and hopefully in the next couple months we will be moving to a new home that better serves our love of creating comics and illustrations. It's going to be... INTERESTING, if nothing else. HERE WE GOOOOO ~

Every nice elf should have a nice squirrel pet, I think. :D (created in Manga Studio and Photoshop)

Simeck Entertainment- character concepts

Character concepts for an animated TV show pitch for Simeck Entertainment!  She may or may not be totally evil.

Bart Bruinsma Concert Poster!

Oh man, I suck at writing blog posts when I'm stressed... Which is probably why I often don't do it at all. But I NEEEEED to post this one - if you're located in the Netherlands, read closely!!

It sounds like an awesome show, and is next week!!!

This was a REALLY fun project.  I enjoy working with musicians a lot, and have done several album designs, but this is my first concert/tour poster design.  Bart had a lot of cool ideas that I was able to incorporate, and I. Love. How. This. Project. Turned. Out.  I made several other concepts for this poster, these are some favorites (sketched traditionally ink/pencil/watercolor pencil with some digital enhancements/text):

One goal was to make use of the negative space of the paper, to make that space intentional, since Bart would be printing these himself without trimming. I had a lot of other ideas for the poster's palette, too, which were a LOT of fun because Bart wanted it to be somewhere along the lines of a COLOR ASSAULT, which I rather enjoy making... :)

UPDATE 2013-04-16: I got a question from @DannyMonzillo about which parts of the poster are traditional and which are digital, and figuratively smacked myself in the face because I had originally intended to talk a bit about that but forgot in my sleepiness.  In the final design, the drawing of Bart's face and the background illustration of someone getting shot were drawn traditionally with ink, and integrated digitally.  There is supposed to be nothing flat in the design, so I went traditional for these elements to get the texture of a brush in.

There are also several textures (photos/scans) layered in, which I got from my own homemade texture archive and these STELLAR people: lostandtaken and Simply Textures!

Here's a PRO TIP: Bart wanted some secondary imagery in the background of the poster, something you'd notice on a second look. Hence, the illustration of someone getting shot layered in like a texture in the largest dark-blue part of the final design, around Bart's face.  Here's a section of the raw scan:

Looks pretty funky, huh?  You can even see the seam where I had to tape on another piece of paper.  But there's a method to the messy odd-colored madness: I used the select color range tool in Photoshop to pull the black sections and the green sections out of this drawing onto their own separate layers, and then manipulate their color independently. You can use any second color, I just had a brush pen with green ink on hand.  I used this trick a bit in the drawings of Nick and Eli previously. MY SECRET IS OUT! Hope someone's able to put this method to use in their own situation, it's VERY useful for digitally integrating hand-made elements. :)


IN OTHER NEWS.  I'm currently working on illustrating a comic book issue for the indie series "The End" by Shawn Murphy, which is really kicking my butt... HOWEVER, it's coming along nicely and I hope to finish it within the next 3-4 weeks so I have time to prepare for HEROESCON!!!

Album Design for a guitar player

Want another album design?  I gotcher 'nother album design!  For this rather talented young gentleman (from the post below).  :)

This design is for Ben Lapps' new single Giraffe, which you can go check out here!
I really liked some of the other concepts I created for this project, so here are a few of them as well:

CROWN

Recently did a T-Shirt design for local Cincinnati band CROWN. 

Initial concept:

After printing a larger copy of the concept and doing a very light lightbox trace, WATERCOLORING commences.  Obviously, my work area is very high-tech and fancy.  Warm Colors first:

 Cool colors second:

And the final ink last.

One other concept created in preparation for this design may be used for a future project for this band.  Wait and see.  :)

But Sir! What happened to your face?!

And now, some more concepts and illustrations! Here are some faces for some of the secondary characters:


Because the job was so rushed, I actually didn't get to use all the characters that I'd designed. Ah well, se la vie. Here are some more illustration planning/thumbnails:



I was really inspired by the work of Mark Schultz around the time I was doing these - he had come to SCAD this past spring quarter as an artist-in-residence, and I got to know him a bit - such a kind, amazing person! and HIS ILLUSTRATIONS. O LAWD HIS ILLUSTRATIONS.

The play of light and dark to control mood in a single, unmoving is a lot more difficult than it might seem. in animation, you can utilize the motion to get more out of each scene; in Comics you can play out the action and lighting over many panels to create the effect. I think one of my problems here might have been how much I was trying to cram into each illustration, because I knew that I didn't have time to do a lot of smaller illustrations. Pros and cons, pros and cons.

Sunderland Town Market

As promised a couple MONTHS ago, a BIG FAT UPDATE on Gary Blackburn's film Elyn and the Pirates of Sunderland!!! This was an extremely interesting and new sort of film for me to conceptualize. In one word: STEAMPUNK.

At the beginning, while helping Gary finalize the script, I did a TON of research, and after a lot of doodly beginnings, first laid out a general map of the entire floating island that is Sunderland Town. then, I zoomed in and laid out the town itself, and figured out a rough course of action for the characters.


I don't necessarily care if it doesn't make any sense to you. this was the beginning of the town; without this plan I couldn't have gone on in any sort of organized manner.

Next, the main points of interest! the first being this fruit stand:


and a fish stand nearby that our main character would be running around later. Gary was very specific in that he only wanted to model the set pieces vital to the camera movements; the rest is to be matte-painted to flesh out the look that he's going for. that is why the above map/plan was so vital to figure out exactly what would need to be designed first.


Now, buildings! I had the buildings marked on my map, so I knew exactly which ones would be needed for close-ups and part of the action.




I still don;t think I pushed the steampunk aspect far enough - machiney things are not my natural forte. But to go much more in-depth into research would've taken more time than I had on hand.

Next, I did flat map drawings of each side of the street, to be absolutely clear on building placement, scale, and to give more facade details.



And now, what was a lot of fun - a bit of prop design. :)




The signs for a lot of the buildings were fun to research and design - I'm not sure if they'll be used, but I don't mind.



Here's the production blog on Facebook for the film - if you scroll through, you can already see some of the models made from these sketches. It's amazingly unreal to see them that way. :D

As Tiiiime Goes Byyyy....

....I lose track of it. And I suck! But enough of that! My life is crazy, and so is everyone else's. Let's see some concept art!!

I took on a job a month or two ago to make some illustrations for an independent fantasy novel. It was a super-rush job, so I often had to go with only the first or second version of an idea that I came up with - a challenge, and I wouldn't say I like all of the results, but it was quite fun! Let's start with some characters:


It was a nice change to be able to just work with the face and body type of a character. I'd gotten rather used to character designing for animation, with full turnarounds and detail and prop designs and such. Just going with the flow was lovely.

Here are some page thumbnails:



I drew with whatever color struck my fancy at first, but later I used the different colors as a good way to differentiate my different drafts and ideas, even when I was sometimes drawing on top of myself.

And for a treat, here is one of the finished illustrations:

My clients are working on making the book available on E-Readers right now. I'll let you know more information once there's more to tell! :D

Dr. Sketchy and Post-it drawings

Dr. Sketchy's Drink n' Draw was this week! my first time going. Twas fun; wished I didn't have to leave early for work the next day. Next week is "Cincinnati Pilseners and Pencils"; will hopefully be fun also. Here's my favorite sketches of our sexy astronaut:

And here are a few logo design ideas and post-it sketches for some other projects. :D

OH, see.

Lest anyone think I've died, A POST. A lot has happened since May 20! A sort of brief sum-up (which will probably explain my lack of time for updates lately):

Since May 20, I have become an alumnus of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Though I have left many friends behind, I am still working on a lot of their projects; currently that includes background paintings for Nate Swinehart's film Rain Dance and concept art for Gary Blackburn's film Elyn and the Pirates of Sunderland. I have moved from Savannah back to Ohio, and have yet to get all the stuff from my apartment in Savannah into my old bedroom. I have also driven to Vermont and back, Oklahoma and back, and Indianapolis and back (twice for that one). I have acquired a job in the marketing department of a good company, and so I spend most of my days pretending to be a graphic designer and learning more about farming and mining equipment than I ever thought I would. This job also happens to be an hour away from my current home, keeping me away from my REAL work for eleven hours out of the day. But I'm still drawing whenever I can - obviously, mostly concerning the two projects mentioned above, but I'm still working on my own comic book series Band Quest! Just a couple days ago I completed the script for book 1; it will be about 71 pages long. And the script for book 2 is currently about 60% done.

And now I should really get to painting, so I'll leave you with these:

Item 1: character concept for what will hopefully be a future animation project directed by me.
Item 2: doodles on post-it notes. CLASSY. Oh look, there's that character again. I really hope this project pulls through; she's so darn cute.
Item 3: one of my concept sketches for The Pirates of Sunderland film. I've only just started, and this is the best sketch so far; there will be many more (and better ones) in the future.
K bye. :D

Portfolio book cover

So... it turned out pretty nice.

Makes me want to design some orange/blue theme buttons. :)