Illustrator vs. Photoshop

I noticed a really weird thing I do recently. If I'm in photoshop I tend to use gazillion layers with everything neat and labeled. But if I'm using illustrator, I use fewer layers, never label anything, and the space outside my art boards is always a mess. Maybe its because I've used Photoshop more, but I feel like I do it to offset that feeling that everything in illustrator is too precise and clean.

Here's the last four pages I've been working on for the La Jolla's Mermaid Book.

I could delete that stuff outside of my artboards... but I don't. And those layers could really be organized a lot better and labeled. Funny enough though, this file has not warned me for having to many paths, which I'm sort of use to seeing.

Here are some images from an album cover I've been working on. (A lot of glows and soft brushes)

And here's what the layer pallet looks like:

Look at all those labeled layers and folders. Super tidy and organized. My brushes are mostly labeled too. For the Ship Of Fools music video, I even made and properly labeled swatch sets, which I could have gone without. I just feel the need with Photoshop, and not with Illustrator.

In other news, I'm working on thumbnails and a mockup for the children's novel I'm working on. I've started page 26 of the Mermaid book. Sound work that was holding up the finishing of the first Fang and Talon episode has made notable progress so hopefully that train of work will start showing up soon. And I have a few potential jobs laying about for the near future. Huzzah!

Illustrating All the Time

As promised here is a process images of page 23 of La Jolla's Memaid illustration. It's just about done and this shows all the strokes and mesh work that has gone into it. I somehow had missed that you can use transparency with the gradient tool until now, so I've started utilizing that here with the candle light.

And, I've signed on to do another children's illustration job. This one is for a kid's short novel so its a smaller job the La Jolla. Most of the images are just going to be linework and dot the text here and there. I did do a sample illustration to try out a style to use.

The bottom gets a bit too busy with the next and tree, but otherwise I'm fairly pleased with it. The inspiration for the girl characters are based of myself and my sister. I was the neat one always braiding my hair and my sister tended to have more of mess curly clump. She tried to gift me a clump dread-locked hair last time I saw her actually. Some things don't change much.

I won't actually be doing the new illustration for another week, but I'm I've already started pages 24 and 25 of La Jolla today and I hope to at least have those done by then. There are so many yet to do!

Seals and Sickness

Well I've had possibly the worst flu I've ever known this holiday seasons, so I'm rather behind on things unfortunately. Also bruised my hand putting together a TV stand I painted as a gift.

But anyway.. SEALS. Still working on that children's book about a Mermaid in La Jolla. There are quite a few seals in it. It's getting a bit mind numbing. There were 3 on the previous page and 12 on the next two. The current 2 pages have 19 seals.

This 2 page spread (pages 10 and 11) is the first showing of the mermaid and thus sort of important. Currently awaiting crit, and then sending them off.

 Here's the flats I first did with a detail of the shapes that make up the seals.

And here's the current spread.

Also, word is that the animation for the puppet short I worked on two months ago might actually get finished soon. I've actually been missing Maya. So it will be nice to do some cloth animation and render out the project!

More Cliffs.

Still working on the La Jolla Book illustrations. Here's some progress on page four. Still not sure about the colors and some of the details like highlights.

I sorta feel like I want add more red tones... maybe its just those christmas feeling though. Definetly feels a bit drab.

Ahoy!

The last week has been super crazy! Between Halloween and Voter Mania, I've been enter some prints of my illustrations into the Minneapolis College of Art and Design's Art Sale. To have the most stuff to put in the sale, I pushed out page two of the book I'm working on. The Art Sale starts the 15th and runs through the 17th. The last day is free to get in. More info about the art sale can be found here.

Here is the second page in progress for The Mermaid of La Jolla book I'm illustrating. It can be seen next to it's very not finished page three. To cut down on time production time, the backgrounds are going to mostly be flat, while the character close-ups have gradient shadings to them.

I've been getting a good system for working now. I use the brush tool for more organic shapes like the water splash, and the pen tool/shape tool for everything else. Gradients are done with the mesh tool. As you can see with the clouds, I like to rough them in with the pen tool, then add points and pull them out to make the puffs.

In other news, I'm working on a teaser for a webseries that we're hoping will get funding. I've finished most of the modeling, and waiting to hear back from the producer to see if I can post some of the in-progress work here.

Oh yes, and I'm finally using and updating the Behance page I've had for a while.

Dusting off Illustrator

Its been a few years since I've used Illustrator, and with this first page I'm really getting back into it. It's for a children's book I'm illustrating and its by no means finished. The biggest difficulty is getting use to how to use colors in Illustrator compared to After Effects, Photoshop, or Maya. The color system is CMYK for print instead of RGB or my more favored HSV. And there isn't a levels or HSV menu to edit the colors once you've put them in. But I think I'm getting the hang of it again.

Here you can see me starting with my under sketch to flat colors, to gradients. I'm not happy with the skin tone and not sure about things like the eyes and lots of other adjustments, but with a ton of more pages to go I'm trying to hurry along. Here's what I have right now.

Illustration thumbs

Fang and Talon are single day away from finishing filming. It looks super awesome! And I can start on effects soon!

In the mean time I've started an illustration commission for a children's book about a mermaid in La Jolla, California. A place I sincerely wish I could visit.

Just got the page thumbnails approved a few days ago, and starting the first illustration right now.

Here you can see the thumbs for pages 2, 3, 4, and 5 without text. The ship will be a bit smaller I think and maybe some villagers on the cliffs, otherwise its basically there.

I'll be working in Illustrator, which I haven't used very much the last couple years so I'm quite excited to start!