Final Project for Concepts

Well, this is it; I'm done with Illustration Concepts. Oh, sure, I have a final one-on-one critique with my teacher, but as far as work for the class, I'm done. So, before I dive headlong back into my final for Character Development (I've got some more sketches and progress to post later), here it is--my final series for Concepts I. I chose to do sourcebook-style illustrations and layouts of some of the fae races from one of my writing-worlds. The races illustrated here are the Daoine Sidhe, the Lesidhe, and the Cu Sidhe.

Poster design--Tokyo

So, I've been lame about updating--sorry all! Busy busy busy. But I'm back from Thanksgiving now, and embarking on various final projects and papers, so I have a little time now to post at least this. I've done other stuff, but it's not all scanned, so it'll have to be posted later. Might also post a cool photo or two I took on the morbid beach up by my cousin's place in Door county, if they turned out as well as I hope.

This assignment was to design a poster to advertise a city picked by name-out-of-a-hat, and lucky me, I got Tokyo! I wanted to portray it as a bustling, kinda crazy, but really fun place, so I chose to use some designer vinyl toys and this funky cityscape treatment. Left to right the toys are Ciao Ciao, by Tokidoki, Skull-kun, by Bounty Hunter, a Tinpo by UNKL, Shacho, a Takashi Murakami character toy, and a Bearbrick, by Mediacom. I realize they're not all exclusively Japanese designers, but as always with art some thing have to be chosen for aesthetics. I'm very happy with the end product; the final print is 18"x24", all digital from start to finish.

Vectory, vectory goodness

I have made it my personal goal to conquer Illustrator. I can do the fancy tricks with gradients and transparency; now, I'm trying to get together a coherent illustrative style with this program as my ally.

So, first, my Illustration Concepts book cover piece. I chose to re-do The Picture of Dorian Gray. The front cover and spine text is all hand-drawn, and the back is fonts. The gold leaf designs were free vectors from BenBlogged, but I did all the arrangement and patterning myself.

And then some fun for myself--I've been enjoying drawing little cute things like this, so I took my favorite one (a self portrait in my steampunk costume) in to play with more vectors.

Forgot about that poster....

Sorry guys, I totally forgot to show my final for the Halloween Poster project. So here it is; didn't win, as you can see by the posters that are actually posted, but I'm pretty happy with it.












Also, this week's in-class assignment for the same class; we had until 10:00 to do a complete, full-color, 4x4" illustration to accompany an article about the impracticality and awkwardness of the late-twenties-early-thirties "Birthday Dinner." This was mine.

Puss in Boots.... Cat in Geta?

So far, this is the only significant piece that my Illustration Concepts class has yielded... but I'm okay with that, as this one is awesome. The original drawings (one of the cat and mouse, an one of the background and drop shadows) are 7"x16", and the final prints (one black and white, one full color and texture) are..... 14"x32". Huge. Huge and I'm really proud of them both.

The assignment was to illustrate the climactic scene from a well-known fairy tale, but set it in a difference time period than it usually takes place in. We were required to go large, but the specification was at least 16"x16", so the huge oversize was my choice. Fun stuff.
Click for bigness! You know you want to!

Sumi ink lines, charcoal powder-on-a-brush shading, scanned textures, and digital color.

Also, a couple of little sketches of just how a cat would wear those sandals. Why, I don't know.