Promises - Page one Pencils

Here're the panels, featured as separate illustrations in the previous post, brought together to form the first page of Promises!

Admittedly, at the moment the page seems a bit messy and the borders to the panels a tad indistinct, but hopefully the boundaries and gutters will become clearer with the colouring!

Also here is a version with a kinda victorian inspired frame motif around the inset panels. I had an idea to frame the smaller panels in this way throughout the comic, starting with them looking all ornate and fancy and then progressively deteriorating, becoming cracked and mossy, matching the pace of the story.

You may notice that the frames are actually themed to what they are framing! Inset panels 1b and 1c specifically have a smoke/chimney stack and water/wave motif!

This kinda helps separate the panels a bit more than the first version with something a little bit more of interest than just a plain border.. Hopefully it doesn't distract too much from the pacing of the story, I'll be trying versions with and without this framing.

Feel free to let me know which you prefer though!

BA Promises - Page one progress!

Now that all the pages for Promises have been roughed up, I had to think of the next course of action in drawing up the final pages. I'd already decided it would be best to draw the panels separately at a larger scale as single illustrations, and then compose the page within Photoshop, re-sizing the images respectively.

But to do this and have all the single panels come together with no stretching or gaps I would need to do some serious measuring.

So here is how I've done it!

I marked out and measured up the layout for page one to scale - 17cm x 26cm

I then drew a kinda exploded diagram of the page showing the panels as separate boxes, and did some maths to figure out the measurements to which I would be drawing each panel at.

I'd decided to draw at 1 and 1/4 scale (so a 1/4 larger than it will end up being...)

Then it was a simple matter of marking out those boxes at the larger scale, and drawing inside!

All that is left to do is bring each panel into Photoshop, with the initial in scale layout as a base template and re-size the panels to fit on top!!

Bayou Arcana 'Promises' - A few page roughs!!

I've finally gotten round to roughing layouts up Promises and it's lookin' good!!

The story is completely planned out now and approved by Matt, so I have the green light to get on and draw this thing for real!! Whoop! :D

Here're the roughs for the first three pages to wet your appetite:

Octopus E Sting, Slow progress....

The Showering Octopus (as I have dubbed him) has been successfully uploaded and entered into the E4 E Sting competition!!!

In fact this was the case as of exactly a week ago today... I was hoping to be able to post a link for you guys to FINALLY be able to view the finished animation by now!! However I'm still finding myself at the mercy of E4's website admin, and when they get round to publishing The Showering Octopus (along with a few other people's entries, some who uploaded theirs over a week before me!) onto the website...

Rest assured, the moment it is up for public viewing you will be the first to know! (Here's hoping it's worth the wait!!)

Octopus E Sting, IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!!

IT'S FINALLY OPEN!!!!

E4 have Launched their E Sting competition!!!

Can you believe it... After spending last summer making this animation to only find out (after numerous unhelpful emails) that the competition was not going ahead for 2010, E4 have finally launched it for 2011!!

You can find all the development drawings, colour concepts, bits of animation and the roller-coaster communications with E4 about their sluggish launch right here!

Of course this means that I have got the hard part all done and dusted, and once I've sorted out the last niggly bits of animation and added a sound bed, it'll be ready to upload well within the closing date in July!!!

So please, please, PLEAAAAAAASE!!! When the time comes, vote for me!!! :D

Sainsburys Commission

When you can't find me beavering away in my sketchbook, you'll be sure to find me hard at work at my local Sainsburys, and it seems that the two are starting to combine!

Last week my Duty Manager showed me the company sent "illustrated" guidelines for service on the self scan tills, I use the term illustrated very lightly... it looked like they had raided clip art and mashed it together with some text on Microsoft Word!!

So I was asked if I could produce something better, that would brighten up the staff canteen, and to make the task more fun I decided to caricature members of staff!

Marvel vs DC Commission!!

A couple of weeks ago, when I had a freak out over my copy of Photoshop not re-installing, a friend of mine came to the rescue and restored the program to full working order!

So from one geek to another John, Happy (belated) Birthday and THANK YOOOOU!! :D