Category: Book Illustration

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The Methumans Project

COVER DESIGN

Drafting the first issue involved an abundance of planning on many fronts. From cover, page design, colour, character development, setting to illustration. The most important part in its evolution is ensuring this all connects in theme, harnessing power, emotion, and feeling for the characters and its narrative. This planning has taken form in many face to face meetings, note taking, brainstorming and colloraboration on each step.

SCENE ILLUSTRATION

Using Mark’s paperwork I am able to visualise the scenes and transfer to paper, once we are happy with the visuals, I explore their layout digitally. I am learning helpful key points to consider as I am drawing, e.g. producing story boards, deciding on layout before drafting, I am re-wiring my approaches to be most efficient.

PRELIM DRAFTS

The first draft has been produced in three parts, focusing on key scenes in the beginning, middle and end. This development is explored freehand with the aid of digital; we are exploring best ways bring this to life though we are certain these scenes will be re-created using my sharpie style in colour. We dont want to rush any parts of the project, however we have set deadlines for certain events such as Comic Con.

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Guide-book Illustration

Northenden’s Historic Guide-book was commissioned by Now-Forever Heritage CIC after I won their “village by the river” competition in 2019. My responsibilities on this project were illustrating past and present buildings along-side designing the guided walk’s map. This commission involved lots of archival research, tracking down images and memories of demolished buildings so I could illustrate them for the book.

The illustrations and map were produced through a combination of sharpie’s and digital, producing marker drawings and base map then re-working on digital programmes such as photoshop to clean up and finalise ready for publishing.

This was a fab project working closely with the wonderful lead project co-ordinator Stephen Evans, organising daily meetings, mapping out the journey and walking the routes during its development. I am still elated to have collaborated on this and even more excited to have been credited co-author for such a substantial contribution. I hope to do more for different local areas.

Thanks again to Stephen Evans & Now-Forever Heritage CIC for involving me on this project 🙂 I’m excited for the book launch! 🥳

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The Metahumans – Drafting The First Issue

My client had kindly provided me with some very helpful material to get drafting issue 1. These were storey boards accompanied by written plans consisting of 202 scenes. Getting started was the hard part, but once I got going it came together quickly. I am excited to continue producing issue 1, there is nothing better than enabling the clients imagination on paper; sending my designs over is always something to look forward to.

To begin, I correlated the storey boards with written plans to understand the depth and details at play, then started imagining the first few on paper. Using a range of pencils I drafted a rough outline of what I had visioned, once Mark and I were happy enough with the illustrations, I began developing it photoshop.

Since I have never worked on a comic before, I started to research the fundamentals and how to go about them. To neaten up the drawings, I used the digital eraser and exposure settings in order to brighten up/clean illustrations. When framing the scenes, I placed a white layer over my page and set it to 50/50 transparency. I could then cut out a perfect window for the illustrations, which helped clean up the sketchy lines. Next I developed a range of speech bubbles and text in order to bring the first few scenes to life.

Its been exciting bringing it together, I look forward to learning more and developing the style, format and identity of the comic at a high standard.

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The Metahumans – Character Design

Over March 2021, I had the pleasure of working with Mark Storey to begin visualising key characters involved in the first issue of his comic novel , The Metahumans.

With great communication, collaborative pinterest board’s and the help of Mark’s great character dynamic worksheet, I was able to illustrate the first 5 main characters of issue 1 within a matter of weeks. I cant wait to recieve the script of issue 1 and begin full development of the first draft.

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Georgie’s Adventure by Alma Gardner

Georgie’s Adventure is a children’s novel written by Alma Gardner 2020, written for her Grand-children. The narrative surrounds a sweet kitten and his ups and downs at his new home.

I am elated to have been the illustrator for this book. It has been a joy collaborating with Alma and bringing Georgie’s adventure to life. As a cat lover, it has been a nice change focusing on the world of Georige and it has been an uplifting project to lose myself in. The novel may be the beginning of a series, and samples of the book have been printed for potential publication.