Process

Wow! 7 days and almost halfway. Pretty incredible. I'm very grateful. The Kickstarter campaign has spurred my energy and I'm in full creative motion. Here are some of the working images.

I start with a doodle

I gather reference. Lately, I've been flexing my Photoshop muscle and working to arrange and size just how I might like the elements compositionally. I can explore ideas much faster. Having the reference images adds detail I might not just come up with from my head.

I'm basing the box compositions on the golden rectangle.

Using the reference as a guide, I draw the characters in my chosen style.

Next, I'll ink. I'm undecided on whether I will do this by hand or with the Wacom tablet. I like the elegance of line and the layer aspect of creating them digitally. I believe it is the way to go as I simultaneously create an animation objects for future use. It's much slower than should I be doing it by hand. Perhaps it's just a practice thing.

The further question is how will the pictures be colored. I always saw my alphabet book done in watercolors with the level of detail of my first three books with Conrad Storad. However, I tried painting the character in Photoshop and liked the cleanliness and clarity of the digital rendering. (right). The middle picture is a merging of the two. This has the character I like of the watercolor and the definition I appreciate in the digital.

I will render the above B scene in this fashion to give me an idea of how long each page might take to complete. I will be able to better forecast and plan time with this set.

Here are A's pages:

As with B, there will be numerous items starting with "A" in the scene - some hidden.