Monday, April 19, 2010

Till Death do us part.

Hey Everybody,

Here is an illustration I am working on. I have been looking through a lot of great books lately. A majority of them dealing with subjects that pertain to animation in some way. This illustration was inspired by a wonderful book called the artists complete guide to facial expression. There was a lovely picture of a Edwardian man. I think that the macabre and the late 1800's go very well together. I personally think this piece is pretty awful in its current state. There are a lot of things I would change. The poses of the characters is very stiff, and the skeleton in the background needs work. I originally took this to color pretty quickly and then decided to go back and re-approach it focusing purely on the value spectrum. I have always had trouble working with color and getting rich values.
Its a start, and I have some ideas on how to improve it. Ill be back with a better version in no time.

4 comments:

Graphics Janitor said...

Wicked! Reminds me a wee bit of an illustrated poe book i once ran across...

Anonymous said...

Hey Stephen,
Very nice, indeed! Is this something you are physically painting or digitally painting because the wallpaper is fantastic. I'm curious about the "polka dots" on your character. :)

Stevo said...

Hey Connie!

Thanks for visiting my blog. This is digital. The wallpaper was something that I found online and turned into a repeatable texture. I then overlaid it and erased into it to get the effect. I am experimenting with using more pattern and texture in my pieces. Honestly this really isn't a very successful experiment, I am trying a lot of different things in the color version I am currently working on.

The polka dots on the bottom are yet another experiment. Since the character is getting his life sucked away, I was thinking about some ways I might be able to get that across visually. I figured maybe some kind of darkness enveloping him would give the pose more impact. I feel the idea is not very strong.

For the final I am going to try to some kind of mist or plasma colored junk coming out of his mouth and nose. It will be like his spirit is being sucked out of him. I have seen it done in other pieces, and I hope that my version does not come off as cliche'. A friend once told me that some ancient civilizations used to think the breath you would see leave your mouth on a cold day was actually your spirit physically manifesting. I guess that is where we get the concept of spirit or life force? Anyways, pretty cool stuff. Thanks for the post Connie!

Anonymous said...

I like the idea of gunk....sounds good! Are doing this in Painter?