Stationary workshop - figuring things out

In response to some of my earlier thumbnails I started to research Marvel's Silver Surfer to get some inspiration. I love how animated this guy gets and I feel that he shows great control over his body even though he is in a completely weightless environment. One of my original ideas was to parody this great hero by illustrating a Pritt stick surfing around on the Surfer's board, leaving a gooey trail behind to illustrate how far he had come. Whilst looking at the Surfer I was also interested in the cosmic trails that are left behind by his board and I think this helped to animate the character. These are all things that I should consider when making my character.

After playing around with the surf board idea for a while I figured that although it would be cool to parody one of my favorite Marvel characters it would make more sense to come up with something a little more original. Above is my first mock up of my Pritt stick character, I like how he turned out and the glue has been emulated fairly well but after having a few words with Tristan I noticed a few points of improvement that could take action. Tristan mentioned that my characters expression might not fit the piece and the characters shape is a bit rigid. These comments were fair and I was happy to take them on board since this character was still at the early stages of development.

In the article that we were given it talks about the original Pritt mascot and how he appears to have a bit of a hard life and I think that is maybe what I was going for with my characters expression above, I wanted him to look fed up and annoyed about his gluey trail he had left.

For me as an illustrator i'd think that my style of work would be targeted towards a younger audience and even though my original sketch is cartoony he might be a little bit grungy for kids, I should consider this during the next stage of development for this character.

 After revisiting my character and expanding on what I had already learned I came up with a slightly cute and more relatable character (see sketch folder for plan sketches). This one has better form and shape to him. The image above contains characters from the Worms game franchise and I feel like their thumb like shapes helped to inspire my character in a few ways. I started off struggling with animating a solid cylindrical object and I didn't want to give it arms or legs because it would become less apparent that it was a glue stick. I eventually chose to throw reality out of the window and started playing around with some crazy poses for my glue stick character, I didn't want it's simple shape to limit me.

I also wanted to limit myself by not giving my character a mouth, that way i'd have to convey emotions with body shape and eyes alone. Above are a bunch of different brand mascots which i'd looked at to see how other artists have dealt with giving life to random objects. The little pizza is a good example as it uses minimal features to bring it to life, the peas in a pod are also a great. Either way I think I have captured my characters emotions well using the minimal elements I gave myself.

 Above are some development shots of my final image, you can see there is quite a change in between original pencils and digital inking. The original drawing shows satellites and astronauts getting caught up in the glue trail, this changed to rockets in the second image and I had gotten rid of them completely by the third image, This was because I felt that the busy glue trail already added a dynamic element to my image and it did not need much else.  During the third image the glue layer was hidden so I could focus on the character and the earth.

I also added a small moon to show that he is on his return trip back to earth and to really exaggerate his journey he has taken the long route back.

Here is the final image, I made the swirling pattern using ink, I then scanned it in and added a linear light gradient layer mask (what a mouthful!).

I was tempted to add some stars into the mix but I feel that they would take something away from the gooey trail floating free in space. The texture was definitely needed on the earth as it gave it a much needed lift, it was way to flat on its own. I wanted to experiment with glue textures but after completing it I can see that it isn't really needed. This is probably one of my strongest images from this module and it demonstrates a good understanding of character design and composition. The trail was a little bit hard to understand at first but maybe that was because I was looking at it for too long, I thought about moving part of the trail behind the earth but decided against it.

I went for the full size image that would feature the editorial text on the opposite page, I think that was a good choice as it gives my character a lot of room to breathe. Also the large scale image gives a sense of depth and scale to my characters mission.

My mini statement of intent writes about focusing on the character creation and generation of ideas. This workshop helped me aim towards those goals, after writing my statement I decided that I would like to showcase some of my characters at the end of the module via cartoon title cards, This character will hopefully become one of them.

Year three - mini workshops - Editorial illustration

Awesome illustrator Kelsey Heinrichs produces these epic images for various magazines such as Kerrang, Wired and The Wall Street Journal and many others.  These magazines aren't that high end but they don't come cheap either, from what I can see, most of these magazines are printed on thin paper. Kelsey makes these wonderful coloured images and the application of such is very well suited for these platforms.

There isn't a lot of texture to her work if any at all, Most of her elements seem to have 2-3 colour values and her complex images have 4-6 which isn't a lot, it's simple and effective. Looking through some of Kelsey's images I was able to find some of them in context from the magazines, Wired magazines paper looks quite thin and cheap and has a light bitty texture which actually picks up on some of Kelsey's images which works pretty well.

It should also be noted that Wired magazine has a digital version for tablets and kindles which obviously won't feature the thin paper texture, Kelsey's work is coloured digitally also so being able to see the work on a digital platform delivers her work effectively

Kelsey often leaves a lot of space for colour and allows that to do the talking and it is on these larger parts of the print that the texture of the paper can come through.

Ricardo Martinez is an abolsoute boss at cross hatching!
Fan boy moment aside, his work is incredible and visually stunning, he has been in the illustration game for a long time and has landed various jobs within the editorial world. Ricardo has worked for companies such as Dr Pepper and 7UP but his main art style as shown above is black and white ink work. These images pop perfectly on newspaper print purely because of their natural tonal value and the existing grey pages. The natural texture created by the hatching is easy to process and easy to read which is probably why he has landed so many jobs in this field.

Ricardo and his friend Nacho (yes that's actually his name) created the comic 'Goomer' and it has been a very successful and is still in print now i believe. Having a quite look through those comic images i can take similarities from Kelsey's work as far as colour went, everything had nice bold colours and was shaded simply, it picks up on the paper and reads well.


Seems like the cheaper the paper the simple the colours must be? Crosshatching is a smart way of adding shadows and tonal value without having to use too much colour if any at all. It's also a popular technique to use in newspaper cartoons. A lot of big illustrators use this style including Philip Harris and Chris Riddell.