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My Final Poster

I had so much fun doing this project. Developing digital illustration skills and learning how to build characters in effective, interesting ways has been, a blast. I truely feel like I can and have taken a lot away from this course. Talking to other people about my design made the progress of creating Clem so much more engaging, and being able to see and discuss how other people approach this brief has been extremely inspiring.

I’m over the moon with how my poster turned out. I can’t wait to see it and everyone else’s as a final printed outcome.

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Posters I liked for their use of forestry, lighting, scale, perspective, or over all feel. I particularly like the Over the Garden Wall and Iron Giant ones - I think their the most valiant to my own poster design.

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Another update. I finally got the trees into the composition and at a point where I’m happy with them. I think they add something to my background that help make it feel complete. I am going to have to get the light source back in front of them though, which should be too big a deal, I just have to repaint it on another layer seperate from the background.

I’m thinking I might pull the spider webs all the way down into the bottom of the left hand corner, now that the tree serve as a break between Clem and the Spider Queen. The Queen‘s no longer floating entirely in void space, though I do need to work on blending her body into the trees a little bit. I could also add some slight texture to the trees, maybe just using alpha lock instead of a clipping mask, just to see if it looks good or too busy.

I’ve also got to finish Clem’s wings, the Spider Queen’s nails, and the title. But all in all, it’s looking close to done. Fingers crossed I finish it this afternoon.

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Added some spider webs in behind the Spider Queen. They’re white on an overlay layer, which came out to best compared to the other methods I tried. I also decided to add some dust bunnies around the main light source - not a huge addition but it helps to enhance the my lighting.

I still need to sort out the background closer to Clem. With her wings in the picture now, not a lot of the background will be visible, but it still needs something to tie it all together. I don’t know if I‘ll end up keeping the wings or not, once it comes time to colour in the title. We’ll see.

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Getting closer and closer to a finished product. Clem’s shading is still a work in progress, but I wanted to see how the lighting of the characters would effect a background. On top of the black and white I’m adding some darker purple closer to the Spider Queen, and I’m considering adding a warm, creamy colour into the bottom right corner where Clem is. I think that could be much more impactful than straight up black and white.

Still have to colour my title. I’ve yet to decide whether or not it’ll be effected by the shading of the background - probably not, because it might get lost in the darkness down the bottom of the page, but if its just flat colour it might stand out too much.

I have the idea to do a gradient of some description. My main inspiration for what that could look like comes from a children’s book title illustrated by artist Dina Norlund. Her book ‘Greylegs’ has a title with a yellow, light to dark gradient that I’d like to try out - maybe with some different colours, like my red and orange. I’ll see if I can find an image of what I’m talking about to better explain my point.

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This is where I’m at right now with my poster. I did a bunch of experimenting with Procreate shading, and found that the soft brushes it provides let’s me do a blend of block defined shading, and ‘air brush’ shading. I’m very happy with it so far, but I still have quite a ways to go.

Today‘s focus will be Clem. I need to try and do her shading similar to that of the Spider Queen. She still needs a bit of work, but the line art and block colours are there, so I have a good base to make progress on.

I also need to play around with what I want in the background. I’m still all for the slightly visible silhouette of tattered spider webs in the background, behind the Spider Queen. I’m also thinking I could add a rocky texture behind Clem, to show that she’s underground, in a spider cave, looking for the Book of Light. I think that may fit better than the shadows of trees but I can play around with both to find out.

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It's coming together pretty nicely. I ended up using the hair and pose from two different drawings to illustrate Clem better. I didn't like the position of the left hand in the new pose, so I changed it to something more natural. The right hand and wing on the title gave me the most grief; I had to fiddle around with it a ton before I finally felt happy with it. I still need feedback on this composition, but as it stands now, I'm pretty confident in it was a final design.

I've got a canvas set up in Procreate now. I'll do some drawing this afternoon and experiment to see if what I want to do is achievable with Procreate bushes. First order of business will be to draw out the title - I'm really gonna push to have that come first above all else, though working on this composition in PS has made sure that it won't go overlooked. If need be, I might leave out the wings on the ends of it - I like this typographic feature, but if it distracts from Clem's actual wings too much, they might have to go.

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It's a bit rough, but this is the new composition I'm thinking of going with. The angles of the characters is much more dynamic, the title has a proper place in the design (and it's spelt correctly).

One thing I still need to watch out for though, is what's happening in the background. I want it to be mostly void up by the spider queen, maybe with some webs just barely visible either side of her. For Clem, the idea that she's surrounded by forrest, and that the shadows of trees are all bent and warping, could be cool. It'd be part of her journey that I could add, to show thats she's outside in the big wide world.

When it comes to lineart, I'm considering doing that in Procreate, then importing it to PS so I can shade it. Either that, or I do the whole thing in either PS or Procreate. The only problem is, I don't really know how to to blended shading in Procreate, or gradients, for that matter. I could, however, watch some tutorials and do some research. I'm more confident in my lineart in Procreate than in PS. But shading (as far as I know) is much easier in PS than Procreate. Decisions, decisions.

I think a solid course of action for this afternoon is to work on perfecting this Frankenstein-like composition sketch. I still haven't added a face I like for Clem, though I've warmed up to this pose now that its more dynamic. Wouldn't hurt to experiment with a combination of the two, though. Once I have the final version of this, I can save it to my drive, so if I do realise I can shade in Procreate, I can just do everything at home instead of coming in on Wednesday.

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This is a re-work of my original poster ideas, that had the spider queens hands quite big, with webs coming out of her nails. For this composition, I wanted to use some of the skills I gathered in my shading experiments, and apply them to the spider queens face and hands. She's lit from beneath, like someone shining a flashlight under their chin telling a spooky story - it makes it very clear thats she's the villain. It'll be a challenge to illustrate, but the ominous feel she gives off now is well worth the struggle.

Clem is in a very similar pose to my first attempt at this composition. I think I like how that one turned out better than this one, so I might use that as a base for her instead. I don't really like how her face turned out in this drawing either, so I might yoink a her face from another drawing and paste that over top.

I think it'd be a good idea to put these sketches in photoshop, and play around with the size and angle of them. I'll be able to try out different ideas more easily digitally, on multiple layers, until I come up with something concrete. Theres definitely things I want to change/improve in order to make a final outcome I can be proud of.

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More Spider Queen Stuff

Just some sketching of how Vinerva’s body/costume would look. I don’t really like them, but it was a good idea to try and figure this stuff out a bit. I like her hair and face shape better in the previous sketch, and I also don’t know if I want to make her bottom half fully human, fully spider, or a combo of the two. Most likely the last option, at least at this point in time.

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Spider Queen Concept Art

I also realised that I didn’t upload the original concept sketch for Vinerva the Spider Queen. I did this awhile ago, I just forgot to post it. This is the design I based Vinerva off of in my thumbnail poster drafts, as well as what I’m going to make her look like when I draw her is greater detail in my final.

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Title Sketch Ideas

Here are some little sketches of titles I did physically. I really want to make sure that the title design is unique, and not just shoved into the composition because I need it to be there. Like I said in my recap of the critique session, I’m going to focus on illustrating the title first before I do any character/composition drawing.

Right now my favourite version is the bottom one, with the wings on either side of it, and the antenna in the middle. That’s the one I think I’m gonna go for, I just have to add the middle ‘E’ in post *facepalm*.

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Feedback for Poster Thumbnails

We had a group critiquing session today in teams of two. Going into it, I was feeling pretty average about all three of my ideas, I like the first one in this line up (I refer to it as poster one, even though in the original order its number 2, I think) the best. Having people that are outside my personal project comment on them was greatly refreshing - and being able to comment on other people's designs got me thinking about how I could improve my own work.

Poster 1 (First on the left)

People commented on this one saying that it was clear who the main characters was. That was a big selling point that was mention on more than one post it. People like the character posing for both Clem and the Spider Queen, as well as the lighting lines emitting from the book/the webbing surrounding the Spider Queen. Actually show the Book of Light was also something people really liked - over all, it was positively received.

Poster 2 (Middle)

There was a lot of confusion in this one about who the main character was. One way to fix this that someone suggested was to take Clem and make her bigger/closer to the 'camera' (so to speak). I did think of this, but now that it' been pointed out I feel like thats the most logical course of action to improve this composition. People liked having the supporting characters in the poster, but again, with them all on roughly the same plain Clem gets lost a little bit. Another bit of advice was to make the Spider Queen look a little more menacing, and there was also some concern out the lack of title. That last point is a big problem - I sketched the poster out first and had no room to add a title. To combat this, I'm most likely going to draw out my title first (I have a base sketch of what I want it to look like already), then build my composition around/alongside it.

Poster 3 (Last on the right)

There was some concern about the title being lost in this one, whichI whole heartedly agree with. It was definitely added as an after thought, that much is very obvious. There were two opposing comment pf this poster as well. One says that they can clearly tell who the main character and main villain is, but the other says that they can't. The second comment talks about how the Spider Queen kind of steals the spot light - because Clem is so small in comparison to her. But the first one says that it's because of the scale that they can tell who the main bad guy vs good guy is. I'm bias, so I agree with the comment talking about how the composition is clear on who plays what role in my story, but this is definitely something to keep in mind if I want to use this thumbnail as my final poster design.

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The final exercise featured shapes with a lot of different, protruding pieces at various different angles - not to mention the additional, secondary light sources in the last three that I had to take into account. My favourite out of these is definitely the 'third' one (I didn't the first two because I thought they were double ups). I really like how the shading came out on this one - it actually looks like some kind of futuristic engine part, or a robotic organ, etc. The majority of these were done in a cartoony shading style, bar the second last one.

Blocking out shades instead of blending them makes it a lot easier to tell were the light source is coming from. Realistic shading styles have their own benefits, but because I did these shapes in solid colour I now have a good reference for where to fill in my shading tones.

I'll definitely be come back to use these images when it comes to shading my character(s). Face and body shapes are a little more complex than spheres and cylinders, but the basic principles of identifying and shading from a light source (or light sources) is the same.

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Heres my second attempt at shading more complex shapes. I did two of them in a more cartoony style in order to have a better spread of both realistic and flat shading styles. Surprisingly enough I think I like the realistic method more, because blending the shadows, highlights and middle ground together is a lot more seamless/satisfying to me.

I don't think this is the style I'll end up shading my final poster in, but these shading exercises are making me more confident in my digital shading skills. I will, however, do some more cartoony type shading in the third and final exercise in this series, because thats the type of practise I'll most likely get the most out of, in terms of my final poster design.

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This is my first attempt at shading in lighting. I decided to go more realistic first, as I'm not used to doing blended type colouring. My style id fairly cartoony, and my Procreate drawings don't have any gradients or smooth shading. These shapes a very simple, but they turned out to be a great warm up for the more complex examples yet to come.

Lighting is definitely something I'm going to need to take into account. All my thumbnail sketches incorporate shadows to some degree, especially the last two, so any and all practise I can get in will come in handy later on down the line.