Treading the boards

For a while now I've been doing a lot of presentation and proprietary storyboard work. Odd stuff, interesting stuff, speculative in nature, and not always finished. These are bits of the second of a two part project. The nature of the assignment called for finished vector work in three distinct styles. This is the one I had the most fun with. It is reminiscent of old Reader's Digest illustrations in it's rough line and single tone color treatment. I created a few special brushes to work with in Illustrator CS4. (I've since moved on to CS5!) I wanted the style to look rough and coarse as if done on oatmeal paper. We all remember paper, right?

The other snippets are from the other set of storyboards. The style was to be more tech, clear line, and cartoony. We wanted a contrast between the rougher line and the cleaner line. Also contrast in how the overall feel, mood and flow of the boards.

They both were fun to do and took advantage of different features in Illustrator. I wish there would have been time to add color to these, in the vein of "Near Art". We had a bit more time at the start, but the schedule got cramped and one of the designers left half way through the project, so in the end we only completed two of the three.

Anyway the dust has settled on these boards, so it safe to tread.

"Live fast, draw hard."

All in a day's work.

So, the top image is some of what I'm doing currently. Pretty normal, but along the way I get to experiment in Painter and I've made a nice "felt tip marker" that could yield some nice results, given more time. As it is I'm cranking on these with more of an eye to showing off the product/setting (basic information) than anything else, plus I have lot more to do by tomorrow. It's interesting, I know some illustrators have an aversion to working digitally and I definitely can see their point. But there are some pluses. One un-obvious thing, I put a piece of Bristol board over my Wacom so it feels like I'm drawing on paper rather than a piece of plastic. It even sounds like drawing on paper, which I love, "scritch, scritch, scritch." Any drawing is good practice. Doing this sort of stuff allows me to turn around things like the Sunglasses cover in short time (about three hours for inks and colors, more on the creation of that cover in my next post ). I don't always want to work at that pace, but it's all in a day's work, and sometimes it's like driving a really nice, fast car.

More Storyboards

Finished yet another storyboard project. Similar to the last, all top secret. I did make good use of Sketchbook Pro. All the line art and roughs were don in Sketchbook Pro, the color was done in Photoshop. I could have done the color in SBP, but the look I wanted was easier to do in P-Shop. At least as far as I know. Sketchbook Pro has some cool features, including a rotate feature that you can do thru the interface or in set increments with a key command. The brushes have been expanded and are customizable. This may all be held over from the previous version but it's all new to me. It's not as fast with straight cutting and pasting and I have yet to find a way to really transform objects. But for basic drawing, it's faster and more responsive (at a speed) than P-Shop or Painter. Now Autodesk can send me a check.

Storyboards End

The illustrator and teacher Cherry Brown, who along with her husband Dick Brown founded The School of Visual Concepts, once told me to draw something every day.

Storyboards are the wind sprints of illustration. Short, quick, you do a lot and they can be very tiring. However at the end you definitely on. Even though they might not be the best drawing you'll ever do, a little bit of careful attention to each one can have great results for your skills in the end.