The Remake of Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel by Russ Cox

Like Hazel's posting last week, I redid a classic children's book cover for the NESCBWI conference over the weekend. It was very difficult to choose a cover from the thousands of possibilities. After doing some searches on titles to jog my memory, I rediscovered the classic Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton which I loved as a kid. Seeing the original cover after all of these years brought back many fond memories of the book. I thought the story was also a good fit for my style.
 

 
©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

   ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

 What I am going to fiocus on this week is how I developed the cover concept. I start out with a few quick thumbnails to get some form of visuals and composition flowing. Since we had to deal with the book title, we had to incorporate that into the cover redesign.

 

  ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

 What I did next was to to take a thumbnail that I liked and do a larger rough. This helped me define placement of the objects while continuing the development the composition.

  ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

Originally I had Mary Anne facing to the right but I did not want the book title on the left of the page. I flipped the image and thought the overall layout had a friendlier look. Adding some of the modern equipment looking up at Mary Anne helped keep the focus on her face.

 ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

  Now that I had the composition to my liking, it was time to focus on developing and fine tuning the characters. As you could see in the the thumbnail stage, I had started thinking about Mary Anne's face during the process. I wanted to keep her antique and rustic looking with just a few touches of wear and tear but still happy to be working. She was the hardest to get just right since she is an iconic character and the focus of the book. Mike and the boy were a bit easier.

 

  ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

I like drawing the fine tuned elements separately so when I scan them in, I can move, resize, flip, etc. without having to redraw each time. This always saves me time but continuing the development the illustration. The above sketch was finally to my liking so it was brought into Adobe Illustrator and used as a template. I built the illustration in layers for easy editing and if I want to move things around.

 

   ©2011 Russ Cox/Smiling Otis Studio

This was the final piece.

Come back next week to see what the wonderful Debbie Ohi has created for you.

www.smilingotis.com

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Charlotte's Web by Hazel Mitchell

This weekend it's the New England SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) annual conference in Massachusetts. Every year there is a Poster Showcase Competition. This year the challenge is to redesign a landmark children's book cover. It was hard to choose! I decided on Charlotte's Web, because it involves animals and children in the drawing as well as being one of New England's most famous books.

GULP! There is, of course, a lot of responsibility that goes with reworking an already great cover. So I apologize to EB White and Garth Williams.

I decided to go for a much more emotionally driven version in an interior to create more drama. Here's the finished product:

It is created in pencil and then coloured in photoshop. I have also tried to stay much looser on the pencil work itself to create more feeling of movement - a trend I am working on in all my current illustrations.

Here's the process ....

 

First rough draft ....

More careful drawing ... note Fern's face shape changes and Wilbur is more pig like.

This is the the finished pencil drawing, then scanned into photoshop ...

Here it is during colouring ... I work as I would on a water colour from light to dark with few layers. I prefer to use the multiply setting on airbrush mostly and dodge/burn tools.

 

After feedback from crit friends I worked on the eyes, changing them back to my initial idea that she is glancing back. Also I got rid of her marshmallow mouth (see finished piece at top of this post). I also enhanced the shadows on the right with an extra layer.

The text was created separately in pencil, traced from a printout of a setup of the text on computer.

On a separate layer I dropped it in position and used the overlay and screen settings on brush to add colour and highlight the webs.

Here is the wonderful, wonderful original! I can't hope to come close to this classic, but I very much enjoyed working on the piece and will be interested to hear the reaction at NESCBWI.

Thanks for dropping by Pixel Shavings. Did you receive one of our postcards in the mail? If not please send us a message at pixelshavings@hotmail.com and we will get one in the post to you.

Call back next week to see what fab illustrator Russ Cox is up to!

Toodle Pip!
Hazel

see more of my work online at

http://hazelmitchell.com

copyright Hazel Mitchell 2011

Taking it Easy by Sheralyn Barnes

I've spent the last month or so trying to sharpen my computer illustrating skills. I've really wanted to learn how to make the process feel more like real painting and thanks to some great advice from (the amazing illustrator) Will Terry, I've learned a few tips that have really opened up the whole world for me. In fact, I've been a bit obsessed, so that's a good sign. It's a technique in Photoshop that involves creating your own personal brush textures and then using layers, allowing you to construct a painting on the screen just as you would on a canvas or panel. I'm eating it up and just loving it. Many, many thanks to Will Terry and his videos for introducing me to it! I still have much to learn, but am so excited to start my next piece.

I do have to apologize, because...yes....it's another sheep. As I said before, I'm obsessed...in many ways. My plan was just to play around with the technique with a sketch that I had already done. So I just grabbed this sudsy guy out of the sketch files and started playing. 

...and playing

...and many many hours later, I now have this.

 

So, in a nutshell, that's what I've been doing with myself for the last month.

Thanks so much for checking in again. I promise to surprise you all with something non-wooly one of these days!

Be sure to check in on Hazel's lovely work here next week!

www.sheralynbarnes.com

©2011 Sheralyn Barnes

Giants at the Grocery by Fred Koehler

So my daughter and I unrolled a yarn as I was getting her to bed several months ago that went something like this: A pair of young giants are sent to the grocery store to buy sprinkles to finish their mother's cake. But things go quickly awry when the giants get there at the same time as a giggling little girl. Because young giants are particularly terrified of giggly little girls. And so they had to get that little girl to leave. By any ridiculous means imaginable.

As my daughter fell asleep, I thought about the concept. It was simple. It followed all of the rules of a successful picture book. It left an endless canvas for illustration. So I wrote it down. And then I spent the next two months working on the concept illustration.

I shifted how I wrote and drew based on feedback from the SCBWI conferences I've attended, with debts of gratitude owed to illustrators like Dan Santat, Janeen Mason, Loren Long, Paul Zelinsky, all my friends at Pixel Shavings, and editors like Katherine Jacobs and Stephanie Owens Lurie.




I worked tighter, pushed the perspective, paid attention to where the text would go and what would get lost in the gutter.


More interesting detail.


Better reference material, like this grocery storefront from the 1950's.


Particular focus on the page turn, drawing your eye to what happens next.

I'll take this concept to the next SCBWI conference, send out queries, and cross my fingers. And if that's where it ends, it's okay. We're each born with a billion ideas in our heads and a lifetime to explore them. More will certainly come.

Check back next week for something fabulous from Sheralyn Barnes.

freddiek.com

iPad Sketch Using Artrage App - by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Last time I posted about using the Sketchbook Pro app on the iPad. This time I'm doing my Daily Sketch using the Artrage app. It costs $6.99 in the iTunes store, which seems ridiculously cheap to me when you consider how much desktop art apps cost.

 As I've mentioned before, I try to do at least one sketch just for fun every day. Since I work mostly digitally, I sometimes sketch on my iPad instead of with a Wacom tablet and pen.

Because the art apps I use don't let you move layer contents, I usually start with a very rough shape layout, to make sure my drawing isn't going to run off the edge of my workspace.

Note the user-friendly left-hand display of art tool choices. In the screenshot above, I have the crayon selected.

Next, I create a new layer above the sketch and do the line art. At this point I can hide or delete the sketch.

Next, I create another layer below the line art for color. I like the watercolor brush in Artrage, so decide to select that tool. There's a bit of a lag when you're drawing, but I don't mind this for a sketch.

Above: As I add more color, I fiddle with the brush size and other settings.

I like the way the digital watercolor paint interacts with any paint already on the canvas.

Because the number of layers is much more limited in the app than a desktop art program, I frequently merge layers to make room for new ones.

Above: I use the paint roller brush on a layer below everything else to create a simple background. I add a signature and here's the final sketch:

You can find more info (and some great tutorials) on how to use Artrage on the Artrage website.

Check back next week for Fred Koehler's post!

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To see my other sketches as well as find out more about me, please see DebbieOhi.com. If you're interested in digital publishing / e-books / creativity on the iPad (especially related to children's publishing), follow @iPadGirl on Twitter.

Debbie Ridpath Ohi is illustrating a picture book by Michael Ian Black, coming out from Simon & Schuster in 2012. Represented by Ginger Knowlton at Curtis Brown.

A Simple Animation by Russ Cox

For this week, I thought I would show some steps for a simple animation that I did for American Greetings. The animated piece was used for their online ecards so we kept the color to a minimum and the overall look very simple to keep the loading time down. The first step is that I was sent a script to work from. After reviewing the script, I did a storyboard where I broke down the story into visual segments with notes on transitions.

Once the storyboard was approved, I brought the storyboard into Illustrator. Most people will draw directly in Flash but I find the drawing tools a bit clumsy. The latest version of Flash is much nicer so I will have to try it out. I used the storyboard as a template so I drew on top of it multiple layers so I can break down the movable parts into individual pieces.

Once the characters and support elements were completed, I imported them into Flash where they were organized into folders according to the character. I then began building the animation from the first scene. Since this was going to be used on the web and in emails, I kept the frame rate at 12 fps for faster loading times. Each movement and character was placed on its own timeline. This allows for easier editing. Some movements were their own smaller animations that were then placed on the timeline. This keeps the complexity down and allows looping of movements like blinking of the eyes. Flash can be a bit wonky so as I get major elements animated, I saved the file in steps. There have been a few times that Flash will just shut down or not open a file so it is good to have a previous version as a backup.

Once the client was happy with the animation, I sent them the final Flash file so they could drop it into their template and add their back end programming (ActionScript) so it would interact with their website and ecard downloads. This is the final file.

I hope to have some new Painter samples for next month. Check in next week for Debbie's blog contribution.

Email us or send us a Facebook message if you would like us to send you our very first Pixel Shavings postcard.

smilingotis.com

http://smilingotis.blogspot.com/

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Progression of Character by Hazel Mitchell

Welcome to April! It's my turn to GLOG this week and I have had an exciting week.

First 'How to Talk to an Autistic Kid' by Daniel Stefanski, illustrated by me and published by Freespirit Publishing, went on sale this week. It's a fun book with a serious message. The author is a 14 year old autistic boy and in the book he shares what it's like to deal with people who are unsure how to talk to someone with Autism. Whether you are in contact with someone who is Autistic, or know someone who is, this is an informative and sometimes humorous book. It would also make a great gift for a school or library!

Learn more about the book on Amazon

It was also really cool as I got to do the lettering for the cover and chapter titles too.

Second - I just got back from the Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program (my mentor was illustrator (and National Illustration Co-ordinator for SCBWI) Priscilla Burris. I have been working with her for 6 months. It has been awesome and if your an illustrator or writer I recommend you check out the next program. Also check out my Facebook page/blog for more information.

So! Here are some of the sketches of the progression of the character drawings for Daniel in the book ...

 

 Here's where we started ...

 Tried it with grayscale tints ....

 

 Then we tried a more sketchy outline and realistic look.

Hmm. It wasn't working, so Steven Hauge (art director) asked me to make him much more simplified and cartoony. I also made his limbs and neck thinner and his head slightly larger to make him look a little younger. I used a felt tip brush pen. Then scanned in the drawing and tinted in photoshop.

 We were almost there ... but the hair looked too much like a helmet ...

 So I tried some different styles, and bingo, we had a personality! Number 2 was what we went with.

 Here's the finished look. The illustrations throughout were tinted grayscale and teal as a spot colour. Overall it gives the book a retro feel that is easy on the eye.

It was great fun and a pleasure to work with Daniel Stefanski and Free Spirit Publishing.

 OH! One last shout out! PIXEL SHAVINGS artists sent out their first group postcard mailing this week.

If you would like one or would like to be added to our mailing list please contact us.

Cheers!

Hazel Mitchell

Thanks for visiting Pixel Shavings this week.

Find more of my work online at

hazelmitchell.com or email me at hazel-mitchell@hotmail.com