...but not quite failure. My back-up story is done and it looks nothing like I had hoped. It's not all bad though. At least that's what I keep repeating to quiet the pessimistic side of my brain down. Anything that challenges you away from your normal operating procedure is good a thing.
I usually tell my friends if they want to grow they have to break something and put it back together...which means usually their bad habits. I'm not sure what got broken in the process but I did many new things that I hadn't done before.
Firstly there's the hand-lettering. Not true hand-lettering mind you but traced from the computer lettering that I had spec'd. It livened up the page, made it feel more genuine and I think overall loosened me up when it came to inking.
As for inking, I backed off further yet on feathering and texture and spent more energy on thick outlines and finer quick flicks of detail throughout. Hoping by far the look to be impressionistic and more reliant on the complicated coloring that I had in mind.
The coloring...for all my efforts to venture into Mitchell Hooks/Bob Peak/Robert McGinnis territory I was shunned. Half the look is based on the medium that they use...well maybe half I don't really know. What I do know is that I wasn't prepared to color that way on sequential art as the story beats change sometimes on the same page. Things were a bit disjointed and as a whole fought with each other. We usually see their work as a single piece of illustration. Sure that's my excuse but then there's guys like Bill Sienkiewicz who thrive...I am not Bill Sienkiewicz. I can barely spell it.
All in all I did push my coloring and tried new things. Well maybe they're not so new since I think some of them were done in North Country. Regardless...I think it worked okay, and being a back-up story, if it didn't no one's going to notice anyway.Let's here it for experimentation. woo.
Finally, this concludes my 3 years of collaborations with others.
While it was fun to play and learn, I look forward to getting back to my toys and my time to engage the nether regions of my own creative endeavors.
stay tuned...
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4 comments:
as always, shane, i think you're being waaaaay too hard on yourself. what you've got here looks great, it may not be exactly what you'd set out to acchieve, but it's lovely none the less.
but i do understand the kind of obsessive tunnel vision i think you're getting close to describing. where all you can see after a while are the individual lines on a pages rather than the page itself. i just turned a bunch of pages on a job feeling much the same way.
that all said (and again it looks great! ) can i make a "way too late to be of any goddamn use" suggestion? in the future if you're trying to hit that peaky/mcguinnessy/fawcetty look (at least in the inks) you might want to consider switching to a cold pressed paper. i'm almost positve it's how robert fawcett got that incredible texture and quality to his line.
just a thought... albeit a late, unhelpful one.
You're right...I totally forgot about cold-pressed.
Shit, indeed.
Thanks. I think anyone who makes a mark suffers from this. Moreso when we try to let go in the process but not too much to look sloppy.
Try try again.
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Ah Freedom! Now you can help me finish this 5ft penis pinata. seriously though your work always looks solid.
Nice stuff, Shane. I like the stripped down line work - it has a nice chiseled look, which suits the material.
I'm looking forward to seeing whatever new personal projects you've got cooking.
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