Storyboard Roughs

I’ve been working on storyboarding a well-known folktale. Here are a few of the board roughs in pencil. I’m thinking of reworking them in Photoshop. I would really covet some constructive feedback from those of you in the know.

Celtic Knot

I went sketching at nearly graveyard. Some headstones have great architectural moulding. One grave had metal cross with a bit of celtic knotwork which I sketched and recreated in Illustrator as an exercise.

I set up a grid and found the repeated unit in the design. I then drew that unit as a single stroke, applied several strokes to the appearance. When I copied and rotated the repeating element, I had to clip the lines at specific places to create the “over-under” characteristic of celtic knots.

Leaving the artwork as single, editable stroke with applied appearances makes editing and correcting the design incredibly easy. By creating graphic styles, I was able to try several “looks” to the design in a matter of seconds.

Nod to Leslie Cabarga’s Logo, Font & Lettering Bible

The League of Niceness

For every successful superhero there are dozens who struggle to gain a modicum of respect. Perhaps their backstory just doesn’t have enough angst. Maybe their name doesn’t strike fear. Possibly their superpowers simiply aren’t impressive. Here are four such heroes who have banded together to bring their own brand of justice to the world. They are The League of Niceness!

The League are always on the lookout for new members. If you have a suggestion for their roster, leave the name here in the comments, or ad a link to a resume and an image of the hero striking a pose that will strike fear in the hearts of criminals . . . or at least make them feel really abashed.

Oddbits

I thought it might be fun to just start drawing combinations of animals and objects. The top several were first drawn with a LePlume brushpen which accounts for the much more even lines. The bottom two were drawn with my ink-filled Niji which accounts for the more expressive and varied linework. Colored with gouache and watercolor.

Bear Goes to Work

“Quick, I need a job and an animal”, I said.
“Umm, Donut Maker and an Aardvark”, she replied.
So a construction worker bear it was.

Never mind the dainty back foot.

Kirby and the Blob

I scanned some Kirby art that I had in the Jack Kirby Collector #46 published by TwoMorrows. I wanted to give Illustrator CS4’s new blob brush tool a test and I thought Kirby’s art, with it’s bold lines and chunky blacks would be a good fit.

My less-than-accomplished inking skills notwithstanding. The blob tool lent a bold line to the King’s work. With few exceptions, all of the foreground art was accomplished with the Blob brush and Eraser tools. I use a Wacom Graphire3 tablet which doesn’t have the range of sensitivity that it’s Intuos siblings possess.

If someone out there in the blogosphere has a more sensitive tablet and the time, I’d  like to hear your thoughts on digital inking with the blob brush. Photoshop is a favorite of many, but the razor edge and scalability of vectors calls like a siren.