George the Fish by sam mclaughlan | Make Your Own Book

TRACING!

I like to work in layers. Layers allow you to play with the composition. ensuring there is 'play' in your work keeps it alive. I use tracing paper to help me see how I might arrange different parts of the image.

See here the individual components and then below that the complied image (with bleed and cut lines) to be printed on the albums CD. Though you won't see it, the character will spin around in the player.

HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY

More album cover work

You can see here the options I gave the band to give me feed back on - this was mostly so they could agree on a concept as much as anything. 

Having then heard back from them I am now starting to piece together how it might look. all my artwork is done by hand and then compiled in photoshop. Having this two step process allows for play both before it gets to the scanner and after. I normally create a number of layers to scan in, that I can then play with once they are imported. This is the art work I scanned in originally.

...and this is what I have ended up with at the moment. 

REDUCE

The thing I like most about working on picture books is trying to reduce the words and images down to a minimum. It has taken me a while to learn how easy is it is to fall in the trap of including elements that do not contribute to the telling of the story. I have found it quite liberating with this project removing everything that does not contribute to the experience of the tale.

While the words of the story often come first, to me it is interesting to try and tell the story with just images too, then you can remove words and/or parts of the images till the story is crystal clear. I'm not there yet with this story, but see part of the process below. Firstly a rough, drawn up in photoshop and then the handmade version.

 Process and Approach (Album covers)

I find that with any commission it is always helpful to take a sketch book to the first meeting so that as you are discussing ideas you can put pencil to paper and the client can give you immediate feedback - the more you can understand what the customer is imagining at this first meeting the more time you will save yourself later on. 

For this commission I took an illustration annual and some of my own work to share different styles, so I could get a clear idea of what they did not like as much as what they did. Be careful at this point not to quote too early, as different styles will take you a different amount of time. Though quotes are not simply based on how long an image takes you, it is important to think about it when quoting so you don’t end up working for two pence per hour.

Once the style has been established, work out what message they want communicated by the image. I always use sketches to focus discussion and generate different concepts within whatever format they are going to use. See the sketches below. click to enlarge.

I always provide at least two options at sketch stage – this then helps the client to fine tune from the choice. They may take elements from each. As I begin to render the image I will share low-resolution copies of it via email, I do this 2 – 3 times on the way to completion. The last thing you want is to have to redo the final image on small projects like this. I also endeavour to scan my work in as I go and compile a layered image. This way if there are alterations later on in the process you can do that relatively easily. In this case the client wanted to change the title and to add colour to the main character.

Here are are some images to give an idea of the development for the album cover. You can see alterations made after discussion with the client.

...and the final cover that folds out. 

The style should follow the story. I am working here on an image that places emphasis on the character The objects about him carry less meaning and have ben left as outlines. The image lacked depth till I put in the shadows. To add to the importance I want placed on the boy and the dog I encapsulated a part of them in a white halo. This is a working document and there are things that still need work - updated version will be posted over the next few days, it will be interesting to spot the difference.