Week 3 - Skype Meeting and Review

This is about four days late from when I first had my meeting with Ben. We had to set up a professional Skype meeting about the first page I had worked on. I can proudly say that he had a lot of positive things to say! He had said to me that my flatting on his page was the cleanest he has ever seen. Which made me feel good about the work I had put into it. However he did give me some pointers on what I can do for the next pages he has to send over to me. 

One of the things he said I should work on is keeping a consistent color for his robot character. In the image (without outlines) I have linked I had given him about three different types of blue tones, which was inconvenient for Ben. This also was applied to the cape, armor, and some of the wires on the robot. Another pointer he told me was to keep it simple on smaller illustrations for both people and the robots. He said that common sense of color simplification will help me in that learning curve. 

The next thing for us to do is to is to put all the other pages into a shared archive and continue working on more pages to come. I can't wait to start the next color flat!

(Please note that I am only presenting the color flat that I created in the image and not the original in the outlines due to agreements between me and my supervisor).

Week 2 Of Color Flatting

Week 2 July 1st (Midnight of 30th)

I am currently up late and working on the flatting and let me say that keeping up a job and and unpaid internship on the side is a time management struggle. Fortunately I have made significant process since receiving the ink drawing. Bishop said that with color flatting the palette choice didn't necessarily matter because in the end the color might be changed. Either way I went with a more realistic palette rather than an abstract one since it feels more natural to me. 

I can say for certain that I am enjoying this more than I thought it would. Personally I thought it would feel rather dull to me since I'm so used to being detailed oriented rather than geometrically. The page has a very post-apocalyptic feeling to it and consists of three characters (one being non-human). So far color flatting the human characters has been a cake-walk as well as the background. However the robot may take some time, as it is the one thing on the page with the most detail. 

Once it is finished, I plan on emailing Ben the file for his critique and will ask permission to upload a shot of the page I worked on for next week's blog. Hopefully by then I will get more pages to work with! But for now, I just got to focus on finishing this robot.

Week 1 Of Color Flatting (Late)

Week 1 June 24th 2016

(Late)

Finally, the time has come for me to gain experience in the art work field; specifically in comics! For the next two months I will be dedicating my time to working with local artist, Ben Bishop, and helping him with his own independent comic series. Now I do want to show some samples of what I will be working on but I must ask permission first, of course. So far he has gone over the basics of color flatting with me in Photoshop and generously directed me to some tutorial guides to assist me during the times that we can't meet. We plan to meet about 2-3 times a week in his studio working on whatever set amount is given that week.

However, for right now, he is out on a comic convention tour and we will not be able to meet until the week of July 4th. With this being the case, and with my time in Maine running short, we plan to do some Skype work sessions/ meetings when the semester approaches. Since he has left he has given me a starter page for me to begin. I am very excited to put my knowledge and skills to the test. Not only that, but I am also happy to get a taste of the comic book and graphic novel work field.