All This Work for Nothing

So I have been working on this book for quite a while now. I technically could've been done a little while back. What happened? Video games? Kinda. Friends? Hmmmm, I guess a little. No, what really happened was I wasn't happy with what I had. I had the whole book illustrated and I didn't feel like looking at it. And if I don't want to look at it, why should you? I stepped away from it for at least a month or so. It was flat, boring and lifeless. See for yourself.

I wanted it to be minimal, but there's minimal good and minimal bad. This was leaning heavy on the latter. However, I was determined to do this. I had a moment where I could almost hear the Rocky music playing in my head and I felt like punching slabs of raw meat and getting back in the ring and finishing this dang book. So I may have had a burger instead, but I came back. I took a second look at what I had done. It needed something else so I grounded the image.

Ehhh. Better. I was getting closer, but it needed a little bit of texture so I gave it some. Actually, a lot.

Ok, this is a little too much, so the final illustration is a little more scaled back, but you get the picture. It has somewhat of a painterly and aged look. I'm happy with it. I was actually hesitant to show you guys because I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I like you. I feel like we have a connection. I don't know, I mean, I was thinking maybe we should move in together. Just think about it. We'd save so much on our utility bills. Sleep on it.

This is where I'll leave you for now. Oh, yeah, remember how I said I was going to add a T-rex? I did.

Word!

This is how the story goes

Happy New Year folks!!

Sorry it's been a while but you know how it goes, holiday gatherings to go to and post-apocalyptic mutated insects to kill (an Xmas video game present. I'm itching to go back for more.).

So where were we? Oh yes, I had just introduced the main characters. So by now I've made tweaks to the story line, finalized the main characters and story boarded the book on post-it notes. So next I laid out the book pages in Illustrator and began drawing each page as seen below. I don't know how other folks would handle this stage but I like to see all of what I'm working on in one place so I can make adjustments as needed. The same goes with anything else I work on, EVERYTHING is on one file and nothing gets deleted. I'm a digi-hoarder because you know you'll eventually need to go back to the ONLY thing you deleted. I usually have a layer in Illustrator called UNUSED or TRASH.

Anyways, without further adieu, here's what the book looks like laid out.

We are almost caught up to where I am presently. Of course I blurred out the image because I don't want to fully ruin the surprise. I've since made a few more tweaks but that's for another time.

Thanks y'all and have an awesome awesome crazy new year!!

Word!