A wrap-around book cover assignment that actually wasn’t due until July, but I had some open time this week before I get super busy with three simultaneous projects next week. This was for a writer who I did cover art for several years ago, and have been doing magazine essay illustrations over the past year. The idea of doing this derelict ship was quite intimidating, but once I got into it, it was quite fun. Below is a detailed version with just the boat.
The client for whom I did the ‘Pirate Ship’ illustration a few weeks back, requested another version with extended size, and details, and a border and overlaid text. Here’s how that turned out.
Another illustration for a book project I’ve been working on this week.
One of a series of illustrations I’m doing for an upcoming book project. More to come later in the week.
It’s been five years since I’ve completed an animated film. The reasons why have a convoluted history. Going back around 15 or 20 years, I first discovered a hidden feature on the illustration program I was using at the time for my work. Corel Painter, along with its many fine realistic brush features, had, in an earlier version, a primitive ‘animation feature’. The feature wasn’t much more than the ability to use multiple onion skin overlays to see the progress of your animated drawing over several frames, and then to play back the animation instantly to check your progress. I did several test projects, and, from 2010-2015 was able to complete 3 animated music videos for my band, the “Jukejoint Handmedowns”, also using Apples ‘iMovie’ for combining animated clips.
A computer upgrade (and subsequent upgrading of my system software), meant that I had to also upgrade Corel Painter, who had, in the meantime, dropped their ‘animation feature’ from the latest version of the software. I have been playing around with various alternative animation software platforms in the past five years, but nothing had really clicked with me, the way that the original Painter tools had.
During the recent pandemic slowdown, I spent some time learning how to use Adobe After Effects and Adobe Character Animator, and put together the above film for our upcoming album release. I had a lot of fun learning new techniques, and stretching my horizons. Each scene was a new challenge, and led to new skills, and have learned even more since its completion. So stay tuned for more.