Yoohoo Art Tutorial- The Many Phases of a Cartoon Illustration

by David Finley

 

The Long Journey Down the Yoohoo River.

 It seems like I've been working on this piece for years because... well, I have.

 

 It all started with a silly sketch done in brush-pen about a favorite beverage of mine. It was offbeat and surreal, the type of thing you can only come up with when you are extremely sleep deprived and your subconscious takes over. I don't remember ever sitting down and planning this, but I knew I loved it from the start.

 Sadly, I moved to another state less than a month later and the sketch was shelved, and then lost. (at least for a while, anyway)

 Two years later I started toying with the idea again, this time adding my cat companion, Skelly, and some unicorns on the chocolate mountains. It was more refined than the previous sketch, and I loved the addition of the cat.

 So, I inked it digitally, and was very pleased with the results I might add. Now, it was time to add color.

Which produced this version above that I've stayed with well over a year now. I was very happy with it and still am, but something about it didn't seem quite right. I never liked it as much as I did the very first sketch.

So this week I hit the old drawing board yet again to give it more character. I completely recolored it and revised the inking a bit. I like the worn look of it and the faded aspects, but still wasn't quite satisfied.

 The character and the cat, seemed to get lost somehow and the sense of a long journey was not communicating clearly.

 I made a difficult decision to start cutting out a majority of my hard work, erasing the background, including some terrifically stupid looking unicorns.



 And it worked. That sense of the original brush-pen drawing returned with this version. All the negative white space really conveys a sense of isolation and distance, while the birds in the background and the wave swirls suggest surrounding.

 Best of all, the guy and the companionship of his loyal friend Skelly read loud and clear. I may have taken almost five years, but I couldn't be happier with this version.

 I hope you enjoyed this inside peek into my artistic process. Thanks for reading, Scofflaws!

-Dave

Tutorial: The Adventures of Punky and Bucket in Graffiti Land

Words and images by David Finley

Greetings, Scofflaws!

Today's post is a tutorial explaining my process in the creation of this piece below.

A little over a week ago, I posted an article depicting a scene from a parody of Mary Poppins I am writing. If you would like, you can look and see some concept sketches and visual development on the characters from that previous post by clicking, here.

Today, I am going to follow my article up with a series of images involving those same characters, and explain the process I use to establish the visual look for this story.

With this particular drawing, I sat down with my sketch book and some markers putting down the first thought that came into my head. I enjoy sharpies because they don't allow me much room for meticulous detail or careful planning. They are powerful and bullish on the page, often bleeding into the paper. I don't have to care that the resulting drawing is crude and ugly, as long as it does its job.

At this point, the drawing is not even close to being polished and I'm not completely happy with the body language of the characters, but it establishes the tone and humor I'm trying to convey.

I've added lines of action, which are imaginary guides that control the directional flow of the eye across the picture.  

In my reworking, I tighten up the body language of the characters. I want the robot to be more delighted, upright and alert with his lines of action pointing the viewer to the wall behind him. The cat has good southern-belle characterization in the sketch, but I want to draw her lines out further to add grace and elongate her body lines.

Here you can better see the directional flow the lines of action give the piece. They are positioned to lead the viewer's eye in a pattern of direction ending with the robot's cane.

Now it's time to open Adobe Illustrator to tighten up and "ink" the linework.

 

The result is much closer to my original vision. I've also redone the background. It is still seedy, but I've taken away the needle and trash to avoid stealing focus from the graffiti that will be placed on the wall behind the characters.

My result is cleaner, and slightly more dynamic. The lines used to render the characters and the water curve and flow diagonally, giving them a more kinetic and moving feel, while also contrasting with the heavy and stable vertical line of the pipe, and simple and at-rest horizontal line of the ground.

It is also important to mention line weight, or the thickness of the lines. Thicker lines will bounce toward the eye faster than thinner lines. Balance is key with this device. It is important to use both thin and thick lines to avoid visual monotony. Thicker lines should be used to anchor, while thinner lines are useful for detail, and contrast.

Power to the People.

 At this stage, I insert the graffiti into the background. It was a lot of fun to design and create this graffiti myself. Because the graffiti is so kinetic and visually active, we do have the unfortunate problem that it threatens to bury the main characters and steal focus.

I then change the color of the graffiti from black to blue, which helps, but doesn't totally fix the problem. We want some focus on the graffiti, because in a sense it is a character, too, but in it's current state, it is still a bit too powerful.

We'll try to fix that with some simple color and shading choices.

Very Gene Kelly.

You'll notice I've added a dialogue balloon to complete the punchline.

The first color treatment I apply is an analogous, or blue tone color treatment. I really like this look, and I am tempted to keep it. It creates an old fashioned, and nostalgic feel that aids in portraying the innocence of the characters, but the characters are still getting just a little lost.

I have added color to the foreground characters, but have retained the monochromatic treatment of the background elements. The blue background color scheme contrasts nicely with the oranges, and reds used on the characters.

 So, there you have it. The result is clean, and dynamic with nice color contrasts. I would still like to find a way to use the monochromatic color scheme, but this is just a concept drawing and there is a lot of room to shift..

Thanks for reading!

Illustration Tutorial- The Bear Who Hated His Job

A preview of the finished image.

Today's tutorial shows the process in making the cover of my Bear Who Hated His Job graphic novel. In this tutorial, I will break down my how I constructed the image including my inspiration, and give a step by step layout of how this image came together.

Step 1) The Sketch

I made a simple pencil sketch on regular sketchbook paper to get a feel for the pose and the shapes. I then ran some very basic inks on the drawing with a pen just to get a feel for the lines and shapes. Now on to the inking for the finished drawing.

Step 2) Inking

I took this drawing into Adobe Illustrator to tighten it up, simplify the shapes, and "ink" the drawing digitally. While it is extremely time consuming, I love the precision and control I have with Illustrator.

Step 3) Line of Action and Line Weight

By applying the principles of line of action (or flow of action) and line weight (or line variation) to the character, the drawing will be more interesting to look at.

Line of action helps direct the viewer's eye across the figure and it creates movement to the piece. In the piece above two diagonal lines of action are used to suggest movement. The more vertical line is tilted to show our bear leaning back, and the more horizontal of the lines follows the flow of the knife to the bear's gaze.

Line weight brings a visual weight to the lines. If all the lines were the same width, the piece could not sustain the clarity this version has and the viewer would have a harder time reading the image. Notice the heaviest line along the back of the bear to weight him from that direction.

Step 4) The Logo

Every cover needs a title logo. For this one, I chose to stretch the text all the way down the page and emphasize the words, "bear" and "job". The stretched text also creates a looming feeling to the piece.

When I place the text in the composition with the bear, it's almost as if the word "job" is sneaking up on him. Now, it's on to the colors!

Step 5) Colors

 I decided before I started, that I would use a limited color pallet of red, white, black, and gray.

First, I start by laying down the flat color.

 I could have stopped here if I wanted to, but I like adding texture to create some extra visual depth.

Step 6) Extra Touches

One trick I like to do is add some scanned paint textures into the piece. I insert the paint texture into a layer in Photoshop, set the layer mode to "multiply", (which means the darkest elements of it can be seen, and the lightest will be see through) and then I set the paint image at about half transparency. Remember, it's only there for depth.

The added texture gives a nice backdrop and I also add another beam of light behind the first one at a lower opacity.

Next, I add some gray tone shading to the bear himself and I desaturate the colors a bit more for the whole piece. And then it's finished.

I hope you enjoyed this piece and found it informative. Comments, suggestions, and questions are appreciated.