The cover was for an issue with various Christmas-themed articles, so for my initial sketch I went with a classic--if somewhat generic--holiday image. While the client liked the feel of it, they decided they wanted something a little more focused on gift-giving.
Sketch #2 focused more on the gift...but the client wanted something even more overtly about the gift, and less overtly Christmas-y.
Sketch #3 was the winner. I managed to avoid the more obvious trapping of Christmas (the tree, stockings, etc.) while still making it clear that it wasn't simply a birthday by keeping the boy in his pyjamas. With this sketch, I finally had an approval to move on to the final art.
As always, I enlarged the approved sketch, tightened it up significantly, and inked it.
Then, it's onto the scanner and into Photoshop for colour and effects. One more assignment down!
2 comments:
Very cool, as always... do you tend to work for the same clients time and again - do they keep coming back (I'd imagine they do)? If not - how the HECK do you find the time to shop yourself with everything else you're doing? Have you found the secret of 28 hour days? I've been trying to pull that off for YEARS! [smirk]
Very cool - and I like the feel of the first (fits the retro-classic feel of your rough pencils) - but agree the Christmas without direct reference in the last one (nice choise on PJ colour) really works. Good stuff!
Thanks, Scott.
I mostly work for the same illustration clients that I have for years...as you suspect, the time I have for marketing myself in that field is severely limited. Occasionally, new clients will trickle in (having seen the web page, or because they're fans of my comics work) or I'll target someone who I'm really interested in working with, but for the most part the illustration stuff is sort of on auto-pilot.
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