Style Exploration: Black and White

My primary objective for this section was style exploration. For the sake of simplicity, I decided not to venture into color, this way I could focus on the shapes/design and values. Putting the characters in context also helps with figuring out how they move and how their designs function with a background. I already noticed that some of the silhouettes and design elements need to change/be clarified in future images.

I chose three styles to experiment with: A painterly one, a style inspired by animated films, and a comic book inspired style.

Painterly

Image number one has broad inspiration of 20th century American illustrators, but the composition is primarily inspired by N.C. Wyeth’s works. This is by no means a study of his approach, but I looked at the dynamism of his character’s movements and at his use of environment to frame the action. He is especially fond of using a big, dramatic cloud in the background and/or mountains that both give the composition breathing room and are likely a necessity of the book/magazine format he was often working with. A lot of the images that might have more naturally benefitted from a landscape format are instead cleverly composed in a portrait format, but by no means does the negative space feel like it’s unnecessary. The added height simply gives the images more drama.

I tried to replicate this effect in my own image, though I can’t help but feel like the mountain doesn’t quite have the effect I intended. I may have defaulted to a stereotypical mountain shape (though I did use references of Norwegian landscapes, not mountain stock images) and the boring shape created a less interesting composition.

N. C. Wyeth Catalogue Raisonné – Brandywine Museum of Art

As for the story itself, I imagined this image as part of a scene at the turning point where the Snow Queen is close to killing Verner in her rage but then he empathizes with her and she ends up helping him and his friends in their quest instead. Since it’s such a dramatic scene, I did my best to convey this in the posing and framing of the characters. I also tried to make the lighting as theatrical as the pose, but I think this could really have benefitted from a lighting reference. Not something I could find or make for myself in the time limit, but something to think about for the future.

“Animated” / thin lines, painterly background

A lot of my artistic inspiration comes from films, especially animated films, which is why I wanted to try my had at something resembling a film still for the second image of this project. The point is mostly to combine the clean, thin lines and flat colors of the characters with a more painterly background. As inspiration, I looked up some films that have a lot of greenery, because I knew the illustration would be in a forest, and these also happen to be some of my favorites in visual terms.

Disney’s Sleeping Beauty

Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle

A lot of my inspiration also had to do with atmosphere. Ghibli films have an especially good handle on atmosphere and lighting. I wanted my image to sort of convey a moment of sun-warmed peace between adventures. In retrospect, I might have chosen the wrong angle for the lighting to be appropriately golden-hour-esque, but the backlit look seemed like a cool idea at the time.

The characters are having a relatively peaceful moment as they travel through the woods, though there may be some teasing and map-related frustration in the mix.

The main lesson I took away from the entire exploration section can best be seen in the images above and below (the middle character, Runa). I think I need to trust my original sketches more, because I have noticed that I frequently tend to make corrections as I go and end up with something worse that what I started with. It’s common for an artist to like their sketches more than the final product, but this is a step further than that. One can easily see that in the original sketch Runa is much more animated and her gesture and pose makes more sense than it does by the time I get to the final stage of the image.

In the end, I didn’t quite use a line art style similar enough to an animated film for the image to be mistaken as a still. In animation, one need to keep shapes and lines as simple as physically possible in order to keep the characters consistent and time reasonable. I would have needed to use much less line variation and greatly simplify the way I drew the characters. I knew this, but did not realize how much the “better” line work would affect the final result. Even if I did keep the rendering as simple a s possible (flat shapes, cell shading), the impression the image gives isn’t quite what I was going for.

This is where I most started questioning my resolve regarding the black and white, because I found it very difficult to make the lighting work with he “surface color”. I think I might still go back to the final image a try to figure out how to make all of the characters read clearly and be lit cohesively at the same time. I think I might need to knock back the background more with a lighter shade, as if there’s mist or something, in order to keep the characters dark and in the foreground.

Comic Book

For image number three, I looked up one of my favorite comic book artists, Mike Mignola. Though this is probably also the inspiration I actually followed the least. I greatly enjoy the way he uses shapes almost exclusively in his shading. It’s very graphic, and something I want to explore more, but I’m very much not used to working in that way so the image just looks like a more generalized comic book approach. The dramatic shadows are probably the biggest indicator as to whose work I was looking at as I was making this piece, but no more than that. Simplification is once again what I would have needed to accomplish a more closely related style. The background would have benefitted from this the most.

This illustration depicts Verner (winged boy) and Morten’s (big guy sitting down) first meeting with Runa (taunting girl). I presume her and her crew of robbers tied them up as they were sleeping and are now having a good laugh at them. After she has her fun she invites herself right along with them because she’s never been on a “quest” before.

I tried to be better about trusting my sketch here, unlike in the previous illustration, though I still think some of the animation was lost by the end of the process. I ended up fiddling a lot with the values at the end because I noticed that I tend to make things too dark when I use digital painting. It’s important to keep in mind that no “color” in the image should be darker than the “ink” when making comic book pages. I think I got it in the end, though it still might be a bit dark. Or maybe the lack of color was just getting at me.

Some Color

I did give in and tried out some colors. It’s nothing too serious, because it’s just using gradient maps, but I still liked to see these illustrations with more than just monochrome.

Conclusion

Going forward, I will probably use the second style the most. I like how the simple characters interact with the more painterly background, though for more dramatic scenes I might dip my toes in the comic book style for a more graphic approach. The painterly style would be very good for covers or for posters.

In the next section, I plan to play around with some color, now that I have gotten to know both the characters and the stylistic direction better.