Category: IP Development Mentorship

September 14, 2017

IP Development Mentorship Week 8

DISCLAIMER: I don’t mind you guys sharing my thoughts about the mentorship with others. However, if you don’t see the art or writing bits up at SongofExile.com, that means I’d prefer you keep it between us! Enjoy!:)

Final week! Sorta. SDCC has thrown a monkey wrench into things so that our guest critiquers are busy, so we have an extra week to work. That’s okay because I am totally taking advantage of the additional time to put extra polish on my art and finish up a color painting I wouldn’t have had finished by the end of this week, anyways.

This past week, I’ve continued my feverish working on panels for the book trailer! It was a week of learning that if something just isn’t working right, I needed to learn to let go of it. It’s a tough lesson to learn, as it meant redoing two of my total panels!

The rejected scene was just too boring. It was lacking interest and tension and the figures were very static and vertical. Moving the camera and changing the lighting added so much more drama! The figures have also been tilted in the picture plane for more dynamism.

The line this panel was attached to originally read: “All the while, a forgotten darkness closes in on the capitol as the darkness of impending war casts a shadow over the kingdom. ” The newest revision reads: “…or the disease that was eating away at the people?” I needed to swing the focus back around from the ‘big picture’ of the kingdom to the suffering of the people of the kingdom instead. The original panel line art was done by my instructor during a critique. I loved it so much I really, REALLY wanted to bring it to final and include it, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

The truth is I wasted a lot of time trying to make the original ideas work when starting over would have been quicker. Lesson learned! Onwards and upwards!

Last week, I mentioned photo collaging as a technique I’ve been experimenting with to speed up my workflow. Here’s an example of the photo reference I cobbled together from bits of hair, cloth, various model references from DeviantART, and desert photos.

mjranum-stock on Deviantart has lovely well lit stock with very lenient terms of use for artists and commercial projects. I highly recommend him, though be warned that everybody else uses his work too, making it very recognizable. The female figure and flowing cloth in this image comes from his gallery.

The trick really is in bringing it all together at the end through lighting and values, making your own creative changes, and knowing when to deviate from your photo reference so you can create the most elegant final image. I’ll be notifying the model stock providers of the use of their photos once the images go public, while the reference of Jaipur fort I used for the palace will need to be changed later, since it’s only a placeholder for my presentation right now. Generally, dA stock providers are a kind bunch who allow commercial usage for free or low cost, which makes it one of my favorite places to find stock.

I’m currently working on the final color painting of the opening image. I’m planning to post the final color painting with a step by step to Patreon once it’s finished, so keep an eye out!

So here I am at the final push. I still have a color painting to finish and a video mockup I’d like to throw together for my final presentation. Wish me luck!

Week 8 Art Wrap-Up

Read about the rest of my journey with the IP Development Mentorship here:

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Final Week
Final Critique

September 14, 2017

IP Development Mentorship Week 7

It was another sleepless week spent on making illustrations for my pitch! I’m still only a little past the midpoint with 8 of 15 total illustrations completed in grayscale, with the initial illustration of the duel pegged for completion to fully painted color.

I also got to practice pitch once more, this time to Kalan Ray, a visdev artist with a history as a linguist, which gave him some insight on the historical sources I’ve been drawing on for my story (the Mongols, kings and succession, etc.). This was the first time I’ve actually had a chance to pitch my revised book trailer script with the new POV and it was a huge success! Kalan gave me the great complement that he would totally read my book when it’s done, since it was right up his alley of interests. Best. Feedback. Ever!

There’s really nothing like validation from a pro to motivate a person! I’m just going to enjoy my ego fluffing for a small bit before I realize that after this course is over, I’ll actually need to Write The Thing.

I have named my figure “Slim Tim”!

Another awesome thing that happened this week is that my boyfriend gifted me with this TrueType male figure! We found a great price for him on Amazon. It may just look like an overpriced doll, but its extreme points of articulation allow for it to be posed in ways the usual artist mannequins can’t and make for great photo reference, especially for seeing how lighting works, draping of clothing, and placement of cast shadows.

The female TrueType figure is also in the mail right now. I’m so excited! My boyfriend is best boyfriend. These figures are going to be invaluable to my workflow. Thanks to this mentorship, I’m also planning to add 3D modeling with Daz Studio (a free 3D program) to my repertoire so I can light scenes and have more fine control over lighting and camera placement, but the program was a little too much for me to try to learn this week. I did manage to create a reference photo with Daz for the illustration I need to work to color, but it could definitely use improvement. Beware the naked manbutt if you want to see it! It’s here.

An example of how useful this doll was for me in my latest panel!

Another technique I’ve added to my workflow this week is photo tracing. I feel like a cheater doing this thanks to strict gallery schooling in college where true skill meant you could draw everything from scratch, but since I have so little time to get these done, I’ve been playing fast and loose with photos.

As you can see above, I pretty much traced my photo reference of the figure, then altered it to suit my needs. I also used two different photos of Blood Dragon Trees spliced together for the background. Photo manipulation creates a base quickly that I can refine for later, a technique I was introduced to by Rebecca Guay, actually! It can save a lot of time and also help your art feel more grounded, though you must also know when to deviate from your reference, which is a hard skill to master, in and of itself.

Next week is my last week of the mentorship! Can I finish all of the illustrations and face the final critique of Max Landis, who gave me such great crit before? Will my changes be improvements? Stay tuned, Bat-fans!

Week 7 Art Wrap-Up

Read about the rest of my journey with the IP Development Mentorship here:

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Final Week
Final Critique

September 14, 2017

IP Development Mentorship Week 4

My mentorship went on a brief hiatus for a week where I caught up on a ton of sleep, played Witcher 3, and took a much needed load off. The 4th week resumed this past week and we were right back to the revision game! I finished up my book 1 synopsis and defined the skeleton of my book trailer/pitch.

I ended up tapping my writer friend so hard for edits that I hired her professionally for all of the late nights of brainstorming and revisions we had been doing together. This was the best move I made to really bring the polish to my story that I needed. The mentorship teachers only have so much time in and outside of class to critique our art AND writing. Once my mentorship ends, I hope to continue the working relationship with my new content editor into the future and I’m so excited to see how my story will improve because of it!

The Importance of Revision

It seems all I’ve been saying this entire time has been REVISION, REVISION, REVISION! But it really is so important to the narrative process, not only for writing, but for art as well. There are times I’ve stared too long at the same painting or too long at my synopsis during this mentorship that I just couldn’t see what was wrong anymore. Getting a second set of eyes on my work has improved my work so much faster in a shorter time than banging my head against the wall trying to solve the problems myself. I really can’t recommend a good critique group for art and a good content editor for writing enough!

Grand Total of Revisions Thus Far

Synopsis – 8 revision
Pitch – 2 revisions (with more to come)

MOAR Pitching!

When it comes to pitching, I’ve had another chance this past week to pitch my story to a story director over at Riot Games. Talk about nerve-wracking! I got some great feedback, however, and I get to update my pitch now with even more pointed feedback that I wouldn’t have gotten if I had continued pitching to people who already know my story really well. It’s more proof that getting an outside opinion is so very important when you’re working on a narrative product!

This Week’s Art

I’m still working on trying to get the thumbnails for my illustrations sorted out. They keep changing as my pitch evolves and I take some away and add others. I’m excited to be working with a set of images for a single narrative! It’s not something I get to do often.