Monday, 12 October 2009

Work in Progress Part 3

So, where were we? Right our page is being worked up in Illustrator, which I will admit I used to regard as one of the slowest and most anal ways of creating artwork, conceivable - how wrong I was. It's actually a real delight to use and is easily adaptable as all the vectors and shapes are always manipulable, which for this kind of project where I'm frequently having to go back and rework earlier pages for reasons of continuity is a real joy.

So we start to add in colours as well as adding more figures to the background of the Cloud 109 cyberlounge. With the figures in the lounge, I originally was creating them with the big eyed Manga look I'd given Gina, Cary and Rabby but it just was'nt looking right, they were too distracting and coming up with workable designs was just getting too time consuming. So I lit on the idea of trawling through various friends Facebook/MySpace albums to create an ever shifting mass of cool young bohos to waft their way through the cybernetic Babylon of the Cloud 109 lounge. This has worked really well and I do endeavour to flag up to various interested parties when they're about to make an appearance but it makes the whole creative process for me at least, much more alive, these little characters in the background really do have lives beyond their 2D incarnations.


  1. Thanks for stopping by, Peter. This is really fine work, great characters...

    At first Illustrator seems perverse and alien, doesn't it? But once you've got to grips with that you're laughing. Even so... it's still pencil paper and Photoshop all the way for me.

  2. Great to hear from you Nelson and I've now just discovered your website which is a total knockout - love your draughtsmanship there's elements of Chris Riddell and some lovely Froud'esque touches in some of your monsters - the Rise and Shine illo is a knockout!

    I noticed that you're also part of that highly talented DFC collective - it was such a great comic but the subscription only distribution was I suspect just too much of a hurdle in the current economic environment for it to survive.

  3. I saw me in the background but have no memory of being there. It made me laugh, thankyou xx

  4. Yeah, it's such a shame the DFC didn't live long enough to escape the subscription only model and get onto the shelves. I'm pretty sure that was the long term plan. Still, they're bringing out collections of some of the finished strips next year, so who knows? If they do well the weekly version might even get a second wind when times are less harsh.

  5. Ever wanted to get free Google+ Circles?