The fine results of a productive night :)

Let's start with Kid's book... No wait, let me back up a touch. So, working at Joe's house has been hard. We have this big studio space in the back room but it was just not a good workspace. I don't know why but any time I came back here I lost the desire to work. So this weekend I came back here to work while Joe was playing games and I got that "Ugh, I don't want to do this" feeling and decided the room must be tended to. So I poked my head out the door to the living room and asked Joe if I might make the room a proper studio space. He said I could go to town on it. So I moved almost everything. I cleaned and cleared and removed. There was a big corner sofa set in a corner with a TV stand in it, there were about a million chairs... generally there was too much stuff and it wasn't in places that made any sense. So, the whiteboard went up on the wall, the sofa went in the corner, the art supplies went in the cabinet. Everything got swept and dusted and now the space feels like a work environment. It feels comfortable and intentional. I'm proud of my work. All of that said, I started working this afternoon and have only stopped for occassional breaks. I sat down with a paper and a pencil and wrote out an extensive to-do list. I have accomplished a respectable portion of that list in the past hours. Now, let's start with Kid's book:

Most of the people in my children's book class chose stories that involve one character or a few characters, but I am working with Justin. This means two things as near as I can tell. First, it will be awesome when it's done, if it gets done. Second, it cannot be easy. I have to design at least one new character for every page of the book except maybe the last page, depending on the final format of the book. So it's been slow going. The class before last we had a review and I showed the following page of character designs:
It contains the out-of-date version of Sandwich and Kibble (lower left) and the six prototype people that I made to figure the style out (lower right). Between that class and this evening I figured out that all the info I need is in my sketchbook so if I had my sketchbook I could work on designs. The third, fourth and fifth characters on this next page were designed at odd intervals when I had my sketchbook with me:
The rest were designed tonight. I'm sure that doesn't sound like much to my non-art people, but I had to look at each of the page descriptions consider what the characters needed to communicate and who they needed to interact with... Okay, so maybe it isn't all that much work, but it took a long time and it's hard to make this many characters look unique in black and white. The bottom characters are Vanilla Latte (the mother in the story), Kibble (the dog) and Sandwich. They had to be re-designed. In addition to these character designs I have prepared the thumbnails for all but the last 4 pages. This was also a lot of work. I am happy I will have something serious to show in class tomorrow.

So, aside from Kid's book I found all of the reference for my next computer Ill project and primed the god-bird for the next Sculpture assignment.

And then there's Ill II... In which my past two assignments have BOMBED. So, I have to work on re-doing everything from the past several weeks. I finally re-drew the fashion drawing that Thiel liked:
I'll be tossing some digital color behind the drawing and crossing my fingers, I still like the second on like this better.

So then there's the next assignment, which is a double-page spread for a children's book. I decided to do the fable of the farmer and the rattlesnake. I want to do the final scene, wherein the snake has bitten the old man and he is dying and the snake leaves. I did thumbnails and then the thumbnail that I am planning to go with:
Wish me luck! It would be really nice if Thiel actually liked something I do again. I also composed the reference photos for the revision of the book cover. {yawn}.

Love and coffee!
~Anne