So I got carried away and did this in a day...

Adding another book cover illustration to my portfolio.

Hey everyone! Just joined and this is my first time posting. Going to try and do the challenge every month

Hey! New student for the new year Here are some of my recent portfolio pieces

It depends on where you want your focal point to be. I would keep some light on both of them, so maybe the lighter background, but make sure either your background or your foreground girl is brighter than the other, to make one stand out

@carlianne super cute!

@Coley I actually haven't joined either but I probably will, especially if I'm going, since it adds a discount to the conference price

@Juli I like the colours! But I think it's overall a bit too dark now. If you're using Photoshop, I would try doing a quick levels adjustment while you have the black and white filter one just to try and get a little more light in key areas.

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

Hi, I think any of them could work but personally I find the 3rd one conveys more of a story then the others so it seems the most compelling to me

@Nyrryl-Cadiz Thank you!

I love both expressions but if you're trying to convey surprise, then you definitely have to go with B!

@xin-li

I agree that you don't need to know Magritte for the image to make sense but it definitely adds to it and my eye went straight to "This is not cheese" haha

For character design, maybe try out different types of clothing or props that he could have on him. Maybe more art supplies as an illustrator, or things to show other aspects of his personality. Maybe even some clothing/design choices based on Magritte, like a bowler hat? I struggle with sometimes having "generic" characters as well so I don't know if I can help much with suggestions.

I don't know that I really get the idea of him discovering that the moon is made of cheese, maybe you could add something else to suggest that concept. But I like the image anyway, so I don't think it's necessary.

I personally like the linear/straight on perspective for this one. It doesn't look amateur-ish if you do it well and you've clearly shown us that you can do different angles and perspective in your work so I wouldn't worry about that.

Super cute! Looking forward to seeing how it turns out

Gorgeous! My only nitpick is that you could try maybe tilting the perspective to make it more dynamic and enhance the feeling of motion even more. And have the bugs flying at a bit of a different angle. Very horizontal compositions tend to feel more still and that counters a bit with your subject. I love your character designs though, they have so much personality! Fennec foxes and kangaroo rats are the best

I think the composition of the princess piece is much more dynamic and it's an interesting story concept but harder to get at first glance. Maybe make the part that's transforming a little more obvious and have her reacting more strongly to it? And possibly think about the separation between night and day, whether it sould be a hard line, or a fuzzy transition or maybe like tendrils creeping in. They're both looking good!

300 dpi CMYK is standard for printing, 72 dpi RGB is standard for web. Photoshop has an option to Export for Web and you can save a jpeg (automatically in RGB, 72 dpi) and you can change the image size in pixels at the bottom and see how many MB your final image will be. That way, you're not changing the size/resolution of your original file (which I have accidentally saved over in the past!)

Love how this is looking! A tiny bit of rim lighting on the house might make it pop a bit more though

It depends on where you want your focal point to be. I would keep some light on both of them, so maybe the lighter background, but make sure either your background or your foreground girl is brighter than the other, to make one stand out

@Coley I actually haven't joined either but I probably will, especially if I'm going, since it adds a discount to the conference price

@Coley Yeah, that's really far to go. We definitely need more Canadian SCBWI chapters. That being said, I think I'm probably going to try and go this year so if you do manage to make it, let me know! It would be nice to meet up with some other SVSers

Hi guys, I'm looking into going to an SCBWI Conference for the first time. I'm sure many of you have been already and can let me know how it went. I know that it's a good opportunity for networking and critiques but I'm trying to decide if it's worth the cost for me.

I'm living in Montreal and this year's Canada East event is in Ottawa (2 hour drive away) so if I'm going for the three day weekend, I would have to take a half day off work, drive 2 hours, stay 2 nights in a hotel at $160 plus tax, on top of the conference fee of around $400, and an illustration critique of $50. So for everything together: printing an updated portfolio, book dummy and marketing materials, plus food and gas etc, it's going to cost me between $800 and $1000 to attend the conference.

I want to go because I feel like I need to put myself out there more and really pour myself into this industry. For the people that have gone to conferences before, do you guys think it would be worth it?

@RitaGoldner thank you!