Hi Everyone, here is my entry!

Farmers, beware of the black sheep!

Made it in! Hi everyone, here is my Nightfall entry

Hello everyone! This is my first post and contest with SVS, super pumped for this months theme!

Hey everyone, here is my entry!

Hey everyone, here is my entry for the contest!

This is so awesome! I really like see how other people work and love sharing my process.

This piece originated from wanting to have two characters scoping out an alley. Then through exploring ideas turned to the woods, then hiding from someone. Eventually I had the idea of it being a giant crow. Next was to figure out where they would hide. I liked having the characters in the woods but, knew there was a way to up the danger so, I moved them to an open field. Looking to further this I thought it would be interesting to have their only cover by a group of cows that could move at any moment. Lastly I was looking for little story details to give them a reason for running from the crow, the green bag, and the holes in the crown to hint at whats in the bag.

Thumbnails

I wanted to have some understanding of crow and cow anatomy so I did a few sketches to give ideas on how to simplify.

Taking the piece to photoshop for the cleanup, value, and color test.

A big challenge was figuring out a pose for the kids. There was even more exploration than this in the digital file.

Final

I hope you enjoyed. I love talking about this stuff so ask away if there are any questions.

Hey Gang!

Lightbox Expo is fast approaching. Wanted to see if anyone else was planning on attending and I wanted to share my work in progress portfolio for the event.

I'd like to have ten good images, right now I'm at seven but, I'm fine going with less if it means the work is good. The order of the images is important, I'm posting them in the order I think they should go. I want to see if any images are really jumping out at people or if there are some major red flags. The end goal and where I'd like to see myself working is children's publishing, editorial, and private sales.

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3.

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7.

Hello, SVS Team, here's my submission!

Hey Gang, here is my submission. Fun way to end the year!

Hey Gang! Lightbox expo is this weekend and I'm putting the last touches on my portfolio. I fly out in the morning. Wanted to share a couple new pieces I've made and a revised piece.

This had a couple things touched up digitally, I think it brings a little more life to it.

One of the things I needed to work on was some sequential pieces, this one goes with the Crow illustration thats 1. This takes place earlier in the story before they have a run in with the crow. For the image order I want this to follow the crow one, being the new 2.

I had so much fun with this sheep illustration, it had to go in the portfolio. I feel like it's one of my stronger pieces, so I want it in the middle, I'm going to have it follow the taco truck watercolor piece.

This last one is part of the crow illustration series, this would be once they arrive to meet the crow. I'm having a hard time with this one. There's things I like about it, but there's something I can't quite place.

Wanted to see what people thought and if it should go in the portfolio. I'm not sure where I would place it in the order, maybe after the other two in this series? This was laid out with the intent of being a spread. But what do you think?

Please let me know if you think the order of these should be different. If you want to see how they feel in order, I have them up on my site. https://www.normanmoranaillustration.com

Also!! If anyone else is going to be at Lightbox please hit me up, it would be awesome to meet someone from the forum! During the expo I'm more likely to see a message on instagram, and a link to that is in my signature.

I've reworked #3 into #5.

I tried a few experiments with changing up the shadow plane silhouette (see #7), but it seems like when I add more complexity it gets distracting. I want the focus to be on our red plane. And I like the idea of something alive chasing him but I think it distracts from the goal.

Here are some rambling thoughts. What I worry about with #5 is the shapes overall are too similar, when I break it down to its core design it isn't as interesting to me, but I think it could work with the details. I see the appeal with him being chased by a plane, but the shape in #6 can be stronger from a design standpoint and as far as that shape represents, it could be a storm he's trying to outrun. Really I'm stuck on picking #5 or #6, but wanted to include #7 and #8 to show what I didn't think was working.

Thank you all again for the help

@Heather-Boyd Thank you I'm leaning more towards the plane now. i've been working on some options, I think I'll post them here soon. I'm glad you called out the small plane shadow on #4, I'll use that.

@Ryan-Ehr that was really helpful. I'll play around with the scale and make sure we can see the pilot clearly. It's tough, I'll have to play with the shadow of what is chasing him more. I like the giant bird! That was one of my first ideas, but I have a piece in my portfolio that already has a giant bird and I don't want it to seem like I'm reusing the same ideas I'll try a dinosaur though.

Thank you!

Thank you, @jwing for the feedback, I appreciate your perspective

Hi Everyone,

I've been working on this concept of a pilot flying his hardest. I have some parts falling off the plane and smoke coming from it and I wanted something to be chasing him. I've been playing around with what that can be and have included some options here. I'm leaning towards #4. I'm curious how this concept reads relating to the challenge, "Everything was rattling, falling apart and breaking!!!" I haven't made it into the past few top 16's and I'm wondering if my concepts haven't been clear enough.

Here is an earlier sketch of the idea.

Thank you!

@lmrush Thank you, so much!

@Braden-Hallett exactly!

@Braden-Hallett Oh that makes so much sense! It had seemed uncharacteristic haha. If you find it bugs you, maybe play with the scale a little. My day job is as a production artist, I can't help but see these little details

I didn't pick up on this on my first read, but I love that the front is them chasing the rabbit and on the back we get the payoff. Very clever.

Killer! I really dig the fix on the front side. I have one more little nit pick XD This can be subjective, but the spot illustration feels a little cramped. I'm not sure where your safe areas are. I bumped them over to the right a bit and down a smidge. It felt a little more balanced and you can avoid getting the edge of you illustration cut off. Excited to see where these lead you!

This is a tough call. I could see either working. I did really like B. but, I really like the warm feeling of the blue in A. and would hope influences potential clients.

If I can call out a small nitpick. There is a tangent starting to for with the clouds around your characters mouth. Maybe there are some other ways to draw that main cloud line on the bottom, particularly the spot near their heads.

Killer post card!