While freelance design certainly offers the opportunity to switch between media and content pretty fluidly, I still seem to desire the side projects that are personal interest in nature and keep me trying new subject matter and techniques. Whether it’s an illustration project for my nephew (the super hero pic on the right) or a partnership with a friend to try and bring in some different clientele (legacyworks.us), or even managing a bike shop on the side,  I really enjoy the break from my typical 9-5 clients to keep things interesting.

Illustration:

Most of my illustration work has been for a personal projects. But, I do get the odd client here and there that requests an illustrated accent to a larger piece I’m working on for them. In a couple of rare cases, the project is actually based around the illustration work (homeslicedelivers.com). But, typically the illustration work I take on is for family and friends.

The Defender is a character that my 6 year old nephew has made up. My mom sewed a cape for him and got some gray thermals and he flies around with a foam sword acting as “The Defender of Justice and Truth.” For Christmas this last year I thought I would put his character on paper. He loves Spider Man and Batman and I thought he would enjoy seeing his character drawn like the comic book guys he likes so much. So I picked up the drawing pad and got to work.

For the project I did initial pencil and ink work by hand and then scanned the image in and did the color work on the computer. I dusted off my incredibly large Wacom tablet (which my wife so graciously bought me and I don’t have near enough opportunity to use) and got to work on the color work in Adobe Photoshop. After filling the large color areas with a solid color (cape, skin and body), I used the polygonal lasso tool to block out areas of shadow and highlight, filled them with black or white and dropped the opacity so that they still brought in some of the overlapping values with the other highlight and shadow areas.

Finally, I took the layered TIFF file and imported it into Adobe Illustrator to add the finishing touches that make it look like a legitimate comic book cover. I played with some background images, but in the end I decided to go with the high contrast of the character on a solid white background (I stole this idea from a Spawn cover that I’ve always liked).

Needless to say, when my nephew opened the picture on Christmas morning he was extremely excited. A true win/win. I had the opportunity to do a fun illustration project and was able to see him light up when he opened it.