In a new illustration I was asked to draw a shot that looked over the boys' shoulders as they read the magazine. The page they had turned to showed the game winning touchdown where almost all the players of both teams were piled up on the goal line while the referee signaled a touchdown. When I read the description my first thought was, "how the hell am I going to pull this off?"Thankfully, we live in an internet age where finding shots of the game were as easy as typing it into a Google search. So, I had the photo the boys were looking at. Now, how to turn it into art without just swiping the photo and popping it into the art?
For those of you who are students out there this method will seem like cheating. Whatever. Go tell the teacher on me and get me in trouble. The bottom line is that this method works and it works well. And, there are no rules in "art."
I took the photo and, using Photoshop, converted it into a blue line photo. What that means is that when I printed the photo out, all the grays and blacks of the photo were now in a non-reproducable blue hue. This way I could go over the photo in black ink, tracing off the players and the referees. When I was done and scanned the image back into the computer, only the black line was seen but all the blue dropped out of the image. I now had a nicely drawn inked line piece of art of the photo.
I then took the original photo and turned it into a simple four toned cut paper piece using Photoshop. All of the tones and grays instantly turned into a simple four toned piece that made it look like someone had built the whole photo out of construction paper.
I laid the toned photo underneath the inked line work and, ta-dum, instant magazine art!
A few other touches like adding some text and some wear and tear lines on top of the photo and it made the whole magazine image look like it really came from forty years ago.
It isn't perfect, mind you, but it works well and really contrasts against the clean, cartoony ink lines of the main characters looking at the magazine image.
Another step down, just a few more to go.
6 comments:
AWESOME! I love that photo. Obviously.
Copyright issues, though? I wonder.
Hey, you're the one who wrote the scene into the book :) And I did show the photo to the higher-ups before I did it. So, we'll see how it flies.
Nice job!
For those of you who are students out there this method will seem like cheating.
Ah, remember when we were all that uncompromising? That lasted, what, about a month into our first year at Kubert?
You know what ? If one day I have to use this kind of process to reach a goal, and someone tell me I cheated, I'll say "It's not my fault, Sean Tiffany himself from Kubert's school of Art told me I was allowed to do this !" :) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
Manu...it's art...there is no "allowed" or "forbidden." It's art...do what you need to do to make the piece the best it can be.
Rob will tell you. He was there with me in the Kubert trenches.
I know it, Sean, I was only kidding, it was just a joke !!!!!! :) ) ) ) )
Post a Comment