I posted these WIPs of the Bedlam spread. Theres still a lot of work to do on it, mostly the city itself, but not today.

The cat needs to be resized and moved to the right somewhat. Maybe I can find a place for her somewhere in the bottom left corner, I don't know yet.

I'm working on the city itself further down on the artboard. I'll post a view of the entire artboard when the page is finished.

More tomorrow...

This is a number of sketches that I hope will let me finish the Bedlam page. I've already made and posted the model for the city in the center. That makes it a bit easier to follow through and draw the rest in.

The only thing I don't have a clue about in here is the cat. I have no drawings that I'm happy with. It'll work itself out, maybe not today, but eventually I'll find a shape I can live with.

Ten days left.

More later, I'm building a little model to help me get the Dis (Bedlam) page done.

More later...

I've had to start to think about the geography of hell. Its been imagined thousands of times, but for my purposes I like the spiral structure. Dante talked about layers, like an upturned cake. Milton favored the immeasurable pit. My Hell, once the Lion's Gate is passed, is followed by the spiral stairway that snakes down into the abyss. After that the dark plain stretches out until the road down is reached in the very center.

As the road down is followed it gets darker and hotter, the demons meaner, the sins worse. At very bottom is the city of Bedlam, or Dis. Thats where we're going now.

These are some sketches for this part of the book. The city looks kind of like a cake in these drawings. The "OPEN 24HOURS" may stay.

I just had a revelation for the piece I'm working on. I suddenly realized that it was wrong. I'm not entirely sure what I can do to fix it yet, but that'll come. The problem is that at least a third of the page was just bare, even accounting for the pinstriping to come later, it was just too bare.

I'm just sketching some fixes for it now. The golden rule when trying to redesign something is 'draw anything except whats already drawn'. As long as I sketch away from the direction I know is wrong my chances of finding a better way are very much improved.

This is a sketch for the last page that hasn't in any way been tackled yet. The image has always looked pretty much like this but I've flipped the composition to break up the direction of the pages.

I think it might tie into the spiral stairway image, which I love, that curls back and forth. By breaking the direction up it gets a little more twisted and turned in on itself.

When I worked as a storyboard artist I was always prevented from playing with peoples heads like this. I was trying to make people feel uncomfortable in places, cutting a little too close, showing not quite enough to make a picture, that sort of thing. I did a fight sequence in a Duckman cartoon where I'd inserted no narrative. It was just random acts of violence cut together. It was just about 30 seconds of 'too close for comfort' groin stomps, a shot of fingers and a foot coming down hard, cut to a face pain distorted face etc.

Needless to say, I loved it. The producers were not so happy it seems. My director at the time, a guy called Stever Loter, faught for every last shot (or at least told me he did) and we did manage to keep a few at least.

I wasn't too upset, I knew it would be a long shot for this sort of boarding to go through the process uncut. The truth is that after those timing jackals had done their dirty deeds I could barely recognize my own work when it was played back to me, so its not like my intent was ever likely to survive intact anyway.

Okay, on the previous post I layed out a page spread from start to finish. The sketch was quite loose but I had done a lot of sketching for this page. The Lion's Gate motif is something I've used before. Its a very graphic symbol, and its suprisingly common. A quick google reveals Lion's Gates in cities all around the world.

The image here shows my entire artboard with all the sketches and scans that went into the piece. Thats kind of how I work, I improvise a lot, just doing what I think feels right. Theres a lot of pick and mixing, a stroke from this image, a shape from that one.

The sign is a Dante reference, although depending on the translation the real incantation reads 'THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY, THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN, THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST. JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER; MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY, THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY. ABANDON EVERY HOPE WHO ENTER' and lacks the often repeated 'HERE'. Oh yeah, and its inscribed above the door and not on a sign as such. Artistic license, you can't beat it.

I've been sketching the hero for nearly 3 weeks now and this is the direction he seems to be heading in. He seems to me to be some kind of a hipster doofus. Thats okay for the start of the story, but when the cars show up he starts to channel Jim Clark (RIP).

The hat is a joke. I took to wearing one when the temperature got over 115F here in too sunny Los Angeles. It suddenly made sense to keep your bonce out of the sun.

Comfy too.

Eleven days left. I went with a change of direction for this page because it just wouldn't work any other way. The pinstriping is temporary, just a placeholder while I have a think about it.

I did a lot of sketching last night and I think I got some good stuff. Looking forward to trying to translate it into some finished work. I'm working on 3 pages at once now, trying to force a direction for one, still sketching compositions for the second and noodling the third. By my count I have 4 pages where theres not so much as a line down yet. Thats making me nervous. If I could just figure out a way forward on a couple of them it would take some of the pressure off. I'm hoping I'll get to work all day on the book, it looks like its going to be a slow day otherwise with my usual clients out of town for a long weekend. I'll post some of the sketch work up later after its scanned.

Things have slowed down to a crawl.

The idea now is to just start to push the images that are somewhat done forward, hopefully to a finish and at the same time produce one page spread a day. That would leave me with about 4 days for polishing and pinstriping.

Its possible, just not likely.

I did manage to get the bulk of this stairway page done yesterday, and sketched the figure last night. Lots of room for pinstriping on this one.

Many revelations in the last twenty four hours. With twelve (I think) days to go I'm desperatly trying to fill the deficencies in my designs to find a style for the pages that aren't done yet.

I thought that I'd shot myself in the foot because the cars were so solid that my drawings look two dimensional next to them. I think I found a way around. Its the simple approach really, just draw the charactars better. Bugger. Easier said than done. I've had to scrap a couple of pages but thats life. I spent last night sketching (and watching Project Runway) and I came up with a more sculptural sensibility for the figures. Lets see if it works.

How do you use the spelling checker in Blogger?

Found this great pinstriping video below on YouTube. Its made me more excited than ever to finish the main illustrations and then move onto the 'decoration phase'.

Isn't the Internets wonderful...

Working on the last few car poses. I think I have 3 page spreads left to do, 4 at the outside. Too much to do, less than two weeks to do it.
Anyway I changed the angle from the original sketch to give myself some negative space for the verse. If it doesn't work out I can always cut closer to fix the composition if thats whats called for. I think I'll probably have to cut closer than this for the finished page.

Thirteen days left, I'm shitting worms at this point. I have most of the middle of the book done to at least a certain degree. But that leaves a small block at the end of the book and a larger block at the start untouched.

Whats worse is that I have at least 4 other (hard) deadlines in the next two days that I can't miss.

A hard deadline, btw, are the deadlines that I cannot slip because a client is expecting and we're not at home to Mr. Fuckup.

This is a page spread that I did after buying a copy of MotorSport magazine. It was the May issue with the Cooper on the cover. Great pictures, but there was a shot from just inside the cover that may or may not have been taken by Malcolm Griffiths.

This one was kind of difficult, it seemed kind of plain when it was on the artboard. It just seemed to hang right when it was placed in Indesign with its corresponding verse. Can't explain why that happens sometimes. I eyes play tricks and the minds goes along for the ride.

Anyway, the photo was of a Cooper from a little later than my Lotus 25 (1963) but it was such a good photo that I had to do something with it.

The steps in the below process from bottom to top are as follows

Step 1: After posing the model I start to trace in a bright color (easier to see)

Step2: After the tracing is done I'll stroke all the lines with a thicker line to make it stand out.

Step3: Without worrying about line thickness or detail I'll start to pick colors for the largest parts of the drawing.

Step4: Start to add detail and group lines and shapes together to make it easier to tame the image.

Step 5: Add lines that I'll use to define the movement in the piece. Because I want this illustration to seem like it was moving I used long sweeping lines that curled around the car.

The smoke was added to give the impression of a change of direction.

The composition was changed to allow more white space around the car.

Note, this is not finished. Thats all I'll do for now. Theres a lot of detail stuff that I'll pick up later after I've had a few days to look at it. All the little stuff I push back to the clean-up stage at the end of my deadline. For now this is a good start.

I'm going to go through the entire process of one page spread in the next couple of posts. It might take a day or two because theres a lot of steps, but here goes.

I had a picture in a book of a guy called Peter Arundell drifting the Lotus 25 R4 around a long sweeper and I liked it a lot.

I did some sketches, scanned here for your pleasure, trying to capture the feeling of the car at speed. I kind of liked the front angle of the car so I posed my model based on the photo and my sketch.

I try to always sketch inside a box thats roughly the same proportions as the pages I'm trying to lay out. The next post will have a few WIP shots as the image came together. Theres still a lot of polishing to do, but that will happen at a later date.

Two weeks even left. Fourteen days, shit.

I'd like to say that yesterday was great and I got lots done. I can't say that. As the work is pushed forward there are pages that increasingly become more resistant. Maybe they're not the right pages, that I don't know yet. I've always found the pages that are hardest to draw are the ones that should never have been there in the first place. This is as far as I got yesterday with this piece before I left it in frustration.

This is another worksheet that I've been working on. Again, its basically a 'where I'm at' with this particular image. Since I haven't made much traction with it in the last few I have to consider this one in Limbo for the moment. The detail at the top is for the devils pose. Still need to work out a few things before I can even attempt this one.

However, I like the composition so far, and I think, if I find a direction, that it will be a very nice page. I'll post some WIP's as it goes on.

Feeling hugely unmotivated today for some reason. Everything is hard today.

Two weeks one day left.

I've scanned one of my worksheets here to show you how this works. About once a day I'll generate a pdf of the entire book in spreads and print it out. The prints are then drawn over with anything that I think may be needed to finished the job. Digital illustration uses a lot of paper you see. Tombou 4B's and Sharpies are used for the worksheet process.

The kind of things that end up on the worksheets include notes on layering, character posing, special effects, repositioning type etc. It helps me to push towards the end and its good to get away from the computer every once in a while. Also because these sheets are half the size of the finished book (about 10" across) they're a lot easier to manage and keep track of than large sized prints that I'll use later for final finishing.

I'm not suggesting that this should be the way anyone else would do it, thats just the way I do it. After working for years as a designer and storyboard artist I can't really ever get away from the paper, I like the feel of it.

When a composition isn't working out (see below) I usually start with a new file and group the major elements together before moving them over in three or four large clusters. I can move these around independently and find a more pleasing position without being distracted by the stuff I already know doesn't work.

Its getting late on Sunday and I don't want to work tonight. Maybe just a little light sketching and a spot of TV.

This one is not so far from finished now, just a little more detail on the rear suspension and engine/transmission as well as some engine parts shooting out the back, and some pinstriped flames, and a little more smoke, and maybe some splatter, and perhaps......

This is pretty much where I'm going to leave this for now. Its not finished, but theres enough down that I can move on.

So theres two weeks and two days left and its starting to look like a giant slog.

I'm working in something approaching a blur now to try to make up for Friday. This is a typical sketch at a fairly advanced stage. Just importing into Illustrator to start getting some lines down but the composition and major elements seem to be in the right place. I'll post some progress on this one later on, tomorrow morning at the latest.