The A.T.T. - Part 2 - The Maquette

At Goodwill you can get a "grab bag special," which is essentially a clear plastic bag for two bucks and as many broken toy parts you can cram into said bag. What you see on the left is the chaotic mess from one of these fun and hand-sanitizer-required-afterward expeditions.

James Gurney has been preaching about maquettes and their usefulness on his blog for ages. Although I had known about them in school, I'd never actually tried building one. With each new concept, I worked, re-worked... and kept re-working an illustration trying to capture something that I just could not translate without seeing it in the environment I was trying to illustrate. Using the maquette saved me a lot of valuable time because I could easily visualize what each shadow, or ray of light would look like because the photo reference for it was right there. Each illustration required less tweaking and I was able to complete them much quicker than with no reference.

When it came time to create the maquette of the A.T.T., I used the opportunity as another "sketching method." I still was not absolutely set on a design, and since I was creating it from scratch I had free range on experimenting. Using the interesting shapes of old toy parts, foam board, and other random materials, I was able to create my own Frankenstein of an Automated Torque Telegrapher. Once it was completely assembled, I painted it flat grey to make it appear more seamless, easier to capture shadows, and reflect light in photographs.

The fun thing about building maquettes is that you can be as precise or uncomplicated as you like. The ultimate goal is to get the information you need out of it, whether it be a certain pose, the perfect angle, or most importantly, how lighting and cast shadows fall on your subject. I've gotten quite a few miles out of just this one maquette. I've used it for several panels in the web comic as well as faux newspaper articles, and eventually I might make a "blueprint style" poster of the Automated Torque Telegrapher. Until then... it rests happily in my studio with all the other clutter of maquettes, books, and scribbles just waiting for the day I need to draw the A.T.T. once more.

In the next post, I'll share a few of the finished illustrations/designs that I have referenced this maquette for.

Until Then,

-b

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You can view the A.T.T. in action in the

Apparition Abolishers webcomic

See the sketches of the A.T.T. - HERE

For some of the very best tips and tricks of illustration art,
visit James Gurney's blog - GurneyJourney,

Torque's Lab - thumbnails part2

The whole point of the quick thumbnails is so that I will have a map as to how I want the story to unfold. They are very crude as you can see, but their only intent was to get the story down onto paper while I still had it fresh in my head. That way I can later go back and reference them when I am drawing more realized layouts without worrying about the story continuity as much.

Now I am able to go back and basically redraw the scenes with a bit more attention to overall design more conscious of the perspective and details of each scene. Some of these images will be different in the final cut and some might not actually make it at all. It's just better for me to just keep drawing fast loose renderings and then be able to take away rather than struggle for content.

These will then go through another phase where I will bring them into Photoshop and fix all perspective issues and create pretty tight color comps before I go to the final pencils.

The goal here is to fully realize the entire painting before I even begin the paint process. I want to work out all my kinks early on so I can just have fun when the paint starts flowing.

I'll try and post some of the color comps next week.

-b

Torque's Lab - thumbnails part1

After the abstract thumbnails I did about two weeks ago. I was able to revisit my original thumbnail sketches (below) and try to make what I thought was a bit crammed and bland into something a bit more exciting and interesting. The abstract thumbnails helped me find new perspectives and overall better layouts of what I thought should be an over the top underground laboratory of whom a few have considered "The Tony Stark of the Victorian Era." With a title like that, you can't just cheapen out on the grand introduction of his laboratory. I needed bigger and better. So what was a measly two pages, has now turned into EIGHT, most are full page illustrations too. Full of steam, gears, airships, nautical ship, gentlemen robots and the introduction to the first Abolisher. (finally!)

(initial thumbnail sketches = poo)

Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me. :)

Tomorrow I'll post some more refined sketches and maybe you can actually understand what the heck you're looking at up there.

-b