Announcement

They put the thing out on the website and I'm on there wheyheyyyyy

Nooiiiiiiceeee

Also mega props for Rosie getting runner up!! Maannnn thats great, money and contracts and stuff, good job.

Leeds College of Art dominatin the victories

Whhhooopopooopp

Finals examples

Put the scans together in photoshop to demonstrate what the pages will look like

Theyre a bit rough but I think it's on the right track

A lot less time consuming than doing it all in real life

Need to fix the glow behind the planets and maybe change the colour of Planet Small, I already changed him to blue but he's a bit lost

Had to find a new way of removing white backgrounds because it was looking really jaggedy and was taking forever to erase and multiply didn't work with the dark background

The new process is using the magic selection tool and selecting the outer area then expanding 2px, then feather and smooth then delete and it deletes the white with a soft edge that looks wayyyy better.

Used the same process to put these together

Still need to figure out whether to use type or hand write it.

Type would be muchhhhh quicker

So I'll probably end up doing that. 

Wooooooo

Got a reply about my entry to Carmelite
Eeeee

So thats pretty nifty, never been highly commended for owt.
And I get to have a snazzy little meeting
Obviously I'll have to wow them so intensely that they hire me on the spot.

We've arranged the meeting for July 27th, while I'm on holiday in Kent which is pretty convenient and gives me a while to pad out my portfolio and get over these hectic coming months.

Woooottt

Started Final Imagery

Decided against the line process I used to submit to macmillan
They didn't look polished enough, but I liked this one, on the left

So I've been expanding on that process
At the minute it consists of sketching the shape lightly in coloured pencil (correct to the colour it will be), then filling in the shape with watercolour, then working back into it with more coloured pencil and pens. It's quite time consuming but I think I like it. It's garnered positive feedback.

Here's some scans

Thats the land areas

And the night day comparison explaining the unstable environment due to an emotionally unstable moon

Some moons and space planet,I did them on really big paper so I ended up cutting them all out to scan.
Pretty pleased with the sun rays, managed to make a smooth gradient in real life
Theres some more planets and a house too

So next I have to put them into photoshop, clean em up and combine it all into the pages.
I wanna do this in time for the crit so I have examples of final pages to show.

Macmillan Entry

I didn't end up finishing my macmillan entry to the standard I wanted
The pages that were initially submittable roughs became the finals and I had to do rough line drawings of the remaining pages as the roughs.
Bit bummed that it probably will hinder my chances of doing well in the competition but never mind.
With the deadline being the same day as the PPP hand in it was a case of do the Macmillan entry better or pass PPP.
I actually had to hand in PPP at twelve and then I had until five to add all the text and make it look okay and stuff which always takes forever so it was a bit of a hectic day
Got it submitted though so it's alright
Also I think it's useful at this stage in the project to see the book as a rough whole, and to start drafting the text so I can work out how much is necessary. A good oppurtunity to review the content and progress. And it forms a good and useful blueprint of what's to be done.

PeragroPod

drawing his little vehicle

It started off as a little round plane

Kinda like nibblers plane

As initially Eddy was mostly travelling between Space Planet and Earth, and the story would focus on such adventures. 

The main focus was that it could fly

Also with Heady Leggys being round, the ship would have to be so to accommodate them comfortably. These flights are probably pretty long.

I like when big characters get into little cars

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

This is the largest automobile I could afford (22 short films about springfield)

Exhibit C

Put it in H (Mr Plow) 

So this was the initial design of the ship

 

And I started playing briefly with making it a car too

It opens kinda like a polly pocket

Theres probably a better way of describing that but I don't know

So when planning the pages I figured he'd probably need to get around in they sky, on land and in water, what with all the flooding. 

I worked on making it adaptable to all three terrains.

I figured it would be a really simple machine because Heady Leggys don't like unnecessary hassle.

It would retain it's shape but change slightly to adapt

So in park mode it has little legs and all appendages tucked in

In flight mode little wings extend out to the side and the flooble pops up to form a propeller

Like those hats

What are they even meant to connote idk

is it like nerd attire

what is it

dunce? 

Anyway the propeller is kinda like those hats

I think I want one

unless the connote something bad. 

http://todayinsci.com/Events/Patent/UltimatePropellerHead.htm

this is what the propeller hat means

it's actually really interesting

anyway

This is the vehicle in flight mode

Then when it goes into land driving mode the flooble goes back in and just wobbles uselessly in the breeze, but where the little standing legs are the wheels pop out.

And the exhaust now makes fumes for reasons

Then when it goes into amphibious mode the wheels go back in and out pops little fins on either side

These are based on the pelvic fins of fish that help them move about and go up and down, which is their function on the vehicle

Also the flooble pokes up again and opens into a wind sock to aid braking. 

And the exhausted at the back pops out to form a propeller

So it now travels in all land areas. 

Figuring out the name I nicked JK Rowlings process of borrowing from other languages 

So I went straight to latin for maximum pretentiousness and looked for travel related words

The verb peragro, which seems to still be used in italian but I'm not sure, means to wander/pass through/traverse/ travel, which I think is quite accurate to the Heady Leggy mentality in it's passiveness.

Hense I titled it the Peragro Pod

Ta dah

My shirt got printed!

My design I did for threadless aaaages ago was chosen for print!
I dind't win but I got a $250 gift code for the store with which i bough a buttload of shirts
Here's my shirt in the winners section!

It is flawed in that being a square shape it doenst look good on a tshirt
This will probably affect my sales
but I get $7 every time someone buys one and i dont have to do anyyyythinngg
I'm gonna enter these more often

Here it is on some more shirts

Roughs for submission

Here's the roughs I've got so far for macmillan
They sure are taking some time, but I'm pretty pleased with how theyre coming along

I've been using linework to hurry the process along but I plan to do the finals more like the night day page

Submitted

Did it - ta daaahh!
Two weeks boooom

Realised I registered for the prize with my old email and had a slight panic that I'd not have time to redo it all and blahblahhh so I asked em

So thats all fine

Glad it's done

Now I can go back to presentation stuff

woop

the world

got this comic at thoughtbubble
seems kinda relevant as its about a whole world made up
it does it through dynamic full spreads rather than encyclopeida
its really pretty

Heady Leggy Plans

Here are my scrappy looking plans for the Heady Leggy encyclopedia
It should be finnnne right
There's definitely not too much to do
Yeahhhh

Text problems

There is so much text to fit in
I planned the images loosely to fit the amount of text but in my haste I definitely underestimated how much text there was to fit in.

Also I didn't consider that the black text (as requested) wouldn't show up very well over the dark blue nighttime pages. I got carried away with aesthetic and didn't fully consider page logistics. This is why there are graphic designers.

So I've basically just tried a bunch of different ways of presenting the text on the page, in white or black or in little translucent boxes. It doesn't look very consistent but it shows possible options.

Roughs

I've finished all the roughs now
Weeeheheheee
Here they aree

Pretty pleased with these, for roughs, and I've enjoyed using my spiffy new paints.

Not happy with this one

This is my final final, but I messed it up a bit.
Did the same process as the last one but I dunno it just isn't right
It's mostly cos the cat looks weird as hell
and I painted a shadow on the light side which I'm real pissed about
Don't really have time to redo it though

 The prescanned linework

 The scanned painting 

 The painting with the linework on top

Painted background behind foxy

Well at least I've got all the finals done

This is definietly the worst though

It's basically indistinguishable from the roughs

Blehhhh oh well

Chalk it up to experience

Need to use the remaining time to get the other roughs done

It worked alright

Put the clean lines onto the painting and it looks pretty decent.
I don't think that other process would've worked for this one really cos its less smaller components, really just one big image, so this was the right process to follow.

This is the line work I scanned in before painting it all

This is the scan with the linework on top

This is everything together with a background and his mouth filled in, and I added more shadow around the foxes teeth for extra horridness

I like this one, but the edges around the fox are a bit off
It'll do though

Crispin Submission

Here are the patterns I sent to Crispin orthotics

Threw in some oldies as well

Final Painting

Trying another new process with this one

With the roughs I've been painting into the coloured pencil linework and aside from being very rough, it looks pretty good.

So for this one I'm doing the pencil linework, scanning that in for safekeeps, then painting into the original linework, scanning that in and putting it under the clean lines.

I'm doing the painting now

Think I did pretty well with his little face. Hes so scared.

Repeat Pattern

Making a repeat pattern for crispin
I've spent a load of time trying to think of like a theme or something to make a pattern from and I can't so I  just used like smiley heads, looks alright though.

Here's the lines

It's a fun unwindy brief in the midst of all this other stuff going on, PPP and kids books and all that

Scanned and coloured it, as such.

I did it on the cintiq so it did that thing where when you put it back over to the normal screen its a completely different colour. It was bright sunshiney yellows but it made it durgy and gross

I altered it slightly when making the repeat tile.
Paul showed me how to do the repeat thing its real cool.
Well, there's a few ways of doing it but I used Paul's which was Filter > Offset and that moves the image over a bit so you can make that smooth to the rest of the image and then do it with all sides.

It's kinda confusing but it worked.
There's also the quarters way where you quarter it and then put them in the opposite corners but that didn't look right on this occaision

Here is my repeating tile
 

The colours went awful again

Here's the corrected, but not ideal, colours with the tile repeated four times

Pretty pleased with the result
I think it repeats pretty seamlessly

I liked this I'd do it again
I need to make the painted patterns I did repeatable tiles as well

Roughsssss

I like this one, mostly because the light went pretty well, and I think the teal represents the nighttime well

About half way through now

Another wee pattern

Playing with beckys paint pens I made this

Really like it, not sure why
Think I'll submit it for Crispin, would be an absolute monster to make repeating though god imagine

I don't usually work in these colours
Or with straight boxy lines for that matter
Looks good though
I'll expand on this at some point
Perhaps initially by buying some paint pens