Monday, March 18, 2013

The Kids Are Alright

One of the jobs I've been working on this year during school was for a publisher in Toronto who creates a series of books for kids called Deal With It. The topics range from dealing with gangs, to cliques to bullying, and my topic was Homophobia. I think it's great that they are approaching these subjects in junior and senior high because it can be a rough time, as we all know. It felt really good to be a part of this. If you're interested, you can purchase it in advance here on Amazon.

That said, it was definitely a challenge because the illustrations for this included over a hundred unique characters of various ages, genders and cultural backgrounds, presented in spot illustrations, full page spreads, double page spreads and even some comic strips. It was fun playing around with the facial expressions, gestures and fashion.

I ended up doing the inking and colouring twice: once to submit the job as a school project, and again to meet the requirements of the publisher. In the end, all of the hard work was worth it and I'm pretty proud of the final result. Here are some of the choice pics. I think it's about 75% of it.

The cover image


Full page illustration


Double page spread











Some comic strips, sans speech balloons
































Wednesday, March 6, 2013

"We Are the Reaction to Your Inaction!"

Last semester gave me a chance to finally get design work done on my baby: Reactionary. It's a story that's been in the works for awhile but I've never really had the time to design the world. So needless to say, this was lots of fun and a huge step forward to finally putting pencil to paper and getting this story off the ground. Without bogging you down in story details, I have included highlights from the development book I created that reveal the world of Reactionary.

Cover (with logo) and inside flap.


Back cover with inside flap.


The money shot of the group in action, plus sweet quotes.


A map of the "world".


Clearly I ran out of time to do backgrounds for the book, some of them were pretty rushed.
This is the base of the Good Doctor.


The hideout for the Reaction, an old fire hall.


Hideout interiors.


The Good Doctor, modelled after Robert Redford. Still haven't gotten this character right and he is probably the most important...


The Ophanim


Red Fred


Fallen Angela


Sebastian Sliver


Sophie Havoc


Vehicles


This last one was an assignment for Digital Production, the goal was to design a series of ads. So I jumped forward into an alternate future where Reactionary was being published by Image. And where I have somehow become "acclaimed."

And that's that, a great first start. Looking forward to writing the first draft this summer.