I want to warn you ahead of time that I don’t have the finished illustration that would normally follow the series of sketches below. I must have gotten rid of it, or else it’s boxed away somewhere in my attic (I moved last November and am still unpacking).
A while back I got an assignment to illustrate a cover for a summer issue of StoryWorks magazine. The art director asked for fireflies reading books. Sounds like a fun idea—I went to work drawing variations of it.
The first one works, but it’s kind of the obvious solution:
I like this next one in spite of its being a little weird. To make it work I’d need to really play up the lighting effects:
Fireflies reading books in a bookstore after hours:
Fireflies combining their individual lights to read a book:
Firefly using a flashlight, with a farm in the background:
And here are fireflies using each other’s butts to read by:
Those were the ideas I came up with. The AD liked the last two, couldn’t decide which one to use—and asked me to combine them in one sketch:
I wasn’t happy with it. Too many elements, too difficult to read the idea. I would have loved to paint any of the other sketches, but it wasn’t meant to be. Nobody’s fault; the art director and I just had different tastes. That’s the way it goes sometimes. You do your work, get your paycheck, and move on.
Another discussion about how much to charge for creative work here.
Keep in mind that your day- or hourly- rate is your minimum—it’s what you need to make in order to survive. What you charge may exceed your rate. It’s not how much your overhead costs, it’s what you can negotiate.
For more info on what graphic artists are charging, take a look at the Graphic Artists’ Guild’s Pricing & Ethical Guidelines.
Best of luck!
https://www.johnmanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/JohnManderslogo300w1-300x58.jpg00johnmandershttps://www.johnmanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/JohnManderslogo300w1-300x58.jpgjohnmanders2009-09-01 09:48:572009-09-01 09:48:57Welcome, Game Artisans
Pete & Fremont and Pete’s Disappearing Act are circus yarns spun by the incomparable Jenny Tripp. Both stories are narrated by Pete the poodle and seen from the point of view of the animals in Circus Martinez.
To promote these two titles, Jenny and I thought it would be fun to produce a few circus posters on a small scale—circus stickers. I love old circus posters—who doesn’t?—and kids love stickers. Here’s a sample of some vintage circus posters:
You get the idea. Since the focus of the stories is on the animals, each poster would feature one of the animal acts. I worked up some rough thumbnail sketches.
Jenny wrote some better copy to replace the dummy copy shown in the rough sketches.
We were bankrolling the production of these stickers ourselves, so I needed to come up with an inexpensive way to print them. You can get self-adhesive label stock in 8 1/2 x 11″ sheets. I fit all the sticker designs into an 8 1/2 x 11″ format, so the printer could print 10 stickers as one piece of art—then guillotine them as individual stickers. Here’s the layout with tight sketches:
I painted all the stickers as one piece of art (one scan instead of 10 saves bucks) around 125% of the printed size. I wanted to work a little bit bigger so my lettering would tighten up when it got reduced. I’m showing you 2 different pieces of the finished art here, because I can’t fit the whole thing onto my Playskool scanner:
Fireflies
illustration processI want to warn you ahead of time that I don’t have the finished illustration that would normally follow the series of sketches below. I must have gotten rid of it, or else it’s boxed away somewhere in my attic (I moved last November and am still unpacking).
A while back I got an assignment to illustrate a cover for a summer issue of StoryWorks magazine. The art director asked for fireflies reading books. Sounds like a fun idea—I went to work drawing variations of it.
The first one works, but it’s kind of the obvious solution:
I like this next one in spite of its being a little weird. To make it work I’d need to really play up the lighting effects:
Fireflies reading books in a bookstore after hours:
Fireflies combining their individual lights to read a book:
Firefly using a flashlight, with a farm in the background:
And here are fireflies using each other’s butts to read by:
Those were the ideas I came up with. The AD liked the last two, couldn’t decide which one to use—and asked me to combine them in one sketch:
I wasn’t happy with it. Too many elements, too difficult to read the idea. I would have loved to paint any of the other sketches, but it wasn’t meant to be. Nobody’s fault; the art director and I just had different tastes. That’s the way it goes sometimes. You do your work, get your paycheck, and move on.
Welcome, Game Artisans
illustration careerAnother discussion about how much to charge for creative work here.
Keep in mind that your day- or hourly- rate is your minimum—it’s what you need to make in order to survive. What you charge may exceed your rate. It’s not how much your overhead costs, it’s what you can negotiate.
For more info on what graphic artists are charging, take a look at the Graphic Artists’ Guild’s Pricing & Ethical Guidelines.
Best of luck!
Circus posters
book promotion, illustration processPete & Fremont and Pete’s Disappearing Act are circus yarns spun by the incomparable Jenny Tripp. Both stories are narrated by Pete the poodle and seen from the point of view of the animals in Circus Martinez.
To promote these two titles, Jenny and I thought it would be fun to produce a few circus posters on a small scale—circus stickers. I love old circus posters—who doesn’t?—and kids love stickers. Here’s a sample of some vintage circus posters:
You get the idea. Since the focus of the stories is on the animals, each poster would feature one of the animal acts. I worked up some rough thumbnail sketches.
Jenny wrote some better copy to replace the dummy copy shown in the rough sketches.
We were bankrolling the production of these stickers ourselves, so I needed to come up with an inexpensive way to print them. You can get self-adhesive label stock in 8 1/2 x 11″ sheets. I fit all the sticker designs into an 8 1/2 x 11″ format, so the printer could print 10 stickers as one piece of art—then guillotine them as individual stickers. Here’s the layout with tight sketches:
I painted all the stickers as one piece of art (one scan instead of 10 saves bucks) around 125% of the printed size. I wanted to work a little bit bigger so my lettering would tighten up when it got reduced. I’m showing you 2 different pieces of the finished art here, because I can’t fit the whole thing onto my Playskool scanner: