Approaching the end of the story spreads for Alamat ng Butiki. I was given a month to do this (but I spent the first week of October waiting for feedback on my studies.) In fact, as I’ve been updating my blog about these pages, I’ve also been sending these spreads to Lampara publishing. Yet none of these emails have returned with comments on the work - which may mean my work is great and has no problems. But frankly, I’d like to hear what the publisher thinks. As the artist I want to know where I am headed with this book. Am I making it too dark? Does the publisher believe this kind of art will sell? I don’t want to be surprised when I’m done there are major revisions to be done.
Spread 11 requires a visual of the mother’s speaking heart. Not something you see everyday in local children’s books - well not in the literal sense of it anyway.
The heart’s speech balloon does not yet have the words. Lampara has both english and tagalog languages in their books. I hesitated to put these both into the word balloon just yet. I want to get the publisher’s idea for this. I did however give the speech balloons a veiny red and purple border.
The water in this illustration is the challenging aspect. The heart wasn’t much of problem, it isn’t fully revealed anyway. The water, however, is everywhere. There is rain, puddles of water, and damp folded clothes. There isn’t much time left for this project, (which makes me frustrated to have NO publisher feedback after all the updates I keep sending,) and so I didn’t pour too much of my time into the wet clothes, but I did pursue the wet hair, puddles, and rain.
The raining is supposed to continue into spread 12. But spread 12 presents several challenges that had to be addressed first:
First, there are two plot points that need to be addressed. One is that Marina is supposed to faint from the sight of the heart, and two the hunchback is chased until struck by lightning. I could have applied a small vignette to illustrate Marina fainting and then devote the other half of the spread for the lightning strike - or vice versa. This would have been similar to spreads 08 and 09. However, I felt that this spread needed to strike the reader in some way that was different from all other spreads.
Second challenge, the perspective - especially since both people, buildings, and sky are involved. I haven’t gotten it quite finished yet.
Third, the high contrast and the almost monochromatic pallette due to the high intensity of light. Pushing the contrast to a point where characters start appearing graphic or overly simplified was something I had to be careful about as it did not match the rest of the book (which then again could be what strikes the reader the most about this spread!!!)
The lightning and the hunchback’s silhouette put together are already quite arresting. It’s a white mark that cuts right into the space for text. I could’ve gone for a vertical layout, but I felt the horizontal orientation would best tell the chase prior to the hunchback being given the shock of his life.
By the way, no Photoshop LEVELS or CURVES adjustments have yet been made to this spread’s illustration. I also did NOT use Hue/Saturation to give this spread (or any other spread for that matter) are overall color glaze. Just painting techniques with the trusty Wacom graphic tablet and Photoshop brushes..
Did you notice the lizard-like shadow form just below the huncback?
