Rusty Banana Forge

A quick pass of all the story pages took approximately 2 and a half days. Putting all the pages together and in color allows you to appreciate the way the color direction is going. I’ll be working out the composition and then the anatomy as soon as I get a grips on the book’s overall “texture”

As of now, I feel the book quite dreary given its sparse use of the warm spectrum, saturated color, and accents (and perhaps even the lack of eyes). I wonder if anyone else feels the same way. I will likely spike the color saturation in the first few spreads (01 - 06) and continue to add accents on a whole. In particular, spread 01 will need more warm colors in that crowd of blue. But afterwards I will maintain the sorrowful colors in subsequent spreads to represent the hunchback’s descent into madness.

The dark colors may or may not be accentuated by the printing process. I would have to send at least one of these pages to have the printer proof so I can have a guide as to how bright or dark the inks will make my colors. One of the advantages of painting digitally, is you can paint it over as you hold a copy of the proof. (Though some printers won’t even bother showing you a proof)

Between the initial studies and the color studies you’ll notice the differences most clearly in spreads 02,07, & 10. These changes happen all the time. Better storytelling is often the reason - other times it’s just censorship - which I suppose is the reason I was told to change spread 10’s knife-in-chicken illustration (my metaphor for the mother’s murder). So far I haven’t gotten comments from the publisher on these, but of course that doesn’t you can’t put in your comments. I’d appreciate it.

Alamat ng Butiki (Legend of the house lizard) would be my second children’s book to illustrate. (If you don’t count the Night Monkeys cover). I’ve begun to document the process to see how I can improve the way I work in the future.

The following are studies of the story pages for the 14 spread book. It is the story of how the butiki came to be. A story of lust, murder, and a mother’s love. Needless to say the story is darker than most titles of Lampara Books. In fact it’s darker than most children’s books out in the Philippine market! Jun Matias of Lampara opted for my style to complement the book due its more realistic, if not mature, nature.

It took less than a day to finish the thumbnails for the story pages. Although other pages requiring more design such as the interior covers, credit & copyright pages, and exterior covers were done another day. However, I didn’t realize that Lampara Books had expected it all in at the get-go. No biggie, we were fortunate enough to work with email.

Alamat ng Butiki is part of a series of legends that are all undergoing production at this moment. So a paramater for this project is that the title fonts (and apparently the inside fonts as well) have to match across all the books in the series. I had already designed the text for the front cover before I was told this… but in any case, if they change their mind I will get to use the text I designed.

And since this is part of a series, the editors will be pretty busy dishing out feedback, among other things. I realized I had to followup for myself on the studies’ s approval… because it had been one week already and I had not received comments. It was only after I sent a followup email that Edith from Lampara gave me Jun’s comments. So remember to followup for yourself, editors are busy people.

1 2 3

The best sketch studies were merged and given their first colored treatment in 1. Aiming to create the mood of a evening flight into a party of Night Monkeys, the details - from the architecture in the background to the characters - are only implied. It is all about painting the vision from initial B&W sketches.

2 adds more contrast between the architecture and the crowd of monkeys. Details were added to Bea and her brother (the monkey she’s on) while I tested some glowing effects to see if they’d work. I decided that the glows weakened the silhouettes and so I disposed of them.

In 3 and 4 I wanted to see how the composition would work without the monkeys populating Bea’s airspace. Back in 2 I was getting the impression that the monkeys on the upper left and right were a bit distracting (especially if the title would be somewhere there). When fully detailed, I would have to deal with 2 pairs of eyes - which will draw attention away from Bea and her brother. I also played with the scale of the 3 “twitching & twirling” monkeys in the midground to give more movement and excitement to the composition. The composition was strengthened by increasing the contrast between the monkeys in the extreme foreground and the background.
4 5 6
7 8

In 5 there is a detailing of the architecture in the background - the rooftops become like stepping stones leading the eye across the illustration. The image was also flipped - it seemed natural to come into the illustration with the character’s first and the scene next. The festival tassles were taken out - they were too colorful, too difficult to control, and messed up the swirling concept. Starting from 5, the confetti in the scene begins aiding in the composition as well, just as the monkeys continue to develop. I was have issues with Bea’s hair getting lost in the buildings at this point and perspective and scale concerns began to assert themselves (the monkeys in the background were too big.)

6 was that moment in an illustration’s process where you can go a few different ways - each possibly as good as the last. “Should I put this roof or not?” “Brighter here or darker?” Trees and cloud forms were added to reinforce the swirling composition. The perspective and scale of the architecture was made more homey and more details were added. The line created by the bottom of the houses and the ground needed to be formed, to serve the composition.

Now it was at this time that the publisher had sent me layout studies of the Night Monkey cover. In response to the box-like framing of my work I strove to bring the swirling closer to the center of the illustration. I did this by painting in more monkeys near the center. In 7 the trees in the background became bushes. I felt like I was pushing too hard to create a frame of dark forms around the book with trees, so I trimmed them. As a bonus for doing this, I provided additional acceleration and color to the swirl which was followed by accelerating and detailing the clouds as well. The colors of the houses and ground behind Bea struck me as approaching gaudy - a little too 80s. I was trying to use the values of the color to support the swirl but went dangerously close to draining the progression.

8 is officially the final version. Heightening the realism meant applying corrections in the lighting - which included taming the blue colors in the background and putting light in between monkeys. Details in Bea’s hair separate her fairly well from the darkness behind her.

The digital medium makes it easy to reform composition and light. We do studies traditionally with pencil and paper - moving elements around by just drawing them over. You simply then have to commit to one and avoid any compositional experimention. With the power of layers, experimenting with composition is quite possible even as you are rendering the work in color. It can even be the way you work. I learned a lot of things about composition (even with confetti) by experimenting on a digital canvas. For me, going through the whole range of choices that have to made and the devices that can be used as I worked was enjoyable and not scary as trying to get it all right in the first or even second color study.

The Night Monkeys illustration is done and my signature placement is the only thing left to be approved.

For those of you who enjoy BEHIND-the-SCENES, I’ll be posting versions of the work as it developed. Let’s start of with the studies and what thoughts went into deciding the best composition.

* these studies are not done in chronological order

Studies 1 & 2 share similar composition. Study 1 had an option of having our main characters face the reader and the overall orientation is tilted. Study 2 puts the characters in silhouette and clearly have their backs to the reader. I wasn’t so clear at this point whether the publisher would go for a back view. I didn’t want the main character to be too “in-your-face” or to draw too much attention to herself (and her story) and take away from the anthology as a whole.

Studies 3 to 5 are developments of one composition - the swirl. I like the swirl. Notice that the head of the girl is pretty much the same place for studies 1 to 5. Golden rectangle composition. The party-like atmosphere and the movement generate by the swirling composition mades study 5 very appealing - except the tilt was a little too extreme. Notice that the girl has one hand holding on and one hand in flying off - that pretty much tells the kind of girl she is.

Study 6 is pretty drab and conventional with our main character in the middle on a throne surrounded by monkeys. Too much attention to the character and it wasn’t exactly expressing the visions I saw as I read the story. The same can be said about study 8.

Study 7, 9, and 10 take bird’s eye views and worm’s eye views of the character. Bird’s eye views appealed to me because that way the main characters can be larger and thus carry more detail in contrast with the negative space in the center. The worm’s eye view didn’t stand a chance (all those monkeys… woe).

So I took what I liked about my favorite studies (2,5,7) and worked them into each other - starting with study 2 as a base. My next post will feature the color studies and how the perspective of the scene develops

I am currently working on a cover for Night Monkeys, by Lakambini Sitoy… to be published in the second Anthology (the first was called Golden Loom) by Tahanan Books. The plot is about a girl who who has the ability to see night monkeys and the story is one of following one’s heart regardless of circumstance.

This illustration is actually the second study. The first study will be used for the final version - watch out for it!