Compositing a picture using many layers

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Yesterday’s post was my 1,000th on this site. Everything here is a re-posted to https://doukat.tumblr.com.

This picture in half of a two-page spread.The two pages have about 100 layers between them. By the time I finish tossing unnecessary layers, there will be about a dozen layers.

My job is to make this picture make dramatic sense. Jimmy and Betty are pledging best friends forever while the ringmaster, the clown, and Betty’s mother look on. The clown is looking at the cake, and the ringmaster has got his eye on the suspicious clown. Betty’s mother is about to intrude on a special moment.

To make the table more interesting, I’m going to add a deck of cards and some poker chips.

Three Characters in Search of a Story -- the Ringmaster, the Tightrope Walker, and the Clown

These are background characters. Now I have to create the foreground characters, Jimmy Jay and Betty Burro, as well as the juvenile crocodiles.

My 40-year old Rollei 35 arrived today. It’s a jewel!

On the the page that comes after the Circus Tent page

The ringmaster and the clown are going to be watching the kids eat birthday cake. This picture will be less complex than the circus tent page. I’m drawing these guys large. They’ll be reduced in size for the final picture. The other characters are Jimmy Jay, Betty Burro, Mother Burro, and the crocodile kids.

Tent Scene, Take 6 -- Introducing a new ringmaster

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The ringmaster is now a penguin instead of a man

I think I’m finally finished with this page. The big change, for today, is that I replaced the man with an animal. Introducing a human being into the book would be a bad decision.

At the moment I’m waiting eagerly for my Leica IIF to make its way from Belgrade, Serbia, to Southern Oregon. This camera was created sometime between 1951 and 1956. I’ve bought vintage cameras before and I’ve had good luck, most of the time. The only dud was a Polaroid camera converted to use Fuji Instax film. The camera itself was fine, but Fuji stopped making the film.

I’m looking forward to having a Leica again. I sold my Leica M3 out of necessity in 1988. It didn’t occur to me that thirty-years later I would regret selling it. Going 30 years before regretting a decision is okay by me — I regret most of my bad decisions immediately.

Tent Scene, Stage 5 -- Burro Tightrope Walker in the Spotlight

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I’m calling this page finished. It’s time to say “enough fiddling” and move on to another page. I have ten weeks to complete 8 more pages, put all of the images and text into InDesign ,and upload the final PDF to IngramSpark. Ten weeks sounds like plenty of time, but it’s a tight deadline.

Circus Tent Scene, Stage 4, with colors

More characters, more colors, more composition. I’ll finish this on Monday, This has been one of the most challenging pages — so many characters, a complex background, and the difficult composition! But fun to do, all the same.

Circus Tent Interior, Stage 3, with audience

What’s to say? I’m sketching in the audience, bringing in some figures who appeared in the first pages.

Circus Tent Interior, Stage 2

Characters from the first pages of the book will be in the audience: giraffes, elephants, crocodiles, and even a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Did I mention that the tightrope walker is a burro?

Circus tent interior -- Burro tightrope walker

To think that I will turn this rough sketch into a finished illustration is mind boggling.

Starlight Goodbye for Betty and Jimmy

This is another version of Jimmy and Betty saying goodbye on the beach. In the background the Ferris wheel and circus tents are supposed to be brightly lit, but I can see that they need some help. Note to self: they seem to be the right size when they’re enlarged on a 27-inch screen, but when they’re reduced to A5, they’re too small. The moral is: check your artwork at the publication size.

The sand needs something — perhaps a sea shell or two. Jimmy and Betty need some shadows, too.