A Monarch Butterfly Has a Great Plan for Getting Over That Ugly Wall

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buddy_great_idea_blog.png, Character development, great idea, the wall, Clip Studio Paint Ex

Lately I’ve been moving along at a consistent clip. I’m more fluent with Clip Studio Paint and that means I don’t spend as much time scratching my head with a puzzled look on my face. Even with my extra activities (my part-time job), I have enough art time to complete an image every two or three days.

Today’s picture shows Buddy Butterfly announcing his brilliant plan for getting over the wall. He’s always boastful and full of himself. The question is, will his idea work? Or is he just being a blowhard? Only time will tell.

I flatted this image with the bucket fill tool. I used my custom brushes for all of the line work and painting. Eventually I’ll have a nice set of brushes that I’ll publish here. I still have to add some shadows and highlights, and some texture. And, the background needs work — I’ll put the wall behind Buddy. One of my goals for this book is to improve the backgrounds and make them more coherent and even exciting. I love to look at other illustrators’ awesome backgrounds, such as those painted by Blue Turtle.

The Jay Family is Going South

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Moving forward one inch today entails drawing the sketch of the Jay family getting on to the Magic Moustache Bus, whose bus driver is a grizzly bear, a friendly one in this case. This is the second time I’ve drawn this scene. Here’s the first version.

I have a few details to add inside the bus, and perhaps some hatching, and more work on the giant moustache. And I’m going to put some passengers in the windows.

In this picture I gave the girls human eyes rather than the round eyes I’ve been using so far. The round eyes are more difficult to draw with expression and feeling. As for color, I’m undecided how to paint this. I’ll sleep on it.

All aboard for the ride of your life!

Character sketches

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After going through The Simpson Handbook, I realized how completely undecided I am about what my bird family should look like. The pros over at the Simpsons have every detail of their characters codified in a look-book. To do my children’s book right I’ve got to standardize my characters so they’ll look the same on page 28 as they do on page one.

So many decisions to make… Should birds have hands? If so, how many fingers on a hand? Five? Four? Should they have mouths or beaks? The can fly, so should they have wings or arms? If they have wings, should the wings be able function like hands? For example, should Momma bird be able to point a finger towards the chimney and say “Don’t you ever mess around with that chimney!”

Here’s are some drawings I did today —- a character sketch showing the relative sizes and color palettes for the Jay family, Momma Jay, Jimmy Jay, and Sammy Jay. Creating a look-book is right there on my mind map for this project, so today I can say that moved forward another inch.

But… now that I’m looking at Jimmy, I’m thinking he needs to be a little more endearing if he’s going to be the hero of the story.