Moving Characters Around to Accomodate the Book's Spine

Today I arranged all of the individual images of my characters into a single image. I shrank Bernie and Uncle Jonny and moved them into a new line of action that converges with the main flow of characters. The two lines of action converge on Jimmy Jay and then plunge down the chimney and into the book itself.

The screenshot shows the Procreate page with a 500px grid. The yellow lines are not going to be in the final picture, of course — they help me visualize the position of the characters reaching limbs. The lavender line represents the spine area. I can see that Jimmy’s feet are too close to the spine. I need to move Jimmy a little to the right. I’ll do that tomorrow.

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Cover Image Revised...Again

Looking at yesterday’s sketch got me to thinking that there’s no way that Jimmy Jay’s going to jump down that chimney without injuring himself. He needs a better line of action, a nice line that makes him look like he’s diving rather than looking like he’s going to plow headfirst into a brick wall. So, I thought I’d better try again. Here’s my second attempt. I think the second attempt is telling me that I’d better make a third attempt.

Drawing a diver from imagination is harder than I imagined it would be. Perhaps some reference photos of divers would help.

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Working on the Frontispiece

Yes, it’s been days that I’ve been reworking this picture. But, I made some progress today. I finally found a pose that’s more dynamic than my original it still needs more work. For example, the line weights are out of whack. Fortunately I’ll have about five weeks off to finish this book. My deadline for publishing is now August 31. That’s 2019, not 2020.

Here’s the rough image. There are some awkward line intersections that need fixing, and the line weight are totally screwy, but easily fixable…tomorrow.

The "guided-eye" sketch inked

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I managed to ink this page in about one hour. When I created the sketch yesterday I figured it would take about 6 hours. But it turns out that I’m a swift inker.

Visual perspective is the challenge in this drawing. The action in the front scenes have to standout from the middle ground action, and the middle ground needs to appear to be in front of the background scene, the guys on their bikes. I can create some of that effect by manipulating Buddy’s wings and having them overlap the background scenes.

Those poor, unforutnate wings. I never draw them the same. One day they’re somewhat realistic, and the next they look like shrunken vestigial limbs that are about to fall off. Lucky for me, in the land of fantasy everything is possible.

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