The Race - A Retelling (My process)

As part of the Art Intensive workshop offered by our regional SCBWI, we have to create a finished picture book illustration by going through a rushed version of the basic process an illustrator and art director would go through when creating art for a book to be published. The process is divided in four stages. 1) Create character studies 2) Create a sketch of the scene I've selected 3)Incorporate comments made by the art director 4) Create the final piece. We were given a short manuscript of the retelling of an existing story, better known as 'The Tortoise and the Hare'. I picked the scene where the character does some stunts to please the crowd.

A bunny is something that I haven't really drawn before so I had to try different ones first to see which one felt better. I ended up picking the first one from this study.


After choosing the character I liked, I started doing more character development sketches. I then selected the ones I thought I could use for the final sketch composition. I added more detail to the character and brought the images to Photoshop. I placed each bunny in a different layer. By having them in different layers, I was able to move them around and change their sizes as necessary. I also added the text to the composition as we were instructed. I forgot to mention that for this particular assignment, I decided to ink the character prior to bringing it to photoshop. This is something that I don't usually do but I guess in this case I was into it and I loved how crisp the drawings looked. I am not usually good at loose sketches. I guess this shows my style well.
Once I created the document in Photoshop and placed the characters in a way I thought I wanted them, I proceeded to work on the background.


To create the background, I used a piece of tracing paper and placed it on top of the composition and then started inking the background (hopefully you can see it well in this image). I proceeded to create a background for the full spread. These backgrounds (back and front) were then scanned and placed in different layers. Basically everything on this composition is in separate layers in photoshop.
For this final piece, I made sure everything was to specifications and I added the crop marks and center fold line and saved the file and submitted for review. We'll see what happens now. I will not hear until August 25th.