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Monday, December 5, 2011

Glitches for Tor.com

This project starts with me busting my knee while climbing, scaring the hair off of my friend Renee, her first time belaying me. Irene called me for a project during thanksgiving week, and truth be told, I wasn't going anywhere for a while (as Chris so kindly pointed out); So why not work on an illo for a wicked story? Plus I would never say no to Irene. If I really detail how much I like working with her, I'd have a restraining order in my hands. I'm busy handling Ted's while we're on that matter.

This time around, the story is called Glitches, written by Marissa Meyer. It is a prequel to her book, Cinder.



Thumbnails flowed easily this time around. They normally do with stories from Tor. Like I've mentioned before, Irene takes the cookie on matching stories with illustrators. This translates beneficially for the artist. Sometimes the mood of the story matches perfectly with the artist's work, sometimes it's the characters, or the setting. Whatever it may be, with her projects, there's always something evident for one to latch onto. After a single read, I had collected plenty of concepts to work with, the main theme being a juxtaposition of inorganic over organic.

Number 2 being the choice, I sent Irene a somewhat cleaned/incomplete inked drawing. I'll explain why...

Here's what I showed Irene...



Here's what the complete one looked like...



Irene is a seasoned art director. Far be it from me to doubt her skills at understanding what I had drawn. My reason behind it is always that I hate to leave my art directors treading on too much faith. They're already putting a lot of trust in me by handing me a project, best not to push it. This time, it was easier to say "looks a bit empty now, but the background will be filled out" than "I'll make some sense of this mess, please trust me".

While on this stage we also went over some tweaks on Cinder's mouth. When working with linework, any tiny detail makes a giant difference. Irene pointed out that the lines describing her philtrum and upper lip gave her the appearance of a more mature woman. In the end, we decided to remove them altogether since we were aiming to make her look like the young teenager that the character is.



After a couple of color schemes, we chose the green dress. By the time I was done with this illo, my knee was back to normal (ish), so I'm back to finding new ways to destroy my body against a wall.



8 comments:

Unknown said...

You draw women so goddamn well. Do you ink didgitally? It looks so slick, I can't really tell.

Irregardless, killer piece.

Goñi Montes said...

thanks scott! this one's all computer. some pieces are not. i love holbein's special black ink and will frequently resort to it. Certain markers and the kuretake pen are pretty awesome too. but yeah, my medium of choice is the computer... hold on, i hear hissing... brb

Victo Ngai said...

Awesomeness is awesome!! I have no idea you inked digitally for this one! That would be 100 times more difficult for me. Amazing you can have so much line weight variation with tablet.

Tyler Jacobson said...

Goni, as usual this is F-ing amazing. Absolutely beautifully done. Are you using photoshop to ink this stuff digitally, and are you on a cintiq? I can't imagine getting such perfect lines without a cintiq. wow Bravo sir.

Goñi Montes said...

Thanks guys! I can never say this enough; receiving words like these from artists of your caliber makes one feel like a million bucks!
As for the line weights... well, I cheat a little. Some of it is actual analog ink. I've also accumulated my own set of brushes in time, most of which are created with marks made with real ink on paper :S
As for equipment, it's a intuos 4, large. Have tried the cintiq extensively, but can never quite get the hang of it. I've grown so used to the intuos that with the cintiq I feel my hand gets on the way.
I'm interested to ask what you guys use. I've noticed some of you incorporate digital media to different extents. Hmm?

Tyler Jacobson said...

wow, you do that without a cintiq. I am seriously amazed. I could never really get a solid line, or straight line with in intuos. The disconnect messed me up. I use a cintiq 21UX for just about everything. I still paint in oils of course but not as much these days. I must agree though, that my hand did get in the way at first when I switched from the intuos to the cintiq. But now i am completely used to it. It is just like working on a light table basically, or drawing table, for me. I recently ridged my cintiq onto an ergotron lx swing arm, so I can bring it down into my lap while I am working at my desk. Anyways that is what I work on.

Unknown said...

killer piece ---you on are on fire lately

Jason Raish said...

awesome, i saw your stuff in her office last week.