Here is the revised artwork having received the art director's approval and as you can see, I have made a lot of further refinements to get all the elements working together satisfactorily.
The art director very kindly sent me back a pdf of the layout with type added, so that I could fine tune the elements which were falling over the text area.
At this stage I am trying to pull in all the elements without losing awareness that this image has to work as a dps with text added. I have plotted where the body type and display type falls using the art director's original layout and have dropped in a blue rectangle to create an indication of where the bulk of the text and headers will fall.
Part of the brief required that I keep the lettering on the shield as visible as possible. To this end, I have tried to keep the impact zone of the lightning strikes as clear as possible, but I have ended up making the effect look more like a water cannon than a lightning strike. The cascading showers of white hot sparks aren't helping either—looking more like water plumes than lightning shards.
I have now imported the Manga Studio sketch into Adobe Illustrator and am tracing my drawing using Illustrator's pen tool with a 0.5 stroke/ line weight. I have also imported one of my earlier illustrations as a source for colour styling
You can see, at this stage, that I have shifted my trace source to the left so that I can see all the relevant details of her anatomy, which would otherwise be obscured by the Illustrator drawing.
Here is the rough (a composite of two earlier roughs) which gained the approval of the art director for a brief that went as follows:
"I have a brief where the idea is a housing superhero, so I want a woman hold a shield looking all superhero! I've added a PDF with the elements and size. I'm thinking something along the lines of Marvel/DC comics."
"I have a brief where the idea is a housing superhero, so I want a woman hold a shield looking all superhero! I've added a PDF with the elements and size. I'm thinking something along the lines of Marvel/DC comics."
for a feature on new UK legislation supposed to protect the interests of citizens living in social housing, which was going to be run in 'Inside Housing' magazine.
