Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Faillustration

Yeah, so my attempts at being clever are laughable at best (and not in the way I would like them to be). In Illustration Markets, we have to do an Editorial Illo for In Character magazine, and of course, I pick the generosity issue, who's cover I cannot top:

It's unfairly perfect. Like, that's EXACTLY what generosity is! What am I supposed to come up with now? So here's my fail cover (partially scanned because I don't have a large format scanner and I'm too lazy to piece together a mere comp/sketch):

I was kinda feeling okay about it.....

Okay so I thought it was a good cover that got to the point, but my senses are obviously skewed when I saw that my professor really wasn't feeling it, and I understood why: It just gives too much information. It's not at all clever (much like me), and so I need to figure out another angle. He did like the hands though, he wants me to keep them.

This one, however, he loved and wants me to keep.

It's about tithing (giving 10 percent of your income to the church) . There was a passage that regarded it as a spiritual investment that ensured money, health, or well-being.

I need to figure out how to illustrate generosity.

2 comments:

  1. You chose such a hard one - difficult mainly because the original IS so great.

    Your first sketch, while it is, as always, nicely rendered, is a bit forward. It doesn't really inspire intrigue to read the article. We get it. Basically, what you prof already told you.

    While the hands are good, they have been used before many times. That's not exactly a reason not to use them - just know that you'll be dealing with a cliche.

    HOWEVER - the soul-credit vending machine is fantastic, and totally outside of cliche-land. It's funny and effective. Simple enough that the reader will get a general idea of what the article is about, but opaque enough to get them to read it. Really good! Gash would be proud, ha ha.

    Good stuff. =3

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  2. That cover is clever because the illustrator did something interesting with the cliches of generosity. Your second sketch certainly has more clarity, but if Cram is going to say that the art should intrigue the reader, then why not the first sketch? That's much more 'intriguing'. I guess it depends on the image you want to create - a more distilled, symbolic image or a more illustrative one, both are equally viable as editorial art, look at Niemann vs. Jillian Tamaki. Thank goodness there's not just one kind of solution or this gig would be even tougher.

    I like the second one, it's a nice drawing. What about trying something with the ribbon on a gift (like the ribbon makes an image), one hand washing another, one pitcher filling many cups, oof, yeah, that's a tough one...

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