My outcome for this project is going to be an art book with character design sheets, concept art and sketch progress. To get some inspiration of how other artists create their art books, I looked at two art books that I own, and how character design is documented in them.
The first art book I own is Gleaming by Laia Lopez. Laia Lopez is an illustrator from Barcelona who has inspired my work since I was around 15. I love her art style, she started with producing fan art online, and has later illustrated books and also created her own original characters that were developed into a book of her own. Laia’s art book consists of fan art pieces, original characters and pages that show the process of her digital artwork as well as some traditional sketches and watercolour work.
Above is an example of one of her original characters, I like how she presents a fully rendered illustration of the character as well as some sketches showing different facial expressions. Thus showing different sides of the characters personality. She also has written a short description about this original character.
This is another example of her character design pages. I really like her page layout of the rougher sketches paired with a ‘final’ illustration.
Lopez includes a range of process pages in her art book which is something, as a fellow illustrator I find really interesting. Seeing the breakdown in her work process and how she goes from just a concept to a final outcome is something that I find really interesting. This got me thinking about my previous brainstorm on the type of audience I am aiming my art book at, thinking about how other young creatives would respond to things like this.
This is another example of a process page of one of Lopez’s original characters. Showing the initial character sketches and the process of a more rendered illustration. I think that these pages also make artists more ‘relatable’ to aspiring artists, showing that all artists start from ideas and sketches, before they produce their final images.
I really like her choice of page layout, she breaks up the progress pages and character design sketches with pages that show off examples of her finished pieces.
These are examples of were Lopez shows off more of her traditional sketches, this is a nice contrast between the digital art pieces that are in the rest of the book. And again, will show to other aspiring artists that everything is a process, and that just because her work is rendered digitally, doesn’t mean she doesn’t work traditionally also.
Another example of an art book is my copy of the Avengers Endgame movie art book. This art book is slightly different to Gleaming, as it is not just one artists work, it is showing off concept art and ideas from the movie and different variations of scenes and characters that didn’t make the final cut. It is interesting to me to see what different artists choose to include in their art books, it is almost showing the behind the scenes that nobody would know about if they didn’t read these books.
Below are some examples of character concept pages from this book
These different from Lopez’s work as there was less focus on the originality of the characters, as these characters are already popular and well known due to the huge Marvel franchise. These pages were more about showing off the different variations of these characters, whether that being costume, setting, powers, or scenarios that either were or weren’t used in the final cut of the movie.
The different examples in these art books have given me inspiration on how to present my own, I want to include the things I learned from both sources and combine them to create my own interpretation of what an artist book looks like.
LUCIE LOCK - UNI BLOG 