Page Development

This is so far what I've done for my first double page,

I've used this image as inspiration, my trees however are not as green! I wanted to create a really dulled down colour pallete so there's that stark difference between the white of the bear and it's surroundings, I did hoever add dashes of colour/greens to the leaves in the image.


Paul Nicklen Photography

Here's the development of the double page...
I started off by digitally going over my pencil drawing with colour line, this way whe I traced the digital drawing in illustrator it would keep the coloured line I desired for the main areas.

Initially it was almost too colourful the grass wasn't right and the bear didn't stand out enough.

So I changed it round some more thinking maybe a more grayscale colour palette will work if I change the background? But that wasn't quite right either, I wanted to create continuity throughout the comic, so the same background colour unless you want to change concept of time would be ideal. It was just too dark and I also had to consider I've got 2 other bears in the comic who or a dark grey so it just wouldn't have worked.

This is near to completion, I got the colours just about right but needed something else to not make it look as flat, just needed something. Which is where I started playing around with mist.

This is the final (not completely cleaned up version) I'm currently playing about with adding some mist/cloud to the night sky, you sometimes get that mist in forests, especially if it's high up!

My Bear

I love the contrast of my bear with that of Pauls photographed kermode bear!

I hope I've captured some of that essence and charm of this little guy!

Spirit of the Forest

Some images I've found useful for working from and doing some development sketches

All these images were taken by Paul Nicklen, than photographer who famously took a picture of the bears for national geographic.

I've in a way developed a story from his photographs, the contrast between the bears with the other black furred bears, catching the fish, and although being solitary and different finds friendship with the other bears, a simple little story line but something possible to illustrate.

Bears! Research

I've been holding onto this story for a while as I've really wanted to do an illustrated version of this article. But I found an article in national geographic about kermode bears in Canada. There's a rare gene that causes some of the bears to have pure white fur, and there was this beautiful picture of a bear eating a fish in canadas secret rainforests. These bears are regarded as 'spirits of the forests' by locals and you can see why. They also describe these white kermode bears as being a lot more solitary than the other bears and often take their fish to eat in the rainforest rather than by the water with the other bears. Here's the article in full and the picture that initially drew me in.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/kermode-bear/barcott-text

http://www.paulnicklen.com/spirit-bear/

Digital Art Bears

Specifically looking at more digitally aimed outcomes, using inspiration from artists such as:


Sarah Goodreau:





I love the simplified characters, and stripped back approach to colouring, it looks really clean love the fact there isn't an outline, it's really thought out, love it!

http://sarahgoodreau.com/tag/bear/page/3/

Timonthy Reynolds:





Really interesting way to capture animals, love the geomtric shapes, fascinating to research, although I'm not sure would work for my project isjust another way to illustrate animals.

found this website/company who design logos and love the simplified outcomes they've created, again no outlines just clean colours





http://www.maadesigns.co.uk/portfolio/digital_illustrations/birds_animal_digital_illustrations.htm


Owen Davey:

I love this artists colour palettes and outcomes, really clean, crisp, I really love the blue mountain scene cd cover, really inspired, makes me think aout my colour palettes a bit more.








http://www.folioart.co.uk/illustration/folio/artists/illustrator/owen-davey

Bear and the Hare

Bears seem to be quite popular at the moment! with the obvious feature of Bear and the Hare at christmas, told a beautiful sstory of a bear always missing christmas because of hibernation, it's just a lovely animation, simple no talk advert, just music running over it.

Brother Bear research

Looking at brother bear for some help with anatomically drawing my bears, also offers some help with interaction with other charactrers, landscape and even the text on the poster.

Bear Research

Initial research and looking at bear illustrations





















Sandra Deickmann