Derby parties coming

This week’s Entertainment Tri-State cover is a quickie drawing on the upcoming derby parties around the area this Saturday.
The initial idea was to have a horse and rider, but with the horse rearing up with a glass of wine in its hooves.
However, I wanted to convey the idea of a party with grilling out and several horses around. So I came up with the first rough.
I also briefly came up with the notion of including a television (for them to watch the festivities) but after sketching it out, I realized its inclusion would make the composition feel clunky.

Now in the second rough, I’ve moved the wine horses to the foreground and placed the grilling horse (sounds weird doesn’t it?) further back. This gives the composition more visual depth. Since it is a quickie, I’m going to try to minimize the number of detail horses — those horses that I want more attention drawn to. I may end up doing a grayish background mass — which is a way to wash in the illusion of a crowd of horses without investing a lot of detail and time.

Here’s just a quick mention. As I started to draw my horse heads, I didn’t like that they were coming off “mule-ish.” These thoroughbreds are an elite group and needed to exude that sort of dignity and aire. Check out my before and after.

I also think it worth mentioning that in drawing horses, it can be challenging to get the body structure right, otherwise your horse can come off looking like a big dog. That will be a challenge as I create horses that can cook on a grill and pour wine into serving glasses.

More to come later … but not too much later.

Finish on Appalachian Film Festival

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Appalachian Film Fest: Second Rough

Here’s a better flushed out version of the previous rough that I’ll likely use for the finish. I made the ball cap change I mentioned earlier and, in the same vein, updated the megaphone, to a bullhorn. Adding the hillside helped a lot as well.
The part that is crucial, though I’m not going to enjoy as much, is doing the tedious sprocket holes on the rolling film — making sure they line up across from each other and have the proper curvature, and a reasonable thickness (so they look like actual holes with film-edge depth, and not like square shapes on the film’s surface. I won’t deal with putting actual images on each film frame — I may lose my mind …
One other thing I changed was after I did the single film strip, I realized it look a lot like a rollercoaster track, so despite the additional tedium, I’ll place a few more partial film strips to create a “cascading like water” look. Also, to this end, I raised the raft and all above the “water” to give it more action.
More later.

Appalachian Film festival rolling in

Dave Lavender is doing a preview for the upcoming Appalachian Film Festival and suggested the idea of a whitewater stream of film coming out of the mountains. I thought it a good idea but wanted to put someone in a raft coming down the film rapids.
A caricature of someone wouldn’t work, cause the person would need to be widely recognized by our readership. So I decided to go with a “generic” film director-type guy, with a megaphone, ball cap and heavy-soled workboots. Note in the rough that I put one of those, artsy beret-type hats on him (I don’t know if its an actual beret) but after having done it, think the director’s ball cap smashed down on his head with oversize sunglasses would work better. I’ll need to leave enough room to fit a camera as well.
Here’s a quick rough, where I’ll obviously need to go in and put the mountains around, so he won’t look like he’s riding a rollercoaster.
I’ll also need to be mindful of where to put the obligatory headline and copy.

More to come soon.