I love social media. I mean, between Facebook and twitter (yes, I know there are many more sites) just about everyone in the world has a voice that can be heard.
When I first heard about twitter, it seemed pointless to me. Now that I've gotten the hang of it, and learned to implement it for my own uses (both personal and professional), I've realized how wrong I was. Both twitter and Facebook have become among the most valuable tools in my arsenal of showcasing my artwork, sharing ideas/tips/secrets with other artists, and of course, attracting new clients.
Every July, I follow all of the Comic-Con news (I haven't been since 2005), and make it a point to follow people on both Facebook and twitter, that I either have never heard of, or didn't know were using either site. This year, I kept seeing people talking about a woman who attended the Con (as the people from the "in" crowd call it), and came dressed as the White Queen from the X-Men series. Now, normally I don't pay attention to that sort of thing, because I've been to enough of these conventions to know that not all of the people who come dressed as a specific character, necessarily look the part. In fact, they look like the exact opposite of who they're portraying.
When I saw pictures of this particular woman, I was pleasantly surprised to see that she not only looked the part, but was attracting a lot of attention from fans. I mean it's such a rarity to see someone who actually looks good in these costumes (they look great on paper, but usually look ridiculous in person), that people seemed to literally flock towards her.
Fast forward to a month ago. I start following someone named Tanya Tate (@TanyaTate for you twitter groupies), because some else I follow, re-tweeted something she said, and it made me laugh. When it comes to me following you, it doesn't take much. I'm easy.
A few days ago, Tanya put out a tweet asking if any of her followers were comic artists, and if so, wanted to do a drawing of her as a superhero. When I saw this, I immediately responded with a "me! me!" It took awhile, but I finally got a response (for a different reason), and I mentioned that while I'm not a professional comic artist (formalities), I would be willing to do the illustration for her. We exchanged emails and got the ball rolling on the illustration. It wasn't until after I agreed to do the illustration, that I realized that Tanya, and the the woman I'd heard about from Comic-Con, were the same person. Hey, I never claimed to be a quick one.
What you see above is a (sort of) step-by-step evolution of the illustration. It started off with a rough sketch of her and a costume idea (the colors were different), and after some feedback from Tanya, we refined the colors and got the overall look of the character nailed down.
The next step was for me to do a cleaned up line drawing and add in shading to give the illustration depth and dimension. Normally, I prefer to add the shading in BEFORE the color, because the color tends to throw me off. I decided to do this in Adobe Illustrator, because I wanted to maintain that really clean/crisp look for the web. It just seems to "pop" better when it's done in Illustrator.
Once the shading is done, I add in the colors. When it comes to coloring, I ALWAYS prefer to mix my own colors. Not a fan of stock/bright colors at all, so I like to experiment with combinations, and come up with the ones I think look the best. In this case, Tanya told me that she wanted to use pink/lavender - so I just needed to make my own shade of each color.
To finish off the illustration, I fine tune all of the details such as eyes, lips, logos, etc. Now, normally I don't like to use black outlines for anything, but for some reason, it just made sense with this one. While doing the illustration, I created a proper superhero logo for Tanya (looks like Wonder Woman, huh?) that ended up serving as a chest plate for the character - two birds, one stone.
Aside from a few minor tweaks (she asked me to make her look OLDER. Talk about throwing me for a loop), Tanya loved the illustration. She was very complimentary, and has been kind enough to mention me to her fans/followers on twitter.
Overall, it was a lot of fun to work on. It took about two days from start to finish, and will look great in my portfolio. Should Tanya ever decided to show up to a convention dressed as her own superhero (hint hint), I'll know that I had a hand in that. Very cool.
Word.
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