Red and the Woodsman: The Completed Special

Here is the completed 2008 Hallowe'en special for Green Corner, featuring Aena dressed as "Red" and Barudo dressed as the Woodsman, of Red Riding Hood.

Total time was 13 hours, 57 minutes (Illustrator began to slow down about halfway through)

A 1440 x 900 desktop version is available for download from the Midori Forest group. If you'd like another size, please request with your screen dimensions in pixels.

Prints are available on my Bubblesite.

Red and the Woodsman: Part 2

I've continued working on the latest Green Corner special.


I did try beginning the background another way before, but I scrapped it and took some photos outside for inspiration. I will be uploading the photos I took to my Flickr account soon.

The grasses, sand patches, and the patches of leaves are all symbols that came with Illustrator (under "nature"). I added a stroke to some of the leaves and changed that symbol's colours; but the others were only coloured, not edited. The trees are from Bittbox (you can download the vectors here).

I'm nearly done shading the figures now, aside from a few things for Barudo and other minor adjustments. As this picture gets more detailed, Illustrator's response time is slowing, so it's taking a little longer to continue the work. I won't be listing the time it took to get to this point from the line work, but I will post the total time once the image is complete.

I'm very happy with how this image is progressing, and I look forward to finishing it. It will definitely be available in my RedBubble store when complete. There isn't much there at the moment, as I'm working on formatting more artwork to add. But if you want some Hallowe'en cards of Aena in her witch costume, that is available.

Please let me know if you have any comments or constructive criticism to share. I'm almost done with this piece, so this is the best time to let me know if you find something awkward.

Hope you like it so far.

Hallowe'en Special: Red and the Woodsman

Here's my initial line work for the latest Green Corner special in progress. I'm using a more natural style for this special, but the comic has more of a manga influence.

Aena is dressed as Red Riding Hood, Barudo is playing the Woodsman. Line work for Aena took 2 hours, 43.5 minutes (mainly because of the detail), and 2 hours 14 minutes for Barudo. I usually use less detail for the hair and clothing in the comic because it's too time-consuming, but I can add more detail in the specials.

I have some minor edits to make to Barudo, but the line work is pretty much set. I will probably show a shirtless version of Barudo later, as I did draw his muscles underneath the shirt. I'll be starting on the colouring and the background next.

Hope you like it so far.

Tutorial: Creating Comics with Illustrator

My tutorial for creating comic pages with Adobe Illustrator is available in PDF format here (941 KB). The tutorial is geared toward the novice user, but more experienced users may find some interesting techniques as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions about items not answered in the tutorial.

Jumping Aena Complete

eeI've completed the illustration of Aena (from my comic series, Green Corner) jumping. You can see my earlier progress post here if you missed it.

The finished piece:


Total time was 5 hours and 11 minutes. As mentioned earlier, the initial linework took an hour and 35 minutes, while the flat colour took 13 and a half minutes. Yesterday, I spent three hours and 23 minutes adding shading, shine, and fixing a couple details. I also added a simple background for interest.

It used to take longer to create an image like this as I was previously using Illustrator 9. I'm now using CS3 with livepaint for colouring, which helps to speed things up.

I've made a 1440 x 900 wallpaper with this image, but if you would like another size, please request and I will upload to the Midori Forest Google Group.

Here's a comparison image that shows my initial pencil sketch, the sketch darkened and cleaned up, and the final piece side by side:


The pencil sketch was completed on a bus and I didn't have an eraser on me at the time, so it's a bit rougher than usual. I try not to sketch on lined paper normally, as the lines don't disappear seamlessly; but it's not really a problem when I create illustrations like this.

And a closeup of the final piece, so that you can get a better idea of the detail I include:


I had some slight technical difficulties with my artblog over the last day that I've since resolved. Sorry for any interruption, but everything should be working now.

Green Corner Special: Jumping Aena

For quite a while, I've put my comic series, Green Corner, on hold. This wasn't an easy decision for me to make, but I didn't have the time to devote to creating the quality work that I wanted. I opted to temporarily put aside this personal project due to more pressing obligations such as my work as an in-house graphic designer in another town and, in recent months, freelance work.

Since my primary income has switched to freelancing for the time being, I have more time than when I was working on-site for a client as I'm not traveling very much.

I took some time tonight to start on the digital version of a new illustration of the protagonist of Green Corner. I haven't had the chance to fully take advantage of having Illustrator CS3 for this type of work until now. My favourite feature has to be live paint (introduced in CS2).


It took an hour and 35 minutes to draw the linework for this piece, including the tweaking of some details. I don't use live trace for this type of illustration as I usually draw or sketch in pencil. Live trace works better for drawings with stark contrast (e.g. pen and ink). Besides, I like the flexibility of using brushes and tweaking individual paths. I switch between the pen and pencil tools frequently.

Laying the flat colour and adding a couple extra details took 13 and a half minutes. That's a huge difference from the amount of time it would take with the old method that I was using with Illustrator 9. This also means that when I do the shading, it will be pretty quick too. I'm also happy to have a swatch library for my Green Corner swatches, as I previously had to copy and paste or manually input colour values as needed in each file.

I think I still need to tweak Aena's right hand and thigh slightly in this image, but I'm pretty happy with where it's going. I'm not completely sure about the length of her arms either, so I may adjust those as well. I think I need to get into the habit of sketching figures more regularly by hand, as I tend to revise more when I'm out of practice.

I am planning to post an Illustrator tutorial here in the future, for my method of creating pages for Green Corner. I'll be making the tutorial with page seven (I'm still working on linework for page six), and I'll be sure to include notes about the old method I used for colouring and shading. I hope that it will be interesting and educational for those of you not as familiar with Illustrator.

I hope to be creating and sharing more Green Corner artwork in the future. I have missed working on it.