I was lucky enough to be hired as the main illustrator for Student Books 3 and 4.
To date, this was the biggest commission of my career. It was a fabulous job and I dived in wholeheartedly. The work load and deadlines were tough but here was a mammoth project for me to get my teeth into!
I loved it!
It was an interesting brief because I was required to take the original illustrations and modernize them. The characters and compositions were to keep their original integrity, this was the challenge and also the thrill.
It took me a few laboured attempts to doggedly copy the originals from scratch before I thought of solution to the compositional problem.
I had to recreate these images quickly so I embarked on a method that was to prove very effective. First I would take the reference file of the original illustration blow it up to A3, save it into grey scale mode, print it out on two pieces of A4 and trace the basic shapes of the characters using the light box my Dad made for me twenty years ago.
And viola!
I now had the basic composition that I could then draw on top of. This technique was only used for the large, highly detailed images. I didn't need this technique for the smaller strip style artworks.
Here are some examples of original artwork and my new interpretations of them.
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