I recently got a project to do a promotional flyer for a short film. After viewing it to get a feel for the mood I got to work on a pencil illustration. It took going over the film several times to get details of both the room and costuming correct, particularly the blouse.
The mood for the piece was cold and tense, with the pic ambivalent as to whether she was predatory or afraid.
After getting the approval on the initial sketch I incorporated the copy and sent the first round proof. The angle of placement was used to create tension and motion and it was balanced out by the blots of red for the tagline and title logo.
The client looked it over and was mostly happy with the general feel. She did want a change to the illustration where the girl’s right hand would be holding a pair of shears. I modified the sketch and changed the rotation because of the way the scissors would interact with the logo. This orientation still kept the motion and the moving of the tagline maintained the visual balance.
The client was pleased with this one and I proceeded to the actual illustration. For this project I dropped the sketch into Adobe Illustrator and vector traced the important elements, added color, gradients and hard lines (including the white stroke around the figure) and then did some coloring and shading in Adobe Photoshop.
