Monday, February 23, 2009

A new approach... to something old

I noticed something interesting when I was creating banners for my website overhaul. The images I chose were all rather large and I had to fit a lot into a narrow strip of space at the top of the webpages. So I took some elements from the background and moved them into the foreground to balance the work and make a longer wider banner-like strip. The result was something that I wish I had thought of when I illustrated those books before. Here is one example... the page looks like this in the book....

But, because I needed to fill the wider strip of space I needed to fill in the right side... I did that by taking two characters from the rear of the plane and putting them up in the foreground. I flipped the image horizontally to have these two characters looking back at the action. ( A child has taken his caterpillar on the plane disguised as an airport salad. ) This makes a much more dramatic event. It is a new approach that I will be considering when the illustration can benefit from this type of composition.

I really like the dynamics of this type of layout. Yep, you can still learn something new every day.

2 comments:

valerie walsh said...

This is so doable when you know what you are doing :) I wish I was more advanced in this kind of work. It would take forever to do this the way I paint :( Both look wonderful and what a great advantage to be able to change the picture!

isay said...

your new banners' really so cool--i like it so much ginger!

--it has been my wish to have a longer banner-like strip, so many wishes........