This fall, one of Brian Keene’s new books, Scratch, will be coming out from Cemetery Dance Publications. Having done the artwork for the book, I decided to do a promotional “layer-by-layer” video for YouTube. The video is for the endpapers of the new book, both are based on a snippet of “mythological” information about the monster of the story.
The video builds the two pieces gradually, revealing each layer until they are complete. As always, let me know what you think.
Away we go…
Addendum:
I probably should’ve put a little more information about the project in this particular post, so here it goes.
The art in the video, for Brian Keene’s Scratch, is featured in the endpapers of the book. The idea is taken from a fragment of the snake’s mythology, mentioned in the book as one of the characters is explaining the snake’s history. The art itself is the same scene from two different angles, of a devastating attack by Scratch.
As far as technique, with this art the pieces are built as individual layers digitally, gradually building layer on layer over the whole piece. Though the layers don’t necessarily pop up onscreen in the same order that I created them, they do represent well how I tend to jump around a bit on things. Doing individual pieces on separate layers does give me the advantage of changing my mind, and quietly (or even completely) altering the location of a piece to make it work better.
The trick was working the idea (and the perspective) to show the same scene interestingly from the two angles. Often something looks great from one direction, yet uninteresting from another. I spent a fair amount of time going back and forth between the two, tweaking the angles and locations to get it just right.
