Rough-rough-rough-ROUGH sketch of a spot for the New York Times Book Review of Stephen King's "Just After Sunset." I'm only posting this, at this level of shitty sketchyness, because I'm kinda stuck on the composition and am wary of going too much further.
My concept is supposed to communicate how "Just After Sunset" is a collection of short stories, rather than a novel, where each story seems like it could go off on its own and become a seperate book. So here, I have King with an axe after just chopping apart his book, and the bits and pieces of the pages are spawning into a bunch of smaller books instead of just laying dead. I feel like the whole cut-something-apart-and-it-only-multiplies-and-makes-things-worse idea is a common gag in horror (or maybe it was just on a Twilight Zone episode and I'm totally wrong) so I thought it'd be a fitting vehicle for King and how the NY Times believes his new book reads.
To clarify the concept on the finished piece, I plan on making his face more of a "Eureka!" instead of a "Haha, fuck you book!" and have rays coming up from the book, so it appears like it was a good idea, and not that King has resorted to self destruction or something.
In the background, will be your typical full moon and hazy clouds, very receeded.
And as for colors, I want to try psychadelic neons and black again, as if its a blacklight poster, without going nuts and screwing it up like last time. If its planned correctly, I think it'll make the image pop alot more and tie in with King's whole camp horror image.
But right now, the composition just doesn't seem to be all that it could. I have another of King's full body standing over the book, but that distances, and therefore, de-emphasizes his face, which is the selling point. Other crazier angles seem too impossible to pull off because nailing a recognizable caricature is difficult enough from a frontal view, let alone from some nutty bird's/worm's eye view. So I'm stuck between making it more dynamic, but without losing the recognizability of Stephen King.
Also, does that even LOOK like Stephen King? That's the best likeness I've gotten so far, and I'm probably going to model the re-drawn face after this one, but I can keep trying new ones if it doesn't read.
2 comments:
Sorry for the delayed reply...it does look like stephen king. I actually agree with you on all points. You are pretty self-aware here. (though I wouldn't agree that it looks retarded ) I do agree that expression is key here, and I think you'll want to be very careful on the colors. I was actually thinking less psychedelic and more old horror movie dramatic in value with some pops of color, mostly because it will be very difficult to make your color scheme work well. If you go there, DEFINITELY color study it first or you could be sorry. It could be really interesting this way, just make sure it gets mapped out first to save yourself some strife. It is a pretty good concept though, and can tell the story you want if you pay attention to the things you mentioned: likeness, expression, value, color, etc...
composition-wise, you can get away with his face being this angle and still making the composition more dynamic. You can make him more hunched over, so his face in closer to the foreground and the scene is more cropped in.
and/or you can focus on the mini-books and make them running off toward the viewer in a dynamic way, sort of coming alive like the creatures you describe in horror films.
You also have an axe to play with and can achieve a more dynamic perspective on it coming forward if you want, These are all ways to make the image more interesting with respect to composition...
Post a Comment