Tom Sawyer Batch 1

 Let's start back at the beginning. 

This post is for those new to illustration or just curious about how the process works. I'll be sharing how I tackled a job of this size: the things I did to work within scope (ie: finding the right balance between 'Sistine Chapel' and 'children's crayon drawing'), and the steps from start to finish on individual illustrations. 

The first part of any project is building trust with your partners. In my case, I had two parties involved: MD (media designers, basically art directors) and AD (academic designers, content writers). I worked directly with the MD, who would route art requests (called specs) to me. When I had art to submit, they would send it to the ADs to critique and approve, then back to me, so on and so forth. 

Early on, AD had no idea what to expect from me when it came to final images. That trust had to be built, and especially with such a big project, the early stages were hard going. I know when parts of my sketches are just placeholders, but they don't. So sometimes during the sketch phase in the early parts of Tom Sawyer I would get asked to change major parts of the image because they weren't sure where I was going with it. 

For instance, when I sent them the first batch of illustrations, they didn't understand the halftones, thinking I had sent them final illustrations. "No, we wanted full color illustrations, these look too serious!"

Similarly, it took me time to learn exactly what they wanted. You'll see my work become looser and more comfortable as the project continued and we started to trust each other's visions.

This project was massive, 30 images overall, and the timeline was very small. Any freelancer knows that deadlines shift wildly depending on the project. I've known artists to have 24 hours to complete a piece, and I've personally gotten a cushy two months for one image before, but this timeline was four months for 30 images. That's sketches, color studies, photo shoots, and final rendering in 92 business days, or about 3 days per piece. Not ideal. 

But, prospective illustrators, you get hired to be visual problem solvers. Sometimes that problem is 'make my book character attractive and energetic.' Sometimes that problem is 'figure out how to make 30 illustrations in sixteen weeks.' 

Part of the challenge of creating so many images, especially fully rendered painterly images, is getting the right amount of detail without getting bogged down, or worse, making an image look inconsistent. With five images in every batch, time spent on one image would take from another, so it was constant triage. I learned a lot in a very short period of time about where I needed to concentrate my efforts.

I had a hidden weapon when it came to tackling this colossal task: I work in-house at McGraw Hill. That means that the book budget was my budget (as long as I didn't ask for too much!), so I was able to hire models and use a dedicated studio space for reference. I also rented costumes. :)

The MDs I worked with were in the same building so they were able to schedule shoot times and align them with project deadlines. That means on Monday I get specs, make quick composition sketches, Wednesday I shoot reference, and by Friday I have finalized sketches ready for color. This does put me at risk, and there were a few times I had to reshoot reference because they didn't like my initial composition, but overall this tactic worked nicely.

It was a big deal to have the help of a team while I picked away at this project. I also work with other illustrators so I could always lean over and ask for advice if I ever got stuck on a visual problem.

In my last post, I showed the steps that were scheduled for each spec, and the deadlines for them. 5 days for sketches, 8 for color, 4 for rendering, and 2 for revisions. This schedule was set up for artists who don't render nearly as much as I do, so I would usually take some of those 8 days for color and render instead. 

This piece, for instance, took eight hours to render (minus revisions). Getting simpler images out of the way quickly helped pave the way for multiple full figure illustrations later down the road! After all, for batch #1, I actually had 5 more illustrations due after this one!

Here comes the boring part: I had to stay super organized. in the end, I had over 500 reference photos and every _revision, _revision_02, _revision_03_recovered file to keep track of across files across batches. It pays to set up an easy to navigate file system, regardless of how big your project may be. That desktop will become a black hole and suck every half-finished project you've ever made into the ether.

Boring part done, let's look at the rest of the illustrations!

In the end, after all the help and the trust and the scheduling, the only thing that kept my work sharp and on target was reference. Good, solid reference. If it were up to me, I would have traveled to Mark Twain's boyhood home in Missouri and taken all the pictures I could, but alas, 'what if we used our vacation to shoot reference for my work' wasn't a great sales pitch. The fact that I was able to find excellent kid models and schedule a shoot for every batch was a life saver. 

Looking back on this first batch, I can see the places where I was still unsure, still building confidence in myself and a truncated production schedule, and still building confidence with my partners. As time went on, and the asks got bigger, I found a rhythm to the work and a better instinct for what details could go and which were needed to sell the image.