A Study of Bears

Earlier this week I posted about a magazine spread where I had to rework some illustrations quite a bit, and a friend of mine asked if I still had the original unused sketches, so here's an example.



This is a comparison of the first sketch I did and the one that was finally accepted. The bear and squirrel are acting out a scene from True Blood. My original sketch is on the left, and the final one is on the right.
I think what I liked most about the original was the pose. I needed to draw a bear pretending to be a human vampire, and I feel like I did a good job of portraying a bear's anatomy within that criteria. You can imagine a human doing this same pose yet the limbs bend like a bear's would. Agian, looking at the final piece now I don't feel that it's bad, it's just not "me." I arrived at the final drawing after reworking the entire set of illustrations four times.



These were some supplemental drawings I did for this project. At one point I was given the instruction to make the bear look more like the Cleveland Show bear, more dopey, and more like a real bear all at once. I did these three drawings to try and show them that those are three very different things and that I was at a bit of a loss as to what they were looking for.

So this is just a post for the curious, and I want to emphasize that reworking drawings is a very necessary part of this line of work. Front is amazing to work for and I have sung their praises many times in the past; they always give me a ton of freedom to do what I want with a drawing while still giving me plenty of specifics to work with. If you ever hire an illustrator or graphic designer remember that the key is to strike a good balance of give and take: Be specific enough that the designer knows what they're supposed to be making (this will cut down drastically on the back-and-forth and revisions) but also be open to deferring to their expertise and opinions since they are the expert, after all. Front has this relationship down and I always look forward to working with them. Right now I'm doing a pirate themed spread for them, so more on that when the time comes.