The internet is a real boom to the illustrator searching for visual reference. It's especially important when working on a piece that requires realistic details. Before Google, I used to hunt down photo reference (or "scrap", as we refered to it) in books and magazines, or try to take photos myself of what I needed. It was pleasant, but time consuming! Now, if I need a reference of say a zebra, I can google "zebra" and up pops 1000 zebra images. I can check that number of stripes with ease and create an accurate looking zebra from what I see.
Golden is the opportunity like a recent job, where I was assigned a monarch caterpillar; currently the butterfly weed in my garden is crawling with monarch caterpillars! How many feet do they have? Which end is the head? Are the antenae on the "back" end shorter than the front ones? The Answers were a click of my iphone camera away, just outside the door. Here's my reference and the black and white rough drawing that followed.
No comments:
Post a Comment