Illustration Friday: Insect

My ever most favorite insect would be the fabulous Bee. Dunno why, but there ya go. I was supposed to do a little animation for the letter V, but after some whining and bribing, got to do B. I'm not going to post the movie, but basically, Bear swipes at honey, Bees swarm from hive and chase poor hungry Bear as background pans, and then after Bear runs off screen, big letter B made of Bees pans on.

There were some actual sketches buried in the photoshop files. I think I was trying to figure out a watercolor type look, that I gave up on and decided to go with what I knew since I had a tight deadline. I also found another quick sketch for figuring out how the pan would work here. Gives you an idea of sloppy I am at the start of a project.

I decided to draw the final background lines on actual paper. Since the pan was so wide, it just was a little easier to handle, plus I like the softer line you get with a pencil. I usually draw with a blue or red Colorerase pencil (I like the texture), and convert it to grayscale after scanning.

The next step is about the coolest photoshop trick ever. Open the Channels palette. At the bottom are a few icons - click on the dotted circle - this will select the WHITE. Go back to the Layers palette, make a new layer, then INVERT the selection. Then fill the selection with Black, or whatever color. This will give you your lines, in beautiful grayscale, on a transparent background.




Now that your lines are on a transparent layer, you can turn on the Preserve Transparency button (it is the little checkerboard near the top of the Layers Palette) and color and shade your lines.



When coloring this background, I had a ton of layers. I like to fill in a solid color for each different area - for example a tree trunk layer, pine tree layer, foreground grass layer, midground grass layer. I turn on the Preserve Transparency, and then shade away. Next, I go to the Line layer, and color the line to match the shading below. Then I usually have another layer above the Line layer for fixes and touchups.

The bees and the bear were drawn directly in Photoshop using default brushes. I turned on the Drop Shadow in Layer Styles on the Bee layer to make it pop a little from the background.