Zack On My Back is a children's rhyme that my friend David composed for his godson Zack a few years ago and asked me to illustrate. (This was way before octopunk and julie had their own Zack.) Now that 7 Souls (my teen supernatural thriller, co-written with my genius friend Barnabas Miller) is complete, I've asked our agent to help me find new gigs as an illustrator and given him Zack On My Back to evaluate as a potential portfolio piece. I hadn't looked at this stuff in a while, but I really want to do more drawing and painting and I thought I'd show this stuff to you guys to get your opinions and/or any recommendations you might have in terms of me finding art gigs. Comments/critiques welcome!
http://www.jordanorlando.com/zackonmyback
16 comments:
Jordan I absolutely loved Zack on my Back. The story and the drawings are both incredibly charming. You have a very nice style in your illustrations, the expressions are great. I would love to see more of your stuff.
Aw, thanks! That's great to hear.
My agent didn't seem too enthused with the book itself, but he's definitely on board with the pictures.
Maybe it's just the parent thing - but I think Cat had the term right, charming indeed! Nice work!
awesome! also charming. :)
Thanks! The agent said the style's not "kid-centric" enough.
Awesome Jordan! I love the illustrations and also your choice of colors! Not "kid-centric" enough? Pfft.
The pictures are large black-and-white pencil and charcoal drawings. I then made high-resolution scans and added all the colors digitally.
I was just discussing that part with my friend Brendan. When I was a kid I had a 24-color marker set (which came in a flat tin box with a hinged lid...you know). I think I graduated to a 64-marker set, later, and I was always very careful about putting the pens back in the right order, not letting my sister screw them up etc. But inevitably certain colors would run out, or the tips would get fucked up and not draw properly, or whatever. By the time I was in high school I lusted after those enormous $600 sets of markers you can buy at professional art supply stores. Finally, in the late 'nineties, when I first started getting into Photoshop, I was like, 'I finally have the ultimate marker set!" 16.7 million colors and they NEVER run out or fade or streak.
Also, I don't know how many times I'd done a pencil or pen drawing, liked it, and decided to add color (with markers or pastels or whatever), only to immediately regret it as the paper buckled and the pencil lines smeared and the detail was lost, "ruining" the drawings. Zack On My Back was my first large-scaled drawing project where I scanned the black and white art and added all the color digitally, and I couldn't believe how great it was. Don't like the color you've chosen for something? Change it! (And the original black and white pencil art is totally untouched). I love computers.
I hear ya! I took to digital art like a duck to water. I got my Wacom about 5 years ago and I haven't looked back since. I do still intend to set up a studio for painting once one of my children moves out and I have that extra room. Nothing beats that feeling I get when I paint, but the digital art is fascinating in it's virtually limitless options.
Also, you can do endless tricks. For example, on page 7 of ZOMB, there are three fish swimming around. Nobody has ever noticed that it's the same fish drawing three times.
Check out this piece here I superimposed a translucent skull over the old woman's face so the wrinkles shown through and altered her eyes as well as adding my own drawn accents to the picture. The effect is intense.
I use Photoshop for much of my work but prefer Corel painter for the actual drawing and coloring.
That's spooky as hell. It reminds me of that pair of frames at the end of Psycho, where Hitchcock superimposes the mummified mother's skull onto Norman's face during the crossfade to the cars being pulled from the swamp.
I like the phosphorescence on the fingers, too.
Oh, um...SPOILER WARNING about how Norman Bates' mother is actually dead.
I might have to see if I can do something similar with Gretchen's face for this thon, lol.
I finally had the chance to give this a proper look. Damn, Jordan, is there anything you can't do? Love the look - Page 12 is my favorite. Book artist, author, graphic designer, are you the Wizard of Oz? I guess my only criticism is the "flirting" page, a bit out of place for a children's book. Perhaps Zack could flirt with little girls on a playground while the man flirts with their mothers?
Yeah, it's totally out of place. It was kind of a joke between me and David, the author: he'd written that line, and said, "Here's your chance to draw Cindy Crawford." So I took him at his word and drew three (then-) supermodels.
Thanks so much for your nice comments! Very flattering indeed, and very encouraging.
Love them! I particularly like page 12 too and also 1.
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