Compositing a picture using many layers

/

Yesterday’s post was my 1,000th on this site. Everything here is a re-posted to https://doukat.tumblr.com.

This picture in half of a two-page spread.The two pages have about 100 layers between them. By the time I finish tossing unnecessary layers, there will be about a dozen layers.

My job is to make this picture make dramatic sense. Jimmy and Betty are pledging best friends forever while the ringmaster, the clown, and Betty’s mother look on. The clown is looking at the cake, and the ringmaster has got his eye on the suspicious clown. Betty’s mother is about to intrude on a special moment.

To make the table more interesting, I’m going to add a deck of cards and some poker chips.

Three Characters in Search of a Story -- the Ringmaster, the Tightrope Walker, and the Clown

/

These are background characters. Now I have to create the foreground characters, Jimmy Jay and Betty Burro, as well as the juvenile crocodiles.

My 40-year old Rollei 35 arrived today. It’s a jewel!

On the the page that comes after the Circus Tent page

/

The ringmaster and the clown are going to be watching the kids eat birthday cake. This picture will be less complex than the circus tent page. I’m drawing these guys large. They’ll be reduced in size for the final picture. The other characters are Jimmy Jay, Betty Burro, Mother Burro, and the crocodile kids.

Tent Scene, Take 6 -- Introducing a new ringmaster

/

The ringmaster is now a penguin instead of a man

I think I’m finally finished with this page. The big change, for today, is that I replaced the man with an animal. Introducing a human being into the book would be a bad decision.

At the moment I’m waiting eagerly for my Leica IIF to make its way from Belgrade, Serbia, to Southern Oregon. This camera was created sometime between 1951 and 1956. I’ve bought vintage cameras before and I’ve had good luck, most of the time. The only dud was a Polaroid camera converted to use Fuji Instax film. The camera itself was fine, but Fuji stopped making the film.

I’m looking forward to having a Leica again. I sold my Leica M3 out of necessity in 1988. It didn’t occur to me that thirty-years later I would regret selling it. Going 30 years before regretting a decision is okay by me — I regret most of my bad decisions immediately.

Tent Scene, Stage 5 -- Burro Tightrope Walker in the Spotlight

/

I’m calling this page finished. It’s time to say “enough fiddling” and move on to another page. I have ten weeks to complete 8 more pages, put all of the images and text into InDesign ,and upload the final PDF to IngramSpark. Ten weeks sounds like plenty of time, but it’s a tight deadline.

Circus Tent Scene, Stage 4, with colors

/
Circus ten, burro on the high wire, Clip Studio Paint EX

More characters, more colors, more composition. I’ll finish this on Monday, This has been one of the most challenging pages — so many characters, a complex background, and the difficult composition! But fun to do, all the same.

Circus Tent Interior, Stage 2

/
Ringmaster and tightrope walker, children's picture book, Clip Studio Paint EX

Characters from the first pages of the book will be in the audience: giraffes, elephants, crocodiles, and even a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Did I mention that the tightrope walker is a burro?

One step closer to finished with Dylan's farewell pages

/
Saying goodbye to a friend, children's picture book,Clip Studio Paint EX

Almost done with these pages… I have to work in the dialog balloons and that will be tricky — I didn’t lay them out in advance for any of the pages. I was winging it like a cocky rookie. I promise myself that I will lay out the dialog balloons for my next book before I do the paintings. Damn! I’m a slow learner.

Today will go down in history as the first time I’ve taken a picture with a film camera since 2015, seven years ago. Rather than use a fancy camera, I used an Ilford Sprite II, an all plastic point and shoot camera. It was fun. I’m going to carry a camera with me whenever I go out of the house.