Tag: George Brown College

THE SNOW GOOSE

THE PROJECT DESCRIBED…

In January of 2013, I took a course at George Brown College in Toronto on illustration for Children’s Books. This was the first formal studio courses I’d attended for marks since 1983. It was a great experience and I learned a lot in terms of composition and technique as a result. My work for this course led to a series of works related to Paul Gallico’s novella, THE SNOW GOOSE, first published in 1940 after the evacuation from Dunkirk. Subtitled “A Tale of Dunkirk,” it was a story about Philip Rhyadher, a reclusive artist, who while tending a lighthouse on the Essex coast in the last years before the outbreak of the Second World War, was approached by a girl of the marshlands who had found an injured snow goose that had been blown across the Atlantic from Canada. Rhyadher heals the bird and allows the girl, Fritha, into his life. A closeness between them develops as the years pass, with the snow goose being at the centre of their platonically loving relationship. Fritha becomes a woman who grows to love Philip, only to have the events of 1940 come between them.

No spoilers beyond that…

This story won awards when released in the U.S. in 1941 and helped Gallico establish himself as an author of note, creating later books like THOMASINA, and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. THE SNOW GOOSE itself was adapted into an award winning film for the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1973 with Richard Harris and Jenny Agutter and while it does not appear to be available beyond the world of YouTube, audio books are more accessible to modern audiences.

I chose this book as the core work for my study in the class, developing several works around it and spending a lot of time researching the time, the location and extrapolating on ideas I was developing for the costumes. I even created a music mix to listen to while working on it, using music from JOYEUX NOEL by Philippe Rombi in a rearranged form intermixed with radio passages from Churchill and Chamberlain to add more weight to the work. Ironically, the music did so well in my mix, it was hard to remember it coming from that wonderful and so tragic film. It is available from Virgin Classics (0946 338279 2) and helped greatly in the creation of the final pieces below. I would also recommend you seek out the progressive rock group Camel’s album from 1975, THE SNOW GOOSE, inspired by the book. (Label: Decca – Universal Special Imports. ASIN: B00005V1B2)

I think the idea for doing this came from driving into Toronto one day for the class an seeing in the distance black oily smoke rising from a fire on the docks in Oshawa. It reminded me vividly of one of Peter Scott’s illustrations for the original edition of the book in 1941 and one thought jumped to another and the images below were the end result. I think my work on it in turn helped bring about the creation of MANNA later on.

SKETCH OF PROPOSED SETTING FOR STORY. 10×8″ graphite on acid free cardstock. Copyright C.A. Seaman, 2013.

THE LOST PRINCESS. 11X14 in., graphite on acid free paper. Copyright C.A. Seaman, 2013.

I had never drawn a goose in my life. I used the same techniques I employed creating a piece I never put in the aviation art show of a Bristol Monoplane. The clouds were blended graphite with a white eraser being used to bring up the details.

RHYADHER’S BOAT. 9×12 in. graphite pencil on acid free cardstock. Copyright C.A. Seaman, 2013.

This was a study of Philip’s boat, which figures prominently throughout the book. I made the sails a little transparent, as I had noticed in some of the photos of small sailing craft I studied, you could see the shadow of one of the sheets through another when the light was right.

FRITHA AND THE LOST PRINCESS- four different versions. 12w x 16h in. graphite pencil on vellum (60lb.) stock. Copyright C.A. Seaman, 2013. Other versions in watercolour, coloured pencil and mixed media and pen and ink on illustration board.

Here, after creating various thumbnails showing other compositional possibilities, was the first run at the final piece, sized the same as the hand-in work but done as a graphite tonal study. It remains one of my favourites. Fritha is as scruffy as Gallico describes her, with a dirty face. Mind you, if you saw the marshlands on the Essex coast, it would not be hard to imagine her this way. They look really wet. The overalls and top are all frayed and worn. Gallico never went into detail on her clothes, but I imagined one described as wild-looking as Fritha could look like this when she showed up on Rhyadher’s doorstep with this little bundle in her arms.

Tags Coloured pencil, Drawing, Dunkirk, Gallery, George Brown College, Mixed media, Painting, Paul Gallico, Pen and Ink, Pencil, The Snow Goose, watercolour, World War Two

Illustration and Cartooning

THE ART OF REPRODUCTION

No, it’s not what you think!

In my courses at George Brown, a valuable part of the instructive process involved reproducing panels from existing cartoons, comic strips and graphic novels. It was a great way to learn the techniques of others, test one’s observation skills, and through the use of comparable media, broaden one’s range in terms of drawing and painting. In one case, reproducing a comic strip had us taking the last panel- which had been blanked out- and creating our own ending for it. Cheating by looking up the original strip was not encouraged. Tracing wasn’t an option either. These exercises were meant to give us something like an atelier experience, where students can spend years copying from plasters and the works of the old masters before venturing out to create their own pieces from scratch. It worked for us. I remember one of the most unusual things I had to sort out was a foot belonging to Dennis the Menace. Hank Ketchum’s rendering of it was stylized, to say the least. In among the other elements, it was unremarkable. Once you looked at it on its own, it became something otherworldly and very strange.

The reproduction of a Calvin & Hobbes strip with my own take on the final panel.

Tags Bill Watterson, Cartooning, Christopher Seaman, Comics, Drawing, Gallery, George Brown College, Gouache, Hank Ketchum, Manga, Milt Caniff, Mixed media, Pen and Ink, Pencil

Illustration and Cartooning

ZEPHYR CROW

Post author By Christopher
Post date July 17, 2020

Zephyr Crow is a teenager living with her sister Bunty and her grandfather, Howard Elbee- a retired special effects movie magician from before the days of computers. Zephyr and Bunty’s divorced parents work separately overseas and have left the kids with the one relative they can trust. Howard, a widower, enjoys the company of his grand-daughters, and on the surface all seems relatively normal as they carry on from day to day.

Except for the fact that in Zephyr, Howard, and Bunty’s world normal is defined very differently from what one what imagine. Think Addams Family meets films about Hollywood…

That’s all I am going to tell you because this project is slated for further development, but has been on hold for a while. It was originally developed for the second of the cartooning courses I took at George Brown College and, modified to fit the needs of this particular Cartooning course, took on some interesting dimensions. (To read about the first Cartooning course, refer to the post on Andi, the beach princess with a difference.) What follows is development work, character sketches and completed projects like a sample one panel image, two comic strips and a projected cover design for an imagined anthology. These were all assessed projects and were all hugely useful in developing skills for me in sequential art.

ZEPHYR, BUNTY & HOWARD

OTHER CHARACTERS…

If Bunty is Zephyr’s foil in this story, other characters are actively supporting her in her adventures. I have not considered villains here as they are more likely to emerge with the stories. What appears are some of the peculiar neighbours Zephyr has, like Monsieur Aggot, a single parent and former horror film star. Monsieur Aggot is a family man as loves his children equally. He is also a real gentleman with fine manners.

THE PROJECTS: 1 A single panel comic

The single panel comic was given to us as a way of exploring the characters in a given scenario. It was completed in pen and ink, with no use of wash or mixed media. There was guidance in terms of the subject, directing it had to be humourous. I think the dialogue was also given to us and we had to fit the subject to the line. Also, there had to be a visible demonstration of grid use and one point perspective in the piece. A good challenge, especially as Zephyr was developing as a much more serious project at that time.

Below are some process frames and the final project. You can enlarge a several images by clicking on them.

THE PROJECTS: 2 A Second single panel piece, using wash and two point perspective in the design

Now we are rolling along with the characters, we step up the work with a new scenario involving real estate, new personalities like Monsieur Aggot and his maggot children, the pet dog and the above mentioned technical requirements. The first image was a two point perspective exercise I did to work out the dimensions in the piece and set the characters in their correct proportions. Yes, Monsieur Aggot is one big bug. He also has a really interesting back story, but I don’t want to share it here.

THE PROJECTS: 3 Four panel comic strip

Next, we took the characters, introduced more into the piece and had to develop a four panel work on them. I was having trouble with my drawing hand at the time and created all the panels full page size first, then scanned and reduced them into the final piece to put less stress of cramping my hand with small details. It also helped me see what was worth keeping after the overload of the first piece. I had a lot more fun with this and pared down the texture a lot, giving the strip a cleaner look. If you wonder why there is so much open space at the top, remember it has to be kept clear to fit the dialogue.

The original panels are included separately and together. Click on them, etc., etc. to get bigger images.

Much more effective use of line and texture. Still hate my lettering, but not nearly as much as in Project 1. Poor Zephyr’s face is a bit twisted in Panel 3.

THE PROJECTS: 4 Full colour weekend paper comic strip

The four panel strip was a great way to develop the characters and I was stronger in my sense of what to do with them. This was a fun work to do, pulling in mixed media and full colour. I can’t recall too much else about requirements of the assignment, but getting into the rhythm, I drew the original panels large, but in scale to the finals and reduced them. It may seem like a lot of work, but I know of other professional artists- their names escape me- who do the same thing for the same reasons, often going into completing the panels and then assembling them later in the computer. I can see that in my future for graphic novel projects.

The story is, incidentally, based on something that actually happened to me once when I took a class outside to draw trees and nature and had one preferring to sit in the sun and download her images from Google.

You can’t make this stuff up. Click on the images….

THE PROJECTS: 5 ANTHOLOGY COVER

The final project with Zephyr and Bunty was an anthology cover. We studied covers from various works like CALVIN & HOBBES, among others, and considered what time of year it would likely be released. Christmas was coming, so why not? As you can see, there were many parts to the project. Two point perspective, which for me had vanishing points 12 feet, (almost four meters), apart and leading to the parts of the planning being done in the computer using a cg grid. The final piece had to have several versions, as you can see here.

Enjoy…

I would like to revisit this someday. It has light and dark elements to it that should appeal to a wide audience. Perhaps a collaboration of sorts might be in order to get it moving. Perhaps I should just make clones of myself instead…

No, I don’t think so.

Tags Archives, Bunty, Cartooning, Christopher Seaman, Comics, Computer generated models, Gallery, George Brown College, Howard, M. Aggot, Mixed media, Movies, Special Effects, Zephyr Crow

Illustration and Cartooning

ANDI- A BEACH PRINCESS WITH A TWIST

Post author By Christopher
Post date July 16, 2020
5 Comments on ANDI- A BEACH PRINCESS WITH A TWIST

Before you go on, this is NOT some tone deaf sexist comic piece.

Andi actually is a remarkably complex character who hopefully will sometime once again see the light of day on my art table. She was created for the first Cartooning course I took at George Brown, and a lot of work went into filling out her character. Part of it came from others in the class, who contributed excellent suggestions when we exchanged drawings and brief outlines of our characters one night with each other and the recipient added a second drawing of a foil for our character on the spot and gave broad strokes to a backstory for that person. It was one of the best exercises I did in that class and made me much more confident in what I was doing later.

DEVELOPMENT OF ANDI AND OTHERS

Miranda Andrew- Andi for short, was a rebel in her youth, getting pregnant at 16 and being thrown out of the house and her school. She went to live with an aunt, a progressive woman with liberal democratic ideas and a strong sense of justice for people who have rarely experienced it. She is also a cancer survivor, an activist and the perfect role model for Andi as she seeks to find her place in the world. The aunt lives on the coast and gives Andi a trailer on the beach to call home. Andi completes her education slowly, through night school and correspondence, has frequent run-ins with authorities who want to separate her from her son and over time develops into a clone of her aunt, ready to pick up where she leaves off when she goes into battle with the big C once more.

Actually, as I read this, I’m really thinking Andi is currently the right person in the right place at the right time. However, when the work was done several years ago, I only had time to develop what you see here before moving on to the next project, Zephyr Crow. Read about that in the post of the same name, coming out soon.

Many exercises in drawing were done to build confidence in rendering characters and drawing them quickly in a variety of gestures without models for reference. The same applied to settings, sidekicks, foils and secondary or antagonistic characters. Here are some of the drawings that came out of those exercises.

Early gesture test while sorting out the figure

Tags Andi, Cartooning, Character design, Christopher Seaman, Comics, Gallery, George Brown College