I recently had the pleasure of working with Ranger Rick, a great wildlife magazine for kids. If you don’t subscribe yet, I highly recommend it. The page I illustrated is usually called Reader Riddles, but they created a custom headline for the next October issue. Halloween is probably my favorite holiday; it’s so rich in visual imagery, history and spooky fun. I’ll show a bit of process here.
The original layout with text blocks in position.
My first sketch after looking at lots of wolf reference to get an idea of their energy and character. I knew I wanted to show the main wolf howllng, so I needed to shift the title to the left to allow for the space. I repositioned the speech ‘‘hooks’’ on each block so that the other creatures are saying the riddles .
I refined the sketch after deciding a longer Dracula cape would be more dramatic, reduced the moon, ditched the cemetary, and placed the cartoon balloon text blocks.
The sketch was approved, and I drew my first layer. I drew the flying wolf-witches separately so I could get more detail and reduced and placed them. It’s usually a matter of balance , so there is some back and forth getting background elements to be the right size. (Those wolf-witches were flying around now.)
The final piece after photoshop.
Detail of cat.
Detail of cat and wolf-witch.
This is approximately how it will look after the art director places everything. Lots going on, but no blood was spilled!
Of course, the night is still young.
