Saturday, February 23, 2008

Fanboy & Fangirl Time Galore.

Over the past two days, my friends and I went up to Atlanta to participate in the SCAD Illustration & Comic Arts Forum. It was amazing, definitely worth the 4+ hour ride.

On Thursday night there was a lecture by 2 comic artists (Eric Canete & Andrew Robinson) and 2 illustrators (Yuko Shimizu & James Jean). I was especially psyched about seeing the latter two because they're some of the most influential and successful contemporary illustrators that I know of. It was thrilling to see them talk about their work in person.

On Friday I attended a workshop by James, in which he colored a simple pencil line drawing using Photoshop. I was amazed to see that for someone who has such great color sensitivity and intricacy in little details, he didn't use any more than like 5 layers. (Granted, it was a quick exercise piece for a demo--but still.) He also used some Photoshop effects that someone could easily call "tacky" (i.e. gradient overlay), but he used them well-- I would never have guessed just by looking at his finished. It further emphasizes that "it's not about what tools the artist uses, but HOW he uses them."

Anyway, I was a little fangirl and I got my sketchbook signed by Yuko & James:


They were nice enough to top them off with a little doodle!

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