Illustrator Critique?

[bluegreenproject]

I'm new here–found my way via Copper. I'm a full time teacher but have been slowly working on illustration in my free time. There seems to be a nice community of people with good taste in comics around here. I think this might be a good place to finally open some of my work to criticism from strangers.

Lately I've been sketching out my stuff in pencil and inking/coloring in Adobe Illustrator CS5. I like the control it gives me. The first one is from a kids comic on composting I've been working on for my students that is all story-boarded out. The second is from a fantasy project that I'm more interested in, but the plot is a little nebulous and incomplete at this point.

Thanks for any criticism or suggestions you might have. -Scott

[Sketchtacular]

On the second piece, I think you should try a different font and add a little shading to the clouds and the mountain. The outlines on the clouds are too faint as well, I hope that helps.

[bluegreenproject]

Thanks, that actually helps to get me thinking about a few things that I had passed over for lack of time and also stirs up some more fundamental questions.

I'm not a huge fan of the font I used either, but I haven't found one that I'm happy with since going digital. I'd love to make a handwriting font of my own, but haven't set aside the time to make that. So I put some more time into finding a decent free one last night... This one is better, but maybe not final.



That's the benefit and the curse of illustrator–nothing is final. I can endlessly tweak an image. I originally switched to it because I wasn't happy with how my paper work looked scanned, and I thought it might save me some time working on a longer project because I can save objects to a library and reuse them later on. Those objects also give me the flexibility to translate it into flash at some future point if I want.

I'm still not sure if it's the way to go though, because I've been so picky. But I've also been teaching myself illustrator while making the dragon image, so maybe it's just the learning curve that makes it feel slow.

I darkened up those cloud strokes some as you suggested–but maybe I just need a more defined light source... All those details on the clouds come down to a time thing too. How much detail should I worry about if this is one image among hundreds? Unfortunately I can't afford do this full time...

Maybe I should give coloring in Photoshop another try? Any thoughts on process?

Thanks! Scott

[bluegreenproject]

I'm also trying to figure out when it's appropriate to use gradients. I don't normally like the look, but I've been reserving them for the background and very slight drop shadows on objects...

I just converted this old pen and pencil drawing of Jorge Luis Borges to illustrator for more practice:

Before + After