In March, the Society of Visual Storytelling (SVS) held a contest for a design sheet for a fairy tale traveler. The prompt read as follows:

Your assignment is to design a Fairy-Tale Traveler. Your character is young, naive, but resilient and stouthearted! Their quiet village is hidden away in a secluded valley, but is in grave danger. A horde of goblins have promised to raid the village when the harvest moon rises. Our young traveler is on a quest to find someone, anyone, powerful enough to fight back the horde and save their village from destruction.

What we want from you is a character design sheet with your own take on the traveler. They could be a halfling, elf, human, or animal. Just make them appealing and interesting.

Every entry must have 5 color drawings on ONE page:

1 neutral pose front, 3/4 view
1 neutral post back, 3/4 view
1 walking or running pose
1 sitting pose (ground or chair)
1 close up of face

It took me awhile to get started. I wanted to plan and complete the challenge using ProCreate. Completing the image 100% digitally though proved difficult for me. I tried for a couple weeks, pressing on with very limited results. I pulled references, I ideated, and even wrote out traits and characteristics for the character. I just could not get going.

So I took my ideas analog and sketched in my sketchbook. It felt more natural and what I was seeing in my head started to get translated.

I then imported my drawings into ProCreate and was able to stitch together the design sheet poses. After laying it all out, It was smoother to start editing and inking my sketches.

After it was all inked, I got some color selection help from my daughter. We found this great color palette on Pinterest and it even came with hexcodes.

After I finished up coloring, I added a texture to the background and hit submit. Here are the other entries: http://cshellmedia.com/clients/svs/.

Endnotes: Overall I'm happy with how Nena turned out. She's the most complete work I've put together in quite some time. I do need better time management for the contest. This image was pulled together at the last moment. The image could use more shading and the inking could use better line weight variation. Plus,the silhouette could have been more dynamic. 

Site under construction.

How many times did the early users of the internet see that scrolling across the screen? Or how many times did we see those words sandwiched by a stick figure construction workers?

more “37.07.16: Words and Pictures” …

January. 2020.

It’s time!! The new year is here and you know what that means. Assessments. It’s the time to assess where I’ve been the past year. And it’s the time to assess what is yet to come.

And it’s also a time, being the year 2020, to gain focus and clarity. What do I want to have achieved come this time next year? What about three years from now? Five?

I saw a lot of folks experience layoffs already this year, and it drove home the point that unless you take ownership of your future, you are slave to the whims of others.

Last year, cartoonists Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar, hosts of ComicLab, laid out their One-, Three-, and Five-Year Plans (ComicLab, Episode 91: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/comic-lab/id1331204679?i=1000451308534).

Truthfully I’ve not taken the time to create a roadmap of where I am, versus where I want to be. The ComicLab episode, combined with two other life events, were the virtual kicks in the nuts

It inspired me to create my own plan. Here are some of what I laid out:

One-Year Goals

• Projects; Finish three story scripts
• Financial: Get paid fine illustrations
• Creative Development: Meet ups with local artists

Three-Year Goals

• Projects: Kickstart first book of cartoon strips
• Financial: Receive a steady cash flow from
• Creative Development: Attend Alaska Comics Camp

Five-Year Goals

• Projects: Ten completed mini-series
• Financial: Make five figures from illustration.
• Creative Development: Start a creative cohort

So what are your plans/goals? Share it. Put it out there and see what happens. Good luck!

I feel this anxiety everyday:

more “There’s Work To Do and I’m Excited” …

If you’ve followed this blog, you know that I have a great appreciation for Jake Parker and his reinvestment in the art community.

But in this post I want to highlight something else Jake contributes: amazing analogies. He’s filled with them. The best example is the “Creative Bank Account.” In the most recent episode of 3 Point Perspective, How to Change, this is what he said about how, or when, artists should consider changing their style:

more “Stuff I Love: A Jake Parker Analogy (Which Is Always Good)” …