Project #8 - My First Paid Project

Wow so much new! As a few of you know I recently got hacked into my Google account. So I was unable to post like planned after I got back from Texas. But a great many things has transpired since then as well, so I'll do my best to cut it short.

1) My eye is completely healed (Thank you Jesus!)

2) I've finally figured out an alternate art style to strive for! (In place of anime. This being digital painting)

3) I have been working hard to improve my Photoshoping and digital painting skills.

4) I'm working on writing a mystery dinner. (I'll let you know more later!)

5) I plan to work on a video for a competition issued by Concordia Language Villages for a chance to win a two week scholarship! (I'll also let you know more later on this!)

6) I managed to recover my Google account :)

So for all you who don't know, yes! I got to go to Texas for a cruise last month! I did some major drawing practice too, so I actually have some stuff to show you!

But first I want to show you the illusive Project #8 first!

So for the last few months I had been working on a project for my mom who is working for an organization  that has been funding children cancer research for a number of years. This being Solving Kids Cancer. And one of their new projects has been starting a weekly podcast. And since my mom has been the producer per se, I was given the great honor of creating the icon for i tunes! Of course I wasn't paid by the company, but I did get a worthwhile enticement fee from my mom. So it all worked out. They bounced back and forth between a few different titles but then eventually came back to their first pick which was TWiPO. (This Week in Pediatric Oncology)

During the process of creating the icon I probably made at least seventeen or more versions, which I won't hesitate to say was greatly more than I'm used to. But all in all I'm very grateful for the experience, as it will go far for being such an early try at commissioning.

So here I have my first sketches. I'm normally utterly helpless when it comes to brain storming, but thankfully I did manage to hack out some decent ideas early on... It's always hardest coming up with an idea for someone else's project... 

Then I went ahead and inked them.

 

 Then here we have some variations and other ideas I laid out.

Was thinking this would make a neat banner, I would have to stretch it more, but you get the picture.

 

Could use this for pretty much anything....

 

From pretty early on I was set on using this one. I was really excited to test my hand at some digital painting.

I also liked this one a lot. It was simple and stood out well, but there wasn't enough room for the other text needed.

   

 Then they wanted to try to use Erik's art, which I thought was a great idea, until I tried to get all the text on... Then I think we all agreed this particular picture wouldn't work too well.

 Then mom wanted to try this picture instead, since it's very common for podcasts to have this styled icons.

I tried a few different fonts and things, but in the end we went back to square one anyway... @_@

 So in the end they agreed on this one. Which at first I was a bit flustered that I would have to go and COLOR the whole thing which takes FOREVER, especially after doing all that work already. So no, I wasn't thrilled.... But after I started working on it, it became fun learning how to paint using Photoshop.

 

So I did still have to make more changes. I was experimenting with some background ideas, but then we decided white would be best since it would be too hard to read the text and whatnot otherwise.

 I also tried a few different colored fonts. But came back to purple in the end.

 This would actually have been the final product had I not persuaded mom too let me continue coloring the doctor. After switching all the elements around for hours I simply wanted to have some fun with it. And plus I had only made it to step 3 of about 12 steps of what I was using for a digital painting help guide! All I did was put the base colors on, I refused to let it go like that!

 So after about an hour or so I finished. Leaving me at about step 8. (Which I didn't mind because I'm sure this was the best I could do with my current skill.)

And this my dear friends is the very tedious process of freelancing/commissioning without proper boundaries. From now on I'm going to be seriously limiting the amount of retakes on this sort of stuff... Wouldn't want me to go mad now would we?

Thanks for looking, and I hope you like it!! I'll be posting a link to the podcast when it's up, as it is currently still being worked on.

Otherwise you can now check out my new Project Chart tab at the top, or click Here to check my progress more conveniently! Thanks so much!

~Zarana

EDIT: Here's the link! TWiPO