Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Character Designs

I've been so busy with client work that I've had little time to devote to my personal project, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

I've been able to squeeze in time between bill-paying projects to finalize the look of four of the primary characters: Ichabod, Katrina, Baltus and Brom Bones.

Thought I would share.

Update on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 7:56AM by Gerald Kelley

UPDATE: I finished off color roughs.

I'm excited about how things are looking so far. Researching clothing styles from the late 18th century has been interesting and it's helped me get past the generic look of some of my earlier sketches and character designs.

Enjoy! 

Update on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 10:34AM by Gerald Kelley

UPDATE 2: I got so caught up in making sure I was drawing fairly accurate costumes that I completely forgot about one of the defining characteristics of Ichabod Crane: his clothes were ill-fitting and his arms were too long for his sleeves.

What kills me is I've read this story dozens of times over the years and I still overlooked that detail. Just reinforces that details are important but only if you keep in mind how they serve the purpose of the character description.

This oversight was caught by a former high school classmate of mine. Thanks, Erick!

Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Brom

I'm really jammed up with work (fortunately!) so I most likely won't be posting much this week. However, I thought I'd share a quick sketch I did the other evening of from my 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow' project (LoSH).

Brom Bones. This is just an initial idea and will most likely evolve over time.  I need to throw down more variations so I can see what else might be possible.

I'm really enjoying the craft paper sketchbook and my Cotman Compact Box. The off-white paper makes it possible to add highlights with guache or pencil, giving sketches a nice added pop. 

Talk to you soon!

Project: Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Since I was a kid, I've been fond of 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' (LoSH). When I was in elementary school (circa 1980), we were shown a made-for-television version of the story starring Jeff Goldblum and Dick Butkus(!). It's actually on YouTube! I don't remember much of the details of the film itself but afterward I remember specifically drawing the headless horseman in class (I wish I had kept that thing...). Anyway, that film is responsible for sparking an interest in the story that's stuck with me through the years.

I've been wanting to work on my own version of the story for a long time. Presenting it as a long-form story book with the actual text relatively intact. I love the idea of presenting classic and traditional stories as originally written, rather than editing them down for simplicity's sake or to accommodate current sensibilities. Of course, that will have to thought out as I go forward but it's the initial idea. The format I am thinking is something like a hybrid of a current story book and the old-style children's books of the past with tipped-in color plates, like old Arthur Rackham illustrated books. A combination of spot illustrations, full-pages and spreads, full-color and black and white.

At this point, I'm ignoring all the previous half-hearted attempts I've made in the past, (here and here) and I'm moving forward with a clean slate. I will be posting character design sketches, environment ideas, thumbnails and such. I may also post thumbnails of layout and text treatment.

So this marks the jumping off point for the project: Ichabod Crane.

Digital Watercolor Experiment

When I started out as as an illustrator (wow! in 1996...), I worked in watercolor and pen-and-ink and pencil. I was getting good work from magazines and design agencies as my portfolio grew.

But one thing that was slowly becoming obvious as time went one: the time/money balance wasn't working in my favor. It was taking much too long to deliver editorial work for clients' budgeted fees. That's when I eventually made the decision to make the move to digital.

The move to digital necessitated a change in style as I was working in Adobe Illustrator. Several of my existing clients were really flexible and welcomed the change and let me use their assignments as testing grounds for what would work and what wouldn't. My clients were gems!

As I've begun the process of working on the overall ideas for my Sleepy Hollow project, I know that my usual style of work is not going to create the atmosphere I want to invoke. There needs to be more subtlety. So I've been experimenting with ways to achieve my old watercolor/pen-and-ink look in digital format. And I think it's working!

Here's an incomplete sample:

Is it perfect? Nope. But this is the closest I've ever gotten in trying to mimic my old style of work.

This is all being done in Photoshop using a few custom brushes and textures. Why not use Corel Painter? Well, I've never used the program. And while I'm sure it would accomplish what I'm looking for, I simply know Photoshop MUCH better and I want to hit the ground running, not try to run up a steep learning curve.

As I work out some of the kinks, I'll post some more experiments.

Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Katrina & Brom

Designs for Katrina Van Tassel and Brom Bones.

The more I think and design on this project, the more I realize this will entail a different feel than my usual illustration style. Not sure if it will have more of a hand-drawn feel or not. Regardless it will certainly call for a greater level of detail work.

Project: Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Ichabod Crane

One of my all-time favorite stories is Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read it every year when Autumn is getting closer. I read it a little early this year. So sue me.

This is a project I've thought about for a few years but I've never committed myself to anything until now. SO I figure the best way to begin is with the character designs and work out from there. And the best place to start is Ichabod himself.

Here's how Irving describes our "hero":

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

So there ya go! I have to say one of the hardest things I've discovered about trying to get him to look right is that nose! I've never really had to draw a long nose from the front before. Getting it to look like there's a bit of length to it when you have it straight on is a bit of a challenge.

Keep your eyes peeled for more sketchbook postings!

BTW: If you want to hear a really good reading of the unabridged story, check out B.J. Harrison's rendition on iTunes.