Hello all. Here is my ‘Wild Things’ update article that appears in this Months “Bedford Clanger’ newspaper. Hope that you enjoy. X

By now hopefully a lot of you would have seen my new designs for ‘The Wild Things’ poster and flyer around town. For this months update I thought I would talk you through the images creation and- what us arty types call- ‘my process’.

Most of my designs start out as really scruffy and sketchy ‘thumbnail’s’ that are really quick doodles of the images I have in my head. Using thumbnails are a great way of getting the image on page (albeit a really rough version) and work out the composition and layout. I got the idea for have the tree’s branches form one of the creatures faces from this stage.

Once I was happy that the idea and layout were in place I got straight to work with drawing the image in my A3 sketchbook.

Now, this is the bit I slightly worry about telling people about as it sort of feels like cheating, but I very rarely draw the whole image as one completed piece on one single page. Instead I will draw each element on a separate page (as shown in the photos opposite) and then composite each drawing together on Adobe Photoshop.

There are many benefits to working like this. One is that if I make a mistake drawing one of the elements- the drawing of ‘Max’ for example- then it is not going to effect the overall image. I can just screw Max up and start him again on a fresh piece of paper.

Another benefit is that I can draw each element as big and as detailed as I like and shrink it down on the computer without loosing any of the overall drawn-line quality.

Anyway, once all of the individual drawings where completed I scanned them in to my computer and digitally cut out the background of the page (quite a tricky task with all of those pesky branches) before putting each image together to create one, final design.

The whole process took me around about 3 days (save for eating, sleeping and blinking).

Yikes, that was a little bit technical (apologies to all of digitalphobes!). Next month’s update promises to be more messy and anarchic as I will be creating costumes and sets with the very talented Matt Baker.

Hopefully I will also have some exciting behind the scenes ‘monster’ photos to tease you with as we continue to work away on what promises to be a really fantastic and hugely ambitious stage show.

www.davidlitchfieldillustration.com

(See the whole of the October issue of The Bedford Clanger online here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/108697189/Bedford-Clanger-October-2012)