Designing George, Part 12

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These are some pre-vectoring illustrations of George in his final design. Now that we’ve got George’s look worked out we’ve got a basic process for each new illustration. First the client tells me what George needs to be doing. In this case George needed to gesturing at important parts of the text. I then sketch out a few variations of a pose. Once the client decides which one is preferred I ink the sketch with a basic line. I then forward the illustration to the designer who converts it to a vector illustration for smoother reproduction.

4 thoughts on “Designing George, Part 12”

  1. Vectorized, eh? That’s a bit of a shame – I really appreciate the strokes of a hand-drawn image. You lose a lot of tiny but meaningful detail when you vectorize; that missing information, to me, is somewhat the soul of the illustration.

    I think vectorization has caught on in certain prepress/publishing circles because certain residents of those certain circles are not as experienced in properly preparing a bitmap image for reproduction. It takes finesse to get it just right; in my opinion, vectorization of a natural image is sometimes a cop-out because it relieves the designer of most of the responsibility of getting it right.

    This is not to put down the skills required in vectorizing artwork. This, too, requires talent and experience. Also, there is a right place and time for vector and raster art. But I’ve seen too much gratuitous vectorization in the last few years. Too many people are optimizing their designs for low-bandwidth outlets like Flash and then thinking that is the correct approach for print publication.

    Eric the Ex-Coworker and Cranky Production Supervisor

  2. For work that has my name on it I prefer the hand drawn, hand inked image. For George I don’t have any attachment. He’s someone else’s project and I’m happy to let them do with him whatever they want.

  3. Poor George! Abandoned by his creator, left to fend for himself in a rough jungle of scanners and tracing software.

    There’s a sitcom idea for ya.

    Eric the Ex-Coworker

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