HOME | DD

Description
[The Creature in the Night] || [Through the Gateway] || [The Chance Encounter] || [A Stranger's Care] || [Standoff by Moonlight] || [Runaway] || [All the Roads We've Traveled By] || [Dreams in the Smoke] || [By the Waterfall] || [Strike] || [In the Cradle of the Moon] || [Resurrection]

---

About the piece:
There was no escape. The buzzing of the helicopters filled his ears, drowning out his thought. Their lights swept about in the darkness, it was only a matter of time...

And then the creature, alien and familiar, leaped from his dreams and into his path.

Date: January 2007
Medium: Charcoal on pastel paper
Size: 20"x24"
Photograph by D. Stallings
Digital formatting in Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS/2

Hurrah! The series finally premiers on DA!

The first image of the series. I was fairly certain what I wanted to do, so it wasn't too hard to get started. :B I'm not fond of charcoal, so I figured if I started with that I could only "improve" from there. And it was also suggested that we move from black and white to color.

About the series:
I did the Jeffery and Íritu series as my second semester project in my AP Studio Art class. An AP class is a college-level class taken through a high school, at the end of which there is a test to determine whether you earn college credit for the course. For AP Studio Art, that means the submission of a 3-part portfolio. The nice part was that I actually received my own studio space in one of the art classrooms. The second semester especially, we were required to produce an entire piece every week, so I nearly lived out of my studio-- I went home to sleep. The Jeffery and Íritu series was done for the "Concentration" portion of the portfolio: the purpose of this section is to show growth by doing a series of 12 pieces exploring a theme or idea. A written commentary was also required.

So I borrowed a couple of minor characters from my other projects and decided to tell their story. :3

Because my concentration was more illustration than drawing, and also because it included several digital pieces, it was submitted as a 2D Design portfolio.

Official Commentary:
The art of storytelling is one of the oldest and most important elements of human culture. For my concentration, I wanted to illustrate my original and unusual tale of Jeffrey and Íritu, two characters of my own design, as much as possible through twelve pieces of art. In all of the pieces I tried to focus on body language and setting to convey the plot and attitudes of the characters. I also played with a "zoom in" approach; toward the beginning the characters don't know each other, so they appear frightening (in Íritu's case) or faceless (as in Jeffrey's). As they get to know one another, the way they perceive each other begins to change, until they form a unique and powerful bond. In slides 2, 3, 5, and 7, I also experimented with monochromatic color schemes to convey the overall mood of the scene. In slide 10 I tried combining several images to indicate a sudden event in the story, while the other images reflected a slower event or a more gradual change.

- - -

Art, design and characters copyright © S. Morrissey 2007
Photograph by D. Stallings

Description
[The Creature in the Night] || [Through the Gateway] || [The Chance Encounter] || [A Stranger's Care] || [Standoff by Moonlight] || [Runaway] || [All the Roads We've Traveled By] || [Dreams in the Smoke] || [By the Waterfall] || [Strike] || [In the Cradle of the Moon] || [Resurrection]

---

About the piece:
There was no escape. The buzzing of the helicopters filled his ears, drowning out his thought. Their lights swept about in the darkness, it was only a matter of time...

And then the creature, alien and familiar, leaped from his dreams and into his path.

Date: January 2007
Medium: Charcoal on pastel paper
Size: 20"x24"
Photograph by D. Stallings
Digital formatting in Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS/2

Hurrah! The series finally premiers on DA!

The first image of the series. I was fairly certain what I wanted to do, so it wasn't too hard to get started. :B I'm not fond of charcoal, so I figured if I started with that I could only "improve" from there. And it was also suggested that we move from black and white to color.

About the series:
I did the Jeffery and Íritu series as my second semester project in my AP Studio Art class. An AP class is a college-level class taken through a high school, at the end of which there is a test to determine whether you earn college credit for the course. For AP Studio Art, that means the submission of a 3-part portfolio. The nice part was that I actually received my own studio space in one of the art classrooms. The second semester especially, we were required to produce an entire piece every week, so I nearly lived out of my studio-- I went home to sleep. The Jeffery and Íritu series was done for the "Concentration" portion of the portfolio: the purpose of this section is to show growth by doing a series of 12 pieces exploring a theme or idea. A written commentary was also required.

So I borrowed a couple of minor characters from my other projects and decided to tell their story. :3

Because my concentration was more illustration than drawing, and also because it included several digital pieces, it was submitted as a 2D Design portfolio.

Official Commentary:
The art of storytelling is one of the oldest and most important elements of human culture. For my concentration, I wanted to illustrate my original and unusual tale of Jeffrey and Íritu, two characters of my own design, as much as possible through twelve pieces of art. In all of the pieces I tried to focus on body language and setting to convey the plot and attitudes of the characters. I also played with a "zoom in" approach; toward the beginning the characters don't know each other, so they appear frightening (in Íritu's case) or faceless (as in Jeffrey's). As they get to know one another, the way they perceive each other begins to change, until they form a unique and powerful bond. In slides 2, 3, 5, and 7, I also experimented with monochromatic color schemes to convey the overall mood of the scene. In slide 10 I tried combining several images to indicate a sudden event in the story, while the other images reflected a slower event or a more gradual change.

- - -

Art, design and characters copyright © S. Morrissey 2007
Photograph by D. Stallings