Spotlight On: Alice Duke

Cerberus

Three words: Green and Brown.

Apart from her classy name, Alice Duke has been as artsy as they come. She is a freelance illustrator with fantastic skills in Photoshop, Illustrator, and drawing.

Most of the subjects of her work include "imaginary animals, lasers, transforming humans", and folklore. She definitely uses a lot of visual textures, and mythological inspiration. 

Her main focus is "book illustration, video game concept art, visualization for films, character/creature design, posters, sequential work, private commissions".

Green Slime

Most of her pictures seem Photoshop-oriented and have a recreational concept.

I absolutely adore her use of natural colors. It may be because I myself am a fan of these colors that I like them, but they are very appealing to me. The way she draws her paintings by pencil first is also very similar to my own style as I'm not too well adapted to the Wacom tablets. As she claims in the mini-biography, she's very into folklore and mythology, and a lot of her creativity seems to revolve around interpreting them in her own way. I'm also very similar to her in this way, in particular to Greek mythology and philosophical ideas.

More importantly, she also has a link to her character designs and illustrations for a graphic novel, which is exactly what I inspire to do.

She really seems to like using that wave-like spirals and lines as a texture and movement in her compositions, and it's similar to the spiral leaves design that I do too, which is another reason I liked her. A lot of her work has nature in their theme, which is probably why there's so much green and brown. She has twisted wood branches, tigers, people, and a lot of fantasy creatures as her subjects. However, she also has very creative ideas incorporated on her figures, as well as a nice texture.

Her humans also look like they're taken from fashion illustration art models and cartoons, a approach that I'm trying to take when I develop my graphic novel.

Evil Genie vs Generic Male

Spotlight On : Marguerite Sauvage

Being a fan of fashion illustration, I often find fashion illustrators inspiring to my work. Though I'm far from an fashionista myself, I find the art styles each fashion illustrators use very distinct yet somewhat universal in the fashion illustration industry. Though some are far from proportional, they are still aesthetically pleasing.

Marguerite Sauvage is a fashion illustrator in Paris, France. Her artwork is very colorful, and I find it fairly appealing. Her range of colors are usually less saturated, pastel, easter colors, which I myself am a fan of. Her art style is distinct in terms of fashion - she seems to have a fascination with freckles, a feature that the fashion world doesn't seem too fond of.

Her work mostly depicts lifestyles of different people. Scenes of parties, indulging oneself in luxury and beauty, as well as relationships between families and lovers, are all subjects of her artwork.

She uses simple colors and little shading, yet her artwork is not as simple as minimalists. Very few of her subjects are males, and she seems to enjoy using watercolor techniques in her coloring.  Many of her penwork seem to be contour drawings, but she also pays a lot of attention to details like texture in hair and patterns on clothing.

In any case, if your guys have the time, check her out!

Introduction to the Fabulae Orsa

As the Pilot Chapter, 'Fabulae Orsa' would be the most suitable name for my project. It comes from the Latin terms 'Beginning' and 'Story', literally translating as 'The Beginning of the Story'. It seems pretty plain to me, but isn't it funny how things sound more interesting and classy when it's written in another language? Not to mention the dead language: Latin. Something about it seems almost rejuvenating.

But I'm veering off topic, in terms of content and plot concept, the title seems somewhat refined and applicable, as I plan on making this 20-page short story based on Plato's ideal society, as he described in The Republic.

According to Plato, the best form of government is something similar to an Oligarchy. While the idea seems medieval to us, he describes thoroughly in detail why and how this government would work. Again, without giving away plot elements essential to my story, I'll just end off by saying that Plato is convinced that while his government is a perfect, ideal solution, he claims that no form of government will last forever. Eventually every type of government will fall.

Keeping this in mind, I'll wrap my plot around Plato's ideal society, ruled by the Philosopher King, as described in The Republic. Hopefully, the conclusion will help tie in to Vitae Propositum's plot as well. So please look forward to upcoming artwork detailing the character designs of my Pilot Chapter, Fabulae Orsa.

What is the meaning behind Vitae Propositum?

Greetings, and welcome to my site about my new Graphic Novel Project: Vitae Propositum!

Before beginning to even explain what this project will be about, I'll first start to explain how I came to the decision of naming my first serious Graphic Novel project. At first, I pondered on a Latin catchphrase because I've been a 4-year Latin student for a while (though I'm far from what you'd call an expert). The former name of my novel was going to be 'Pacis Eternus', meaning 'Eternal Peace'. However, after careful consideration, I decided that it would be more appropriate to name it something more applicable to the story concept so that it would ultimately tie up all the loose ends at the story's conclusion.

'Vitae Propositum' was thought up because it was the most basic yet fitting name I could think of. The underlying theme of my entire project consists of my own philosophical ideas on the meaning of life. While I knew that it would be a very intricate subject to tread on, what better, more appropriate name would there be than 'The Meaning of Life' itself? Thus, the Latin 'Vitae Propositum' came to being, and I found myself rather pleased with the tone of its ring.

I first came upon the base plot of my novel while sitting in my 'Ancient and Medieval Philosophy' class on a lecture about Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica', where he discusses Man's Purpose. Although Aquinas' views differ greatly from my own, I had thought up a plot that tied in with his basic ideas, but conclusively led up to my own dismissive ideas towards Teleology. However, this is all the information as of yet that I will release, since I don't want to give away the entire plot... yet.

So that is the meaning of 'Vitae Propositum', as well as the ideas and influence under my project, I will hopefully start to release some of the character designs soon, but before I start to seriously construct the storyboards and artwork around VP, I plan on releasing a 15-20 page Pilot Chapter as a sample of my work, which I've named 'Fabulae Orsa'. Further details will the posted soon!

As I have a few months to work on this, I'll regularly be updating this with inspiring artists, and updates of my progress! Thanks for tuning in!