The Stages of Transformation
Posted February 5th, 2009 in Illustration.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about grief and loss. Specifically, the psychology behind dealing with death. I read about the stages to grief and the process has been on my mind.
The titular stages of grief assigned to the stages of a werewolf’s transformation popped into my noggin. I’ve been wanting to do something diagramatic for a while. This seemed like an obvious pairing.
I decided to give the design a shot at Threadless. It’s a decent place to vet personal work; getting paid for something I would have drawn anyway is never a bad thing.
As per usual, process and details after the jump!
Feb 5th, 2009 #
Nifty-cool! Thanks for looping us in. ;)
Feb 5th, 2009 #
That is really cool…love your style. What software have you settled into? I’m thinking about Painter X.
Thanks…David
Feb 5th, 2009 #
Great work. Hm, Lon Cheney Jr. as grief counsellor. What a great idea for a diagram. The expressions in the faces are spot-on — except for depression. As someone who if familiar with depression, it’s a bit over-the-top for me. Depression is more like a glazed eye and blank face than scrunched up in grief.
I really like how you textured the earth. Veddy nice, indeedy. Also nice how you went for a non-Western/African-centric view of ol’ terra-firma.
Is this piece all digital? I did get Manga Studio 4 and (aside from the poor typography abilities of its text tool) it is a really improved version. the Pencils, Brush and such are just as fast/responsive as ver. 3 on the PowerPC chip. Are you still using Painter X?
Hope threadless accepts your design!
Again, great concept wonderfully executed!
Feb 7th, 2009 #
GC, sure!
David, I have been working with a real brush and ink, Manga Studio 4, Painter X, and Photoshop. All over the board lately. Each for their merits.
Mike, thanks. I went for the overt depiction for “depression” because something more subdued didn’t seem like enough of a departure from bargaining. A strong image was pretty necessary, I thought, because of it’s juxtaposition with the unabashed fury and glee of “acceptance.” Whattya think?
This was done in MS4, yup.
Feb 11th, 2009 #
I really like this!
Wouldn’t the moon’s phase finish the rest of the month? Doesn’t the Earths shadow cast the opposite side of the moon after a full moon?
But then again… I don’t think it really matters, especially in this case.
Great work!
Feb 21st, 2009 #
I really love the artwork, wolves always work for me just as vampires or skulls. I have been reading your blog every once in a while, but I am annoyed to check it just to see nothing new. I would love to know if you offer RSS subscribtions, which I would instantly put into my feed reader :)
Mar 12th, 2009 #
awesome illustration as usual… i would really like to just have a print of that earth with the moon stages around it.
Mar 12th, 2009 #
It doesn’t look like it will print on Threadless. Prints are on my mind for this one, definitely.
Mar 12th, 2009 #
Smashill, the blog does have a feed:
http://frenden.com/feed/
Dustin, I wasn’t going for diagrammatic accuracy, but solely for how it looked.
Mar 13th, 2009 #
cool, added it to my reader, you still should consider adding your feed link to the sidebar, or maybe I am blind not to seeing it :)