I may say this project was great experience. We enjoyed working with some of the top artists and professionals who gave their hart to make this book happen.
We did have some challenges but we enjoyed overcoming them. Thing that I can point out to be extra challenging was battle scenes reconstruction. I decided to present here few steps that made it possible for us to illustrate these scenes. Once I read: "The question is: How do you eat an elephant...? One bite at a time :) This approach helped as immensely!
These are steps of constructing the composition, dynamism, story and staging of the characters.
We did a lot of research and reference gathering. Reference of anything: clothes, weapons, horses, horse anatomy, inspirational art depicting battles, heraldry, armor etc. Having good reference is paramount for believable illustration! This is something that I firmly believe.
First we made rough composition trying to show the craziness of a medieval battle. We spent some time trying to make right balance, great poses. But this phase is done very roughly and pretty fast. Just make many variations and then chose one that is most dynamic.
Next step was values and composition focal points. Its just playing with the graphic elements of heraldry and dynamic shapes of the soldiers.
After that we worked on the total atmosphere of the illustration. Just to make it fit to the book design and vision of the author.
And whoOOOOoala here is the battle. :)
Battle for Bileca
Battle in Lashva
I also worked on illustrating family trees of different Bosnian kings. Here is just one of eleven family trees done for this project. Here we can see a family tree of Bosnian king Zlatonosovic.
And here is the Final look of this beautifully crafted book. Hope you enjoyed this post.
