Process: Autumn lost in Kingchester
The aim of this illustration was to show our main character, Autumn, seeming confused and overwhelmed by the capital city. She’s been here a few days and yet still finds herself getting turned around on the oddly-arranged streets.
Kingchester was a city built on squares. King Robertus IX had liked getting to the middle of things; “A city of right angles,” he had decreed. If he had learned what a radius was, he’d have likely gone mad, realising he’d got to the middle of things wrong his whole life.
Thumbnail sketches
The 2 ideas I pitched were a first-person view of Autumn trying to make sense of the map, and a low angle shot of her looking small and alone amongst the tall, unfamiliar buildings. We decided on the second, as it gave us more opportunities to include interesting details of the city’s architecture.
The inspiration
The variety of building styles squashed closely together was inspired by The Shambles, a beautiful section of Worcester (where I studied illustration!) with eclectic old buildings, some surviving from as far back as the 14th Century. It holds a special place in my heart and it was a joy to inject some of that feeling into this scene.
Photo credit: Alun Thomas on Flickr
A note from the writer was to not make the city ‘too magical’, aside from the most important buildings, as the common people are not allowed to use magic and so would generally live similarly to how people in our world lived.
Planning the composition
This stage involved learning some new things! I wanted the scene to have a fisheye lens effect, to make the buildings seem more imposing, like they’re towering over and closing in on Autumn. For this I used the very helpful Blender (free 3D software) to mock up two rows of buildings, then learned how to create a fisheye camera to warp the scene, and used this as the ‘sketch’ to work from!
A note for illustrators: in my opinion, it’s really worth installing and learning the basics of Blender. It can be so helpful in planning out scenes with complex perspectives, and it’s amazing what you can do with just a few cubes! It can seem intimidating at first, but the basics (create a shape and move/resize/rotate it) are all you really need to block out rough buildings or furniture, and there are plenty of easy to follow tutorials.
Starting the illustration
Using the Blender model as a basis, I drew perspective guides to help me fill out the rest of the buildings later. Then I started to add detail to the buildings, making sure each one is unique in its construction to add to the visual confusion. At this point I also chose to add another MP (Magical Person) flying overhead, implying that Autumn is going in the wrong direction. Pink areas were a reminder to myself to ask the writer if he had any preferences of what to put there before making these decisions.
Fleshing out details
Following discussions with and suggestions from the writer, I continued adding detail to the scene, building up a visually interesting street and adding another layer of taller buildings behind it, increasing the feeling of Autumn being very small.
I used grey lineart for the buildings in the background, to give more of an illusion of distance. As you can see I had begun to experiment with using different greys in the foreground too, but felt there was too much going on and stripped these back again until the lineart was completed. At this stage we also decided to change Autumn’s head position to be looking at her map.
Choosing colours and finalising
With the lineart completed, I started again with colours: first toning down the foreground to a lighter grey, being more selective with which areas to darken. Using only two greys for the street-level buildings provides enough clarity without the visual overwhelm of the extra white and darker grey from earlier. It also helps to separate the street from the larger buildings behind it. Autumn’s skirt was left in the darker grey to better highlight her against the scene.
Finally I overlaid a texture to give the impression of a traditional print, and this illustration was complete.
I plan to write another post about the ways we incorporated elements of the story and worldbuilding into this scene, such as the bookstore to Autumn’s right which comes up in a later chapter, and the floral-looking tower behind it being an example of ‘fae deco’ architecture.