Below is an animated process of a portfolio piece I just finished. The illustration will be used for a series of promotional postcards for my illustration business. I wanted to target book publishers so I included the kinds of themes that they might want to see; such as animals, children and Australian themes. I love prehistoric creatures and I’m still distressed by the fact settlers drove thylacines (aka tasmanian tigers) to extinction, so this image is a little tribute to some things I love as well as a promotional piece that covers the subjects found in children’s books.

My overall process was the same as usual (rough sketch, cleaner lines, rough colour, detail, final adjustments) but I changed a lot of things in this image as I went along. I think I could have planned it better at the early phases to avoid that. I’m glad that I was able to put more motion and storytelling into my illustration (working on coins doesn’t often demand much of that) and next time I’m going to push for more depth in the background (rather than a simple foreground and a background) and try to loosen up the strokes a bit.

Animated process of thylacine illustration

The final illustration – Two girls getting spirited away to a prehistoric land of megafauna by giant thylacines.