The videos below document the first steps of bringing 'A Trip to Nightingale Street' to life. The basic idea of the story, is that there's a stange district in an unnamed town, where all the folks are rather strange and monsters run wild. A bunch of tourists sign up for a tour of the neighbourhood, poking their noses in and getting in the way, until slowly but surely, each disappears. The tour is lead by 'The Guide' though we only see her white gloved hand holding her umbrella aloft as she narrates the book, though we get a hint about her right at the very end.....
Follow my progress and the ups and downs of Nightingale Street here!
After drawing the pencil sketch, I lay a piece of high duty tracing paper over the top and create the pen and ink outline. This allows me to focus on the quality of line and the shading, which is deliberately scruffy and chaotic to fit the mood of the book. Once the ink is drawn, I then flip the images over and use alcohol ink marker pens to colour them in. These are then scanned in and I use a simple digital trick to create the shadow effect. This all means that I can adjust the faces and show different expressions by re-drawing the ink layer, allowing me to keep continuity, as the tourists appear on each page along the bottom - until each vanishes of course....
