@Kori-Jensen Oh yeah, I think this really reads better! The pants still seem black, but just shifting the hue a bit leaves room for the shadow. Well done!

@Nyrryl-Cadiz Oh good to know it's only three pieces. I was worried about some of my pieces not fitting in as well and bringing down the overall impression but in that case I think I will bite the bullet and enter. Thanks for the encouragement!

@lidia-ull thank you!

Hi guys. A good friend of mine, Mike Manly who's a long time pro known for his work at Marvel and DC comics as well as Warner Bros animation is offering a free online mentorship. I really can't recommend this opportunity enough since he is the person I learned the most from about art in my years of schooling and after as I have launched into my career. Mike is offering this opportunity for free as way to give back to the art community and reach people that might not have such an opportunity otherwise. I especially recommend this to people interested in comics and graphic novels or design for animation. In the information on how to apply he recommends sending six comic pages but if you don't have that feel free to send illustrations as long as they show drawing and storytelling. If you are interested, you can see the full details here:

Let me know if you have any questions about it and I can try and get you an answer.

I have the Affinity programs & I've been very happy with them. I've also used Adobe Illustrator, but that was decades ago, so I can't offer a comparison.

By "hand-drawn vectoring" it sounds like you want to draw like you would with pencil & paper & let the program place the nodes. In Affinity, this would be the Pencil tool. (I'm not sure if the name is the same in other programs or not.)

I agree with what @Melissa_Bailey said about this kind of tool creating a lot of node points. But it's pretty easy to delete the ones you don't want & adjust the curve. Also, when looking for a demo video to share, I saw that there are different settings that can reduce the number of nodes created. I'll have to try them out.

Here's a video demo that explains the various settings of the Pencil tool in Affinity Designer 2 for iPad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEdznUOm3Gk&list=PL1t9c--IJQQ_iYzBFRLdJD1u7EHQhYZtv&index=7

This one shows how to use the Pen & Node tools (I think these are pretty much the same in the various vector programs.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtvVEv5udVA&list=PL1t9c--IJQQ_iYzBFRLdJD1u7EHQhYZtv&index=8

Affinity has a 30-day free trial, so you can give it a try & see if you like it. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/ (Scroll down to the bottom of the page.)

Good luck with your decision!

@kayleenartlover hi, yes I have been thinking of doing that but have been a bit reluctant. I actually did do 5hat once for aquila magazine and they send me an email Adresse that I could submit to. So, maybe I will do that more often 🤔. Thanks😊

@Gary-Wilkinson woohoo! Congratulations Gary! 1000 reviews is no small task! You deserve this. ❤️

@LauraA thanks Laura! Yeah, I’ve taken a hiatus from social media lately seeing that it doesn’t really do much for me job-wise. I’ve just been focusing more on my portfolio instead. I’ve also been planning to start a YouTube channel soon. Again thank you so much for your kind words!😍❤️

@Michael-Angelo-Go That's so exciting!! Congratulations!!

It's definitely because of the maximum brightness of your iPad. You think the color you picked is light, but it's actually really dark and only appears light because your iPad be shining like a lighthouse! I had the same problem and lowered the brightness of my screen. BOOM, fixed! My eyes also get less tired now, win-win!

I use PortfolioBox.net for all three of my sites. I'm very happy with them. They even have a limited storefront you can use.

On their Lite package, you can get a portfolio website for $3.50/month if you pay annually ($5.50 monthly). 50 images, 10 pages... At the Pro level (9.50/month annual payment) you can get/transfer a pre-existing domain name.

https://www.portfoliobox.net/

Nice. Thank you. 🙂

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Hopefully they will fix all the 404s but design wise it's still a big downgrade in how the images are displayed. First image is supposed to be the guidelines for featured illustrators. Second is ugly big black bars when viewing illustrations and third is the tiny cropped illustration gallery. The old website had such a beautiful light box with nice white borders it made all the illustrations look better than normal and the gallery view took up most of the page so this is what I mean when I said downgrade.

@TheresaMuth thank you. That actually makes sense. If all else fails, I’ll just take my pencils and sketch books only. Don’t want to have my copics and Windsor newton markers blocked at the airport lol

@lpetiti i'd say give the author a call for courtesy sake and get this over with. But don't agree to anything yet. Just say you'd like to know about the project first. After which, you can decide whether to take it or not.

@kayleenartlover if you're an SCBWI member, there is a chapter about how to create book dummies in their Essential Guide to Publishing For Children, a free digital download for all members. There is also a chapter about query letters.

Jane Friedman and Upstart Crow Literary have also written good articles about writing query letters.

@xin-li This is a great topic, thank you! Unfortunately I don't have anything to add, but I'm watching it!

I wish you all the best with your book! 💓

@AngelinaKizz Very nice concept!

I agree with Robyn that there may be a more "extreme" quietness to express here. I also agree with Miram that the view of the character could be more dynamic. The combination of these brings to mind images of a girl lounging in bed with headphones on, eyes closed, totally chilled out, or maybe the same view of her reading, but zoomed out a little with her off center and showing her environment.
The loud side could similarly be shown in a more dynamic light - maybe she's jumping on the bed, totally rocking out.

Also might be neat to show her in her bedroom in both images at the same angle and everything, but it's only her pose that has changed.

This all depends on the intent of the images of course - it's totally different to design a spot illo over a full spread, for example. My suggestions probably are more applicable to a full spread.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes!