Iluq meets the Caribou Spirit

Final painting for this!
Also I updated my portfolio website: http://alexneonakis.com

CTN-X tomorrow! If you're there I'll be running around with my iPad showing people Iluq, come say hi!

edit: first round of crits was that the very centred composition and lack of caribou showing in the back was making it feel more christmassy than spirity. so i added more of the herd and pushed it left



edit 2: adjusted it back, i felt it was off balance
added a hue shift



edit 3: cropped to make the caribou seem bigger

Iluq: Caribou Spirit design

I'll have the rough work for this scanned soon (lots of it... my goodness)

This spirit is actually a whole herd of caribou. Since caribou get their strength in numbers, I decided it had to be a herd.

Iluq Meets the Fox Spirit

Final illustration for Iluq meeting the fox spirit.
might be a wip. gonna get some crits and maybe look at it again tomorrow, I've been staring at it all day I'm not sure if I like it or hate it.

Edit:
@jcaffoe and @hughlander gave me super good tips so I made adjustments.
It's awesome having people around to help me out when i can't decide what I hate about something I've made hahah



edit 2:
I decided I needed to simplify the far background because it was sort of flattening out back there



edit 3:

another adjust:

Iluq Meets the Bear Spirit

Finished up my first mood painting for Iluq

Iluq: Progress and Process

Okay so I've been doing more work on Iluq.
And also, at the suggestion of some friends, have decided to post some of the preliminary sketches for the spirits I've done so far.

Iluq:

I was given the crit that she looks too young. I had originally intended to have her be about 14 years old, I've kind of shifted her to around 11 or 12. I'm going to still play around though, I like the sketches I've done of her a bit older:



Here are some more actiony shots, some of them are still the kinda younger version of her, I'm still messing around with that:







Bear Spirit: Rough Work

So here's the rough work for the bear spirit design I posted a while ago:





And here's a repost of the final:



Here's the rough work for the fox spirit, she's supposed to be playful, fun, active and energetic where the bear spirit is more patient and grandfatherly:







This was my first attempt at her final design but I felt like I should simplify her back fur a little. Also, in this laying down pose it doesn't really read as active or energetic so I decided to fix that too



Here's the final design:




And then here's a few of the pages of the research I had done before starting all of this
I have lots of notes and doodles and things, these are just the ones that had drawings that other people could decipher hahah







More to come in the next couple of days!
Next steps are to finalize spirit designs for caribou, raven, lemming and seal
as well as some mood paintings that I'm working on

Iluq: More Vis Dev

A cleaned up version of Iluq:



Some of her facial expressions:



Her grandmother and brother:




A study of some icebergs (from ref):



Environment study (various refs):

Iluq- Visual Development

So some of you know I've been without my computer for weeks now.
I finally got it back
since I was away from it though, I started doing more work on paper, like I used to.
And it feels so great :)

For my story Illustration class, I get to basically come up with my own project
I've had this story playing around in the back of my mind for a year or so now.
I'm really inspired by inuit art, so I'm doing a short comic about a young inuit girl name Iluq (means frost in Inuit language)

Here's some of my sketches and visual development work I've done so far.
I started this project about 2 weeks ago now. Basically, I ran to the library, took out every book I could find on eskimo and Inuit culture and art and have been pounding out sketches of character designs and environments

There are hundreds of sketches of the bear spirit lying around my room, and even more of Iluq, but these are just some of the more recent, not as terrible ones :)

Final Design I've chosen for Iluq:


Some facial expressions (WIP):


Some of the earlier designs for Iluq:




Environment sketches:



Bear Spirit Design:

Places: La Jolla, California

So I've been doing so many doodles for places rewards lately, I haven't really been doing anything for the actual book! I had a really inspiring weekend with Marie at La Jolla in San Diego County. I love how crazy the rocks look. I had a couple reference photos that looked a little like faces, so I did 2 little drawings of rock close ups and then a more pulled back shot