Some personal projects run straight through, quick as a flash. Others get put on hiatus. Many sketches never get off the ground. Today’s post is about one particular illustration of mine; one that has made it through development hell to see the light of day.
After watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the dozenth time, and laughing at that brat Malfoy getting clawed after provoking dangerous animals, this doodle of a cheap pun landed in the sketchbook.
I sourced visual references of both the film and the board game referenced, and drew it out A4-sized while I was freelancing: I distinctly remember working on this while at the Saatchi & Saatchi offices. Scanned it in, did some digital colouring, applied filters and textures while playing around with the colour scheme…
…I still didn’t like how the Hippogriff looked. Or the woods. And couldn’t think of a look for the frame (the above was a placeholder). The illustration was mothballed.
I would come back to it from time to time – you may recall it was teased on this very blog in late 2011. Buckbeak (the Hippogriff) and Malfoy were drawn again in more accurate poses, according to DVD screencaps. After scanning it received a full vector treatment, rather than painting behind un-scalable pencil lines. It last went to the back of the queue when it came time to fill out the background (trees and gravel).
Well, now it’s old enough to go to primary school, i’ve given it one final push. Improved the frame, drew various branches and shrubbery, added smaller taglines and logos… and here it is.
Hungry Hungry Hippogriff.
You can click on the above image for a bigger view.
I’m happy that this has finally made it. I really am. This was my longest-running project, on and off: One other from this “age” was finished last year. Personal projects have no deadline you do not impose yourself, and can be endlessly tinkered, but this is not always a good thing… look what happened to Duke Nukem Forever!
On a lightly related note, concerning that 2011 link I provided up there: I still work with Final Boss Fight, and CraftBoy is regularly updated.
To close this post, deviantArt is where I usually host these things, and not everything on there is in this blog… anyway, my deviantArt page passed some sort of super-devil milestone. Which was nice.
