CHAPTER ILLUSTRATIONS
The King of Rhye is brought to life one chapter at a time
With such a rich fantasy story, I was spoilt for choice with epic scenes to illustrate. The first stage of my creative process was to generate some alternative thumbnail sketches depicting a range of options. We decided which one would best sum up the events of any given chapter and I began to create colour digital paintings accordingly.
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Preliminary sketches and colour tests for 'Part White,' the first half of The King of Rhye novel.
Preliminary sketches and colour tests for 'Part White,' the first half of The King of Rhye novel.
CREATING COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS
Goldsmith's Short Course sparks the creation of the first issue of TKOR comic.
Under the expert tutelage of Alexis Deacon, I put into place what I learnt on his introductory course and planned a 3 page comic based on a scene from The King of Rhye but this soon expanded to 5 pages plus a double page spread cover. The experience planted the seed in my mind that Craig's expansive Rhye universe could lend itself to a graphic novel.
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ANIMATED VIDEO
Comic expands into epic animated music video
Once I had set the style of the comic art to illustrate the story of 'Sweet Dirge' I felt like it was a pre-cursor to a more detailed exploration of the scene. The song manifested itself in my head as soon as I read the original text in the novel; 'The forest must burn, the yew must fall, the Fairy King must die, in the name of the Black Queen.'
Fat Bottomed Boys gave my original song demo a superb makeover and made it sound amazing.
I created a hand-drawn, animated music video in After Effects and learnt a lot of new techniques along the way.
SINGLES AND ALBUM COVERS
Each book contains the makings of its own soundtrack.
With references to Queen peppered throughout and some fine lyrics included in each book, it would be rude not to commit them to vinyl or CD or streaming as original soundtracks (especially as Queen set a high benchmark with the Flash Gordon and A Kind of Magic albums). Fat Bottomed Boys do the musical honours in grand style.
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Bonus extras
Occasionally I go off-piste and create some additional illustrated content for the Rhye universe. Here are a selection of examples....
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