Question about hand done poster illustration process.

[syfyboy13]

I am a bit new to this and wanted to know how to approach the illustration process for creating a gig poster by hand? Since posters tend to be fairly decent in size how does one go about scanning their illustrations into the computer? Do you just work in a small size when illustrating and then rescale in the computer or do people actually draw the initial piece to size? For example.. lets say i want to create an 11X17 gig poster. I want to draw the entire thing by hand on bristol board and then scan into the computer to color...Should I draw it it at 11X17 size on bristol board first or should I scale smaller? Just a bit confused as to how to do this because most regular scanners don't have a very large document size for scanning. Any help or tips with this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[B-DROID]

Howdy. Try doing a forum search about this. There are a bunch of threads here covering the exact thing you are talking about and should be of some help to you.


:clutcheskeystothecastle:

[steve w]

if you don't have access to an 11 x 17 scanner, draw it at 8.5 x 11 with the correct proportions,
and scan at 300 dpi so it doesn't look like crap when you enlarge it.

what's your favorite cheese?

[lil_tuffy]

or scan it at 600 dpi so when you double the size you don't lose resolution.

[steve w]

I stand corrected.

[mikeage]

Some of this will depend on what you want your artwork to look like on the poster. Some prefer the look of a drawing blown up. By drawing at 8.5x11 and then blowing it up for an 18x24 poster. Obviously the artwork gets bigger in size, but so does the thickness of the linework. Imperfections are enlarged bit if it's what you're going after it can add some great character. Of not, well, it can show off the flaws.

Concersely some people like when a drawing is reduced...but drawing 18x24 and reducing to letter size isn't as practical.

[GIGART]

I actually get more detail when I draw big. So most of my original inks are bigger than the space for the scanner. A lot of my inking is done on 19 x 24 inch bristol board.
I have to scan them in pieces and then put them back together in photoshop. Not ideal, but if I want the detail on some illustrations, I would rather draw bigger and deal with it.

[VonDada]

I draw about the same size as the poster, maybe just a little smaller (whatever size the medium sketch pad from Strathmore is) and then scan in, adjust the contrast according to the piece I'm doing and then piece it together in PS. Then, bring it over to AI and "ink" it.

[John Vogl]

There's no right or wrong way to do it -- all good suggestions above. And, agreed, there's gobs of good info in the forums if you do a bit of browsing. That said, it depends on what kind of look you're after as well. Sometimes a really small drawing blown up all huge is appropriate, other times drawing to scale and keeping your line work clean and details sharp is the best route. Try a number of different techniques and see what you like and see what works best for you. There's a million way to do it, and no "right" way -- you'll learn the most by trying a few.

[VonDada]

I learned better ways to do things by lurking here. Observe and learn.