Country Life Magazine - Feb 21st 2008 - Map

This was a very unusual commission, to draw the British Isles in the shape of a turnip, with Ireland as a tomato.

Most unusual indeed.


As you can see the map took up a whole page which was a rather nice, if somewhat surprising touch. Very unusual.

Country Life Magazine - Feb 21st 2008

Country Life magazine has been going for many years, and I was honoured to feature a selection of drawings in the Feb 21st 2008 edition to accompany a feature on organic box delivery schemes.

Here's Country Life's website where you can find out about the magazine, and maybe even pick up that elusive Feb 21st collectors edition for all you Rory Walker Illustrator completists out there!

This is my favourite illustration of the bunch, a selection of organic farmers getting down to business.


Here you can see the illustrations in all their technicoloured glory.

Heinemann Building Skills - Part 4

An eerie Jack the Ripper type scene.... Again, from the same Heinemann English educational book. I'd like to have this one in my lessons at school, what with Victoriana, Running vegetables, Go-Karting and Builders, sounds grand.

Heinemann Building Skills - Part 3

Another picture for Heinemann. This time it's of some vegetables getting chased by a fork. Oh what fun!

Heinemann Building Skills - Part 2

One thing that publishers seem to enjoy, to test the mettal of their illustrators, is to put as many things as possible into a brief. This image contains the following, plus probably lots of other things that I've forgotten -
Sign saying Karting
Sign saying £15
Sign saying that 8pm booking is delayed
A group of disappointed looking people
A dilapidated old building
A bored looking attendant in the ticket office
Sign saying that food isn't included in the ticket price
Bored looking chefs
Unpleasant cold food
Someone making a "ick" face whilst eating a burger
Disappointed children
Bored looking man on chair
Tables and chairs lying around with food on
Man careering round track in a go-kart
etc etc etc

*phew*

Heinemann Building skills - Part 1

This is from a project for Heinemann. I've done a number of books for them over the years. This is for a book on the English language for foreign students.

Accenture Magazine - BP Cartoon

For a little while I had a bi-monthly gig on a magazine all about the "Up-Stream Oil Industry" - no, I've no idea what that means either, but I got to do some fun drawings about it. Whatever "it" may be. I read all the articles I was to illustrate and thankfully was given a very good brief by designer Rob Cubbon (this is his site), but I must say the majority of what was was what completely escaped me. Fun drawing though!

Best of British Magazine January 2008

This is an editorial illustration that was commissioned by "Best of British" magazine. A monthly showcase of British nostalgia and a very entertaining read. You can find out all about them here.


And here it is in all its technicoloured glory!

Second Hand Stevie - McGraw-Hill Australia - Internal page roughs

Here's some page layouts which would have been -

Second Hand Stevie - McGraw-Hill Australia - Character designs and Cover

Occasionally I get involved in a project that looks like it's going to be a winner, but for whatever reason falls flat on its face after getting off to a good start. "Second Hand Stevie" was just such a project. I got the text for the first of several books about a young chap called Stevie who organises brick-a-brack events and recycles things, spent ages doing the character designs, doing page roughs, and designing the cover, when it all suddenly got cancelled. Oh well, such is life.

Here's some character design sheets, you can see how they start off and how they develop into real people.




And here's the cover rough, full of the excitement of a second hand sale!



This is a rough mock up I did of the cover so that the publisher could see how it could look.

Small job for textbook

Every so often I get to draw something fun for a textbook. Here's a magician about to cut someone in half. It doesn't look like the audience is that confident in his abilities...

All about Rory Walker - Illustrator

Hello one and all,

My name's Rory Walker, and I'm an Illustrator based in Brighton, UK. Since leaving the mighty Falmouth College of Arts many years ago I've put my mark on many aspects of illustrative artwork for clients all over the world. I've worked for several computer games companies designing 2d artwork and textures, created album artwork for record labels, designed T-Shirts and posters for bands and gig-nights, drawn children's books, illustrated educational books, filled the pages of magazines with editorial work, worked with graphic design agencies, advertising agencies, and... well you get the picture. I'm a busy chap, and it's all good.

Please click on the links on the right to see specific examples of my work, but as a general overview here's a list of a some of the clients I've worked for -

Publishing-
Macmillan
OUP
Orchard Books
Heinemann
Hatchette
Pearson
Cambridge University Press

Editorial-
Ministry Of Sound
Orca Publishing
IPC Magazines
Country Life
Koi

Multimedia-
ITV
RedBoxNewMedia

Video Games-
Disney
Black Rock Studios
Climax Racing
Rebellion

Got something that you'd like drawn? Click on the "contact me" button at the top of the page, drop me a line and say hello.

Rory Walker

Miniature Spaceman

This cheery chap was commissioned by an editor who was collecting a series of excerpts from various well known authors. My drawing was to illustrate a few paragraphs about a spaceman who is shrunk quite dramatically and ends up climbing up grass in the same way full size people would climb up trees, from a story called "The dog, the boy, and the spaceship".

Tug o War

This was an internal spot illustration for an ELT book, teaching Spanish students, English.

Gig Poster - Blessed are the average

For a while a friend of mine was a member of a band called ""Blessed are the Average". They played a number of gigs around my home town of Brighton and I took it upon myself to design them a nice poster or two. This was the second one I made. Sadly the band are no longer together, but the legacy of my poster lives on.

Carve Surfing Magazine - Girls Toilet

This is quite an old picture now, but it's still one of my favourites. It was originally drawn for Carve Surfing Magazine, one of the top surf monthlies around to accompany an editorial piece on the strange jobs that people have to do to save money to allow them to go surfing every so often. This particular feature was about a chap who who worked in the toilets at a nightclub.


Here it is in all its glory.

Science textbook - Migrating Buffalo

Every so often I get to draw a picture for a geography or science book that has to be more factual than my usual interpretive
drawings. Here's an example of Wildebeest crossing a river.

Swimming Pool

This casual gentleman was an illustration for an ELT book.

Captain Cool - Watts Publishing - Aliens!

Here's another page from Captain Cool - my 2nd book for Watts Publishing (part of Orchard Books). Here our hero is tackling the ever present threat of invading aliens.

Captain Cool - Watts Publishing - Faster than a speeding train!

Captain Cool is the greatest super hero that's ever lived. He's amazing. He can even run faster than trains as evidenced here. There's still a few copies of my 2nd book for Watts publishing available here

Here's what someone's written about it on the Amazon review bit -

from the LEAPFROG RHYME TIME book series.

From the back cover:-

'Monsters and villains
had best watch out
if Captain Cool
is hanging about!

He isn't afraid of anything. Or is he?'

32 high quality shiny pages in the popular 2-page spread format. Numbered pages with clear, easy-to-follow text.
Beautifully illustrated in vibrant colours throughout, this delightful book is further enhanced by relevant facial expressions and that rhyming element!

Example of text:-

`If you're stuck in a jam
or a tight fix,
who will be there
in just two ticks?

"Captain Cool!" we shout.
"That's who!"
"You should see what he can do!"........'

`Leapfrog has been specially designed to fit the requirements of the National Literacy Strategy. It offers real books for beginning readers by top authors and illustrators.'

There are a number of `Leapfrog' stories to choose from and these are listed on the very last page.

I especially like the reference to "Top Illustrators" - ahem.

Tutorial 004 - Colouring

I now erase the pencil lines (once the ink has dried properly of course!) and scan the image into the Photoshop. I habitually scan in at 300 dpi unless the publisher specifies otherwise. This will cover me for most printing types, i.e. magazines, books, internet etc etc. You can always drop resolution and be ok, but you can't up resolution without loss of quality.

Key points here - Scan at 300dpi, Scan as B&W Lineart (not colour or greyscale)

When your scanner has scanner you'll get a nice bitmap image like this -

Note - in the blue bit at the top it says it's a Bitmap image. Also you can see the bits on the side where the spiral binder bit goes through. Click "E" to bring the eraser tool up so that you can rub out the spiral binder holes. However, as this is a bitmap image (hard edges and pixels, no kind of fuzzy edging / anti-aliasing at all) you need to ensure you have the "Block" eraser chosen - it shows up as a small square graphic when you're going over stuff. Here's how you select it.

This is what it looks like on the screen (circled in red) -

Now you can go and erase all the little bits of suff that you don't want which will give you a lovely clean image to work with.

There - now doesn't that look lovely!

Now we have a clean image, we need to convert it into greyscale "Image>Mode>Greyscale" - a box comes up saying "Size Ratio" with "1" as the default. Click "OK" We now know that this is greyscale even though it looks identical to the B&W bitmap cos it says so here (Circled in red) -

Now we're going to covert it to CMYK which is THE essential part of the whole colouring in business. "Image>Mode>CMYK colour" - again we know that it's CMYK rather than greyscale, B&W or anything else cos it says so in the blue info bar.

Now it's CMYK there's one more important thing to do which will save us time in the long run. Preperation and all that. CTRL+A to select everything, then CTRL+J to duplicate the layer. This means that you'll have the same image twice in the psd file. If you look at the layers palette you'll see it as "layer 1" and "Background" with a small thumbnail version of each to see, thus -

The reason CMYK is so important is that it allows us to colour in via the individual "C", "M" and "Y" channels whilst floating the "K" channel over the top. This isn't confusing although it sounds like it is, however, despite trying for years, I can't put into words what it does. Just do it and it'll work OK. Ensure that you have "Layer1" selected. Go to the channels palette which should be located next to the Layers palette, (or if it's not showing click "Window>Channels" and it'll appear). Click on the channel that says "Cyan" and you'll see it go dark blue with an eye appear on the left hand side, all the other channels will go grey and there'll be no eye there, thus -

Here comes the trick - hold down "Shift" and click on the tabs that say "Magenta" and "Yellow" and THEN click on where the eye should be on "Black" and that makes the black channel visable but the key is that you're not effecting it in any way. It'll look like this -

Now SAVE YOUR IMAGE! (and continue to do so throughout the process)

Now you can get to work colouring in. The key here is to colour in simple flat colour using the pencil tool which will give you a hard edge with no anti-aliasing on it, and the bucket tool so that you can drop colour into big areas. This is all good until you come across a couple of problems, the most obvious of which is having a small gap in the black line that will allow colour to sneak through. This is illustrated here where the pink skin colour has gone through a gap and coloured the chaps' tooth. The arrow is pointing at the gap in question, you'll notice, however, how the black line because it's creating a visible barrier has stopped colour from going all over the place, which is jolly helpful -

To fix this problem, i've used the pencil tool "B" as it has a hard edge with no anti-aliasing and effectivly blocked the gap so that the colour is now locked in via a wall all the way around, be it mostly black but also partially yellow like this (I've zoomed in really close for this example) -

So now I can drop the same yellowy colour in to the tooth and it'll stay in place because there's a wall of colour in the way preventing it from escaping -

Nice! You'll see there's a little bit of discolouration on top of the black. Don't worry about that for the time being, we'll fix it at the end.

This is the simple of the 2 problems you'll most likely encounter with this method of colouring in. The second is slightly more complex to explain but is essential to understand otherwise it'll confound you eternally. Let's go to the chap's hair, and use the bucket tool to colour in a few areas with a nice orange

Now you'll see there's a few spots of white that I want to colour in, so I'm going to use the pencil tool and just scribble haphazardly over the top of everything, so that I get all the spots coloured in nicely, and for arguments sake i'm going to colour in a few of the other swirly bits with the pencil too.

Sorted - however, there's a problem. Where i've gone over the lines I've effectivly broken the black line wall. So now, if I drop a new colour (such as this rather fetching yellow) into what looks like an enclosed area, such as this one illustrated with the perfect red circle and arrow -

There's going to be a problem and the whole area is going to flood with colour, thus -

Could be a problem? Yup, but there's a way to fix it. Earlier you duplicated the whole layer and stared working on "Layer1" leaving "Background" untouched. Well, now select "Background" -

click "W" for "Magic Wand tool" making sure that all the tick boxes are unchecked -

Click on any black line bit of the image, (any pixel will do) -

So now you've selected all the line work / black in the picture, CTRL+J to duplicate that on to a new layer.

You'll see it gets placed ABOVE the Background layer, but BENEATH the Layer1. So click on "Layer2" and drag it above Layer1 -

Now CTRL+E to merge down that layer on to the layer beneath -

Now when you look at the same area again, you'll see that the discolouration on top of the black has gone - WOO! - and you can now safely drop colours into areas again without them bleeding all over the place. Here's a before and after shot -

Before

After - See how the "walls" of solid black are back?

Before you can carry on as per usual, you need to go back to the channels palette and select "CMY" and show "K" as explained earlier again.

Now you can colour the whole piccy in, but just do it in flat colours for now. You may end up with something like this -

And what a cheery chap he is. The reason we've only coloured him in in flat colours will show itself presently, but for now click on the "Background" layer, select the black (as shown earlier), CTRL+J to duplicate the layer, click on the layer and drag it to the top of the layer pile. This is just a precaution to ensure that all the areas that may have a bit of colour going partially over the black line are nicely covered up. Now, select "Layer1", CTRL+J to duplicate it on to a new layer. (As you've left layer 1 to click on the background layer already, when you click back on layer 1 all the channels will be reselected, which is good in this instance as we want CMY and K to be copied. You should now have a layer stack with -

"Layer2" - just the black line work of the image

"Layer1 Copy" - a duplicate of the flat coloured picture

"Layer1" - this is the flat coloured picture

"Background" - this is the original black and white line drawing

With "Layer1 Copy" selected (as in the image above) click on an area that you'd like to put shadow or highlights on with the magic wand "W" - again ensuring that no checkboxes are ticked as earlier -

I'm going to select his skin colour and put some shading on it, so I click on a pixel on his face or hands which brings up a marquee thus -

Now I select my brush tool "B"

Note - this is the same as the pencil tool, so click on the pencil/brush icon (here the pencil is selected) -

And Click on "Brush Tool"

This will now mean you the brush selected. The brush is a smooth soft edged (i.e. feathered / anti-aliased) tool. At the top of change the brush blend mode to "Multiply" and the "opacity" to 40%. Hovering over the picture file, right click your mouse button and choose this brush (with nice soft edges) -

Note - the "Master diameter" setting gives you the basic width of the brush and you'll probably want to fiddle with that all the time depending on the size or area of the picture that you're working on. You can also toggle that up and down with these [ ] buttons, though it's quicker to right click and slide the slider along to where you want it to be rather than faffing around.

Hover over the skin colour, and press ALT and you'll see the brush icon change to a colour pipette icon, click on the colour and it'll load that into your colour paintbox window. Now just paint away where you think there should be shadow. WARNING - don't take your finger off the button! Every time you do you'll create a new multipy of the colour which results in messy blobbyness all over the place, the shadows should be smooth.

Here is a somewhat exagerated version. Now you've done that, you can do the rest! Instead of or aswell as shading, you can highlight by setting the brush settings to "Overlay" at 20% and then picking a nice light colour. Here's a rather jaundiced example -

If you decide that you want to change the whole tonal colour of a region once you've shaded it, for example, if I decided that I liked the shading and highlighting of the chaps' face, but actually I wanted his skin to be blue (!) then I can click on the original "Layer1", select the skin colour, click back on "Layer1 copy" and then CTRL+U to change the hue/saturation. This allows me to do things quickly and effectivly with the minimum of fuss as I know I'm only selecting the area specified and not some other small areas which may have become the same colour aswell thanks to shading.

Followed by clicking back on "Layer1 copy" then CTRL+U -

Finally, when the piccies finished, I save it for the final time in its .psd format. I then flatten it SHIFT+CTRL+E and save it as jpeg with "CMYK300dpi" written into the file name so I know what's what. I then go "Image>Mode>RGB colour" and save it again with "RGB300dpi" written into the file name, and then finally I go "Image>ImageSize" and change the resolution from 300dpi to 72dpi, and save with "RGB72dpi" written into the file name. This means that I've got a print version, a highres web version and a standard web version ready at my disposal whenever I want it! I then email my pics off to the publishers. Or, if there's lots of them I put them all together in a .rar file and upload them to www.mediafire.com and send the publishers a link to where they can download them from.

Finally, if it's a snazzy image I take the "RGB300dpi" version, create a new file that's 300dpi, 7 inches wide, by 4 inches high (or whatever), resize the image to fit nicely in the space, save it onto a memory stick and take it to Jessops. I plug the memory stick into the machine, drag the image over to their computer, and get them to print out a well snazzy 7x4 (or whatever) "digital photo" for about 15p!

There's probably other things to mention, but I cant' think of them right now. Hope that helps.