Sustained Investigation #4

The idea behind this piece was to draw a bunch of objects that are very important in the context of the comic. Floating together in empty space like an inventory screen in a video game the objects have to be interesting enough on there own to be eye catching. Even though the objects are fairly separated from one another there is still a bit of storytelling going on in between them. Some of the objects at the top all have circular designs on or as a part of them. All places where there would be text is replaced by ruins, the same alien language present on the prologue villain drawing from the first sustained investigation. In the context of the story all types of data, writing, code, or otherwise can be corrupted by the ruins. The only two exceptions is that the music notes in the music book are still there because it is information that conveys sound, something the ruins can't translate. The "AJ" sticker on AJ's notebook is also still there because its in the style of graffiti and the ruins can't translate or corrupt art.  Lastly the "GAME OVER" on the  arcade games screen is technically in the process of being corrupted with the darkness closing in, this was inspired by a nightmare sequence from later in the story. 

This piece of art was created on a piece of artist paper (thicker then normal printer paper). I used a graphite pencil to sketch out the different objects, used a thin black sharpie pen to do the linework, then shaded in certain areas with the pencil. I did not erase the pencil from the sketch layer for the most part. I liked doing it this way because it reminded me a bit of using layers while doing digital art, with a sketch and lineart layer. Honestly the reason I chose these materials is that I forgot my sketchbook one day and planned to sketch a violin on just a piece of paper instead. The one violin in the corner turned into the whole piece as I repaned it further. 

 The practice work I did before this piece was the sketches I did of a few objects I associated with the characters below the headshot sketches I did of them in my sketchbook. The finished piece is an extension of this with more refined sketches that were then given "line art" through black sharpie pen. I choose to keep it black and white because I find that often times when I try to color in pieces like these they become muddy and unfocused, values are harder to plan out with traditional art. Additionally keeping it black and white keeps the whole thing crisp and puts all the focus on the design elements of the objects.