Curious Little Shadows was an attempt (c.2011) to go darker than my usual goofy “trying to be funny” illustrations. And was hoping, naively, I’d evolve these gloomy situations into 30 second animated shorts. Or a illustrated story book… sooooo, no concrete objective. What’s new, right?
Essentially, these “Shadows” are little bean-sized creatures with no discernable features, except for eyes and whatever ambient light hits their fleecy bodies. They wander the forest floor clustered together, for the most part, avoiding predators of all sorts (for which there are many)… I never fleshed out WHY they were constantly on the move - I guess I figured nothing in nature has a personal goal to aim for, except for survival.
With almost every dire encounter they face, one of the Shadows will perish. The Shadows, after the initial shock, do not mourn - they have to keep moving, keep hiding, keep surviving.
Looking back almost a decade later, this whole abandoned project (#abandonedproject) was an experiment in self-taught backlighting. More accurately, lots of happy little accidents just happened to formulate some purposeful motive - i.e. hmmm, that whoopsie-doodle slip-of-the-wrist brushstroke looks out of place… wait a minute… what if I add another brushstroke next to it? Wow, that… that works! Wasn’t the plan. Well, dummy, quit arguing with yourself and keep doing it!
I planned to make one of these illos into a 10 second test animation - the toothy red-eyed encounter pic - but never got past converting the pic to 16:9 aspect ratio (below).
