I don’t take bad pictures of my stuff on purpose, but since there is little feedback here (and really, not a problem — this is mostly for me anyway) I just can’t be bothered to strive for perfection. If you want to see better pictures let me know or come to my house and see them for yourself. I am showing you these in the smaller size, because honestly they look better that way.
This is exploring the idea that people are more trusting of pre-wrapped candies from great big corporate conglomerates than of home-baked goods. Every Halloween there are articles about people who found needles in apples or caramels, and an equal amount of articles about how needles in apples are a myth and are disproportionately reported for shock value. I have an abiding memory of seeing a news spot about it when I was about 5, and there was a shot of candy going through a kind of candy x-ray on a conveyor belt. It was ludicrous, and kind of creepy really. Why bother going trick-or-treating in the first place if you’re going to be all creeped out by strange people touching your candy?
The the apprehensive one is saying “syringe”, which doesn’t show up to well yet as it’s in pencil. After the initial blocking is done I’ll need to go back and re-terrify her, and re-gender both of them, give them hair, make the eyes less stark. Make the hands tangible.
The sketches. The final composition — quite divorced from this stuff — turned out fairly effective I think, although I really loved the image of the person cowering by the window. There was just not enough visual reason as to why. It was too general: they were just afraid of their neighbor. Putting it out on the stoop has a nice balance to it, although realistically a person afraid like this probably would see the person coming (as in the sketch) and then not answer the door. But hey, this is illustration people. You want realism, take a picture. A boring picture.
And really, she’s not anti-social, just paranoid about food.
