The Answer to 'Where Do You Get Inspiration From?' - 'Wake Up' Process Video + File!

Hey everyone,

Here is the process video, file, and brief insights of WAKE UP, my latest illustration. These kinds of articles are often split into two parts: the concept, where I share the idea behind the piece, and the execution, where I explain the technical aspects like shapes, colors, and value choices. I hope you find this useful; have a great read.

Concept

Initially, I chose a coffee maker reference because it was one of the most common and casual things found in places where I've lived. I assume it would be the same for many people. I wanted to take some inspiration from dreams since coffee awakens people. Then, I remembered one of my favorite shorts by Satoshi Kon, called Good Morning. I love Satoshi's work because it blends reality and fantasy, often exploring complex psychological themes.

The 'Good Morning' short had a great way to describe how I often feel when waking up - all over the place, not very conscious, and slow. I thought it would be fun to create a character who is very sleepy and tired, drinking coffee while several versions of the same character are all around doing different things, and a coffee maker character working to put them all together in order to wake up. I thought an office employee would be the best fit for the sleepy character. As for the coffee maker character, I had different professions in mind, but the military was perfect, as it can basically scream at all versions of the main character.

For the coffee maker character, I took some inspiration from Gunnery Sgt. Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, I guess I can say this piece was very influenced by films and shorts, something I don't often do.

The list looked like this: 

• Color: White, grey, and a little black. 
• Ref: Coffee Maker 
• Action: Someone recently awake, a military figure putting versions of the character together.
• Costume: Military uniform, office outfit.

Execution

My plan was to make a big shape for the coffee maker character that covered the entire composition, with the gesture in my mind being him pointing out to the other character and screaming. Although I started with the military character's body shape, I was most concerned about the character drinking the coffee, since I would need to draw and paint that one several times; it needed to be simple yet interesting to look at.

The composition was relatively simple but tedious because both characters' outfits did not have intricate designs, shapes, or colors. The tedious part was the number of characters covering the composition, which balanced the lack of information in terms of costume design.

As for the color, I kept a big part of the palette towards white and grey bright tones, with little spaces of very dark black just to hit that contrast. I chose blue to highlight the 'spirits' of the character drinking the coffee and some bright red touches around the military character, perhaps to reflect its hot temper.

For shadows, you can see that the final piece had bluish/purple tonalities, but essentially I used very grey tones in shadows. The thing is, I was not very convinced about keeping the piece desaturated, so I added layers on top of the characters with blue gradients in soft light and overlay blending modes to push that 'spirit' like vibe. Finally, I used Selective Color to move the darker and brighter tones towards blue as well. This is well documented in the process video, but please check the PSD file for more.

Conclusion

Recently someone asked me, 'Where do you get inspiration from?' I answered that I don't rely on inspiration because I can't control that; the best I can do is to start from one simple point and from there just imagine or recall bizarre situations that justify the narrative, whether from personal experiences or simply the work of other artists. Is that inspiration? I don't know, but I like the result. What inspires you?