Twitter Ye Not - Titanic
A piece about how figures in history might have twittered or tweeted or whatever, had they the chance, inclination and technology.
On 10 April 1912, the SS Titanic set off from Southampton on her doomed maiden voyage to New York City. Four days into the crossing, at 23:40 on 14 April 1912, she struck an iceberg and sank at 2:20 the following morning. Maritime historians have recently discovered the Twitter feed from that fateful weekend.
This is the fifth of this series I have done so far (Coronation of Elizabeth I, Napoleon entering Paris, the Crimean War, the Suffragette movement and now this). Its a fun series, although I was disappointed that the author had not included 'The Unsinkable' Molly Brown in the Twitter feed - it seemed to be mostly concerned with the characters from James Cameron's film (including Celine Dion's grandmother!) than with actual real-life victims and survivors of the disaster.
I have shown Captain Edward J. Smith in authentic costume at the ship's wheel (also accurate!). The white dot you may be able to make out on the insignia on his hat is a white star on a wreathed and crowned flag, symbol of the White Star Line. Facing him is one of the ship's wealthier passengers lady Muck, complaining about the size of her suite onboard. She too is in authentic costume for Spring 1912, with broad hat, egret feathers and long-handled parasol! I have also shown a rat running at top-speed for the nearest gang-plank or rope by which to leave the vessel (possibly inaccurate!).
10 comments:
Fantastic - great illo - surely this makes the joke much better than the text ever could!
Great characters and great use of colour as always :) I was wondering how you go about creating your illustrations - I know you like to wield a dip pen from time to time, but I'm curious about how you do the 'colouring in' ;P
Keep up the great work :)
Thank you Stephen, thank you Brian. I tend to use drawing pens (various brands) more than dip pens - more control, less blotching. Colouring in this case is simply Bezier shapes on a layer behind the line work.
I'd have thought you just selected and filled on a separate layer. Wouldn't that be quicker?... i'm not familiar with bezier/ illustrator though. Recently i've even just been filling on the line layer, for a lot of personal stuff. I am rather basic though!
You're probably right Scott. I was raised on Illustrator all those years ago and the habit still sticks, even though I'm all inky and real these days. I always found selecting and filling left nasty edge marks, but that was a long time ago. Like creating shapes behind the outlines too cos I like the two layers to interact.
select>modify>expand as a shortcut and a couple pixels quickly resolves that nasty edge area and then sits underneath, behind the line. Just for clarification... not as an order! It always amazes me how many illustrators do the same thing in so many different ways. That's teaching yourself i guess.
Just out of interest, do you do your original line-work in black ink then re-colour digitally? Always curious about how people do their thing :)
Aha! You live and you learn!
Thanks Scott.
Brian, yes, I always work in black (or at least scan in as grayscale!) then colour the lines by using the Channels palette to select it. Again, probably an arseways way about it..
It may well be, but that's probably how I'd do it ;)
I love this series, :)
decontextualization is the key to humor.
Following the conversation, my lines are always dirty and full of white hairs. Yours are so perfect, I thought that you draw with the computer.
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