In my heart I take thee...

My final project for one of my classes was to do an illustrated booklet summarizing one of our favorite stories that had little or no past professional illustrations. Thankfully (and for some odd reason) there aren't many professional works done for Phantom (printed in the the books anyway), so I had free reign to do as I pleased.

There were nine illustrations in total, but while the others are far, far more simplified because I was struck for time, this one was my pride and joy. It's such a sad but beautiful scene that something so simple broke him that I really wanted to capture that tenderness, and I certainly hope I did so.

The inspiration for this design came from my watching the anime Gankutsuou (a Japanese adaption of The Count of Monte Cristo, very much worth checking out even though there are some disagreeable changes in plot from the novel) a couple years ago and being enthralled with the use of photoshop and the textures to give colour and motion rather than drawing the fabrics by hand (Christine's hair is definitely inspired by the use of a floral pattern in Haidee's hair).





Textures from cgtextures.