Week 10 (In brief)

- A new timetable

- Tutorial with Louise

- Drawing the other houses

- Starting to draw the final characters

One little house

I've been continuing with drawing all the buildings today, and I've completed one (I'm not sure which one I'll be using it for yet, possibly Red Riding Hood's Grandmother's cottage).

I've drawn it from 2 different angles, and with cross-sections for both of those angles:

I also drew the front on image of a tree-house which I'll be carrying on with tomorrow.

The Castle

Today I completed the task of drawing the castle for the book, along with all the cross-sections of the various rooms. I drew the castle out quite large to allow me to get in all the detail that I need, and the drew the cross-sections on thin paper over the top to ensure they all lined up.

Here's the finished illustration of the exterior of the castle:

(un-coloured for now as I still need to decide on that)

And here's an image showing all of the cross-sections, although in the actual book they won't all be used at once. Again this image is un-coloured for now, and I think it'll all be clearer once colour is added:

Next up is the gingerbread house and other cottages. Now that I've got this one done and I'm quite pleased with it, the other buildings seem a little less daunting than a couple of days ago.

Little Drawings

The last week or so of this project has involved a lot of planning, organising and working out, so today I wanted to work on something a little more enjoyable. As well as the main characters, houses and castle etc. I'll be needing lots of little details to include in the final images, such as flowers and birds, so today I made a start on them:

I still have a lot more to draw before I can really start to put things together properly.

My plan for the next 2 days is to get the castle drawn along with all the necessary cross-sections, and to make a start on the other houses too. In the meantime I'll be starting to add colour to some of this along with the trees I've been working on.

Week 9 (In brief)

- Little drawings

- The Castle

- Starting the houses

Through the seasons

I mentioned in my post earlier in the week that I am now planning on changing the seasons throughout the course of the book to add a variety of colour etc.

I've made a start on illustrating this in the form of trees. I drew out six styles of tree with no leaves, and then used tracing paper to create different kinds of leaves, blossom, snow etc. for each of the styles. I then put the leaf layers on top of the trees in photoshop.

This is the result for one of the trees:

I'm pleased with how this has turned out so far, and next week I'll be experimenting with adding colour to see how the final thing might look before continuing to draw the rest of the elements of the scenery.

Even more planning

Following my tutorial with Jonny yesterday I've spent today continuing to plan and adjust the layout of the scenery in my book.

The main issue was needing to use more angles and view points so that the pages weren't too repetitive, so this morning I got to work on figuring that out. 

I drew out a very rough version of the layout I had come up with yesterday (with a few tweaks) onto A2 card. I photographed this a few times, cropping in on certain areas that I need for my book, but obviously these were all from the same angle.

So next up I cut around the tops and sides of the buildings and other elements of the scene I had drawn, and folded them up from the bottom, to create a little 3D version of the world:

This then enabled me to photograph it from different angles to use as reference.

I used these photos to create a rough plan of the layouts for each of the 12 pages (referring back to the plan I had made for what each character would be doing and where they would need to be):

The blacked out areas in the above images show where there will be a cross-section of a building and the characters will be inside. I've tried to vary these as much as possible across the 12 pages to further help with the repetition issue.

I also wanted to vary the colour in the pages without just changing it for no reason, and I've come up with a solution for that too. Jonny mentioned yesterday the possibility of changing seasons but I dismissed it to begin with as the stories are all taking place across one day. However I've though about it since and realised that I can have all four seasons in one day, because after all this is a fairytale world! Its worked out quite neatly that there are 12 double pages and 12 months in a year. I'll be starting in September in the Autumn, and ending in August in the Summer (and including every month in between). That will mean that the colours, nature, weather etc. will all change on each page (the characters and their clothes will remain the same).

In terms of colours I will be using a simple 5 or 6 colour palette throughout the book, with an addition of 3 more colours that vary depending on the season.

I need to hear back from Jonny to confirm if these ideas are suitable, and after that I'll be getting on with drawing the final images of the scenery over the next week.

More planning & a tutorial with Jonny

This afternoon we went into Uni for a talk by Jonny. He explained a lot of the logistics of what happens after we finish uni, in terms of taxes, agencies, invoices, payment etc. He also talked to us about the degree show and potential ways that we can display our work. I have a few ideas at the moment but I'll be looking into that in more detail a little later on in the project.

I had a tutorial booked for the afternoon, and in between that and the talk I sat in the studio and carried on with the planning for my book. I used the storyboards I had created yesterday to figure out some potential layouts for the fairy-tale world. I was quite surprised at how quickly I stumbled upon a layout that worked, although I still have some adjusting to do.

During my tutorial with Jonny I showed him all the work I had done since I last spoke to him, and explained where I was at with the project. He was quite pleased with most of what I had done, and particularly liked the palace designs I had done and the method that I used for them. I also talked to him about the colour mis-registration that I tried out earlier in the week and I explained how I was pleased with the result but felt it would be too much when used on a busy scene. He understood this but also agreed with me that the texture is definitely something I should use, and said I should explore that a bit further (creating my own textures using relief rubbings, rollers etc.).

We had a look at the sketches I had made for the fairy-tale world and I explained how I was planning on cropping in on different areas for each page. Just before my tutorial I had realised that this may not completely work as there are a few pages in the middle of the book where the same scene is needed so it may get a little repetitive, and Jonny noticed this issue too. We discussed a few ways to potentially solve this, some of which wouldn't work too well with the idea of the book (being able to see all of the characters on each page is quite important), but one idea that I did like and will be trying out is changing the angles and perspective. For example, one image could be drawn with a lack of perspective, in the style of a map, and the image on the next page could be drawn from a lower angle with a more realistic perspective. That way the scene is the same, but without it being too repetitive and boring.

Jonny suggested I carry on with storyboarding and aim to have a mock-up book done by next week to show to the tutors (although there were no tutorials spots left next week so I may have to e-mail Jonny a digital version to see what he thinks). So the drawing of characters and scenery is going on hold for a while whilst I figure these things out.

Research and Planning

Today I've spent quite a bit of time planning my book and figuring out what will be happening on each page, as well as deciding on how many pages to have, and what other elements to include in the imagery.

First up I created small storyboards for each of the six fairy tales. For the first two (Hansel & Gretel, and Red Riding Hood) I initially broke the story down into 8 points as I did earlier on in the project, but I preferred the pacing in the 12-point versions so thats what I've decided to go with and have planned that out for the other 4 stories as well.

Using these storyboards I then made a plan for everything that will be happening on each double-page spread (pictured below). I've made a not of what every character will be doing at every point in the story, so that I can now start to look at what aspects of the scenery will be needed on each page to help me design the layout of the "fairy-tale world".

I also made a few notes on some other elements that I'd like to include in the imagery, such as heart and key shapes in the pattern of a tree trunk (or perhaps even carved into a tree), apple trees and birds (recurring themes throughout all fairytales), and objects in groups of 3 and 7 (recurring numbers in fairytales, I've made notes on this earlier in the project).

Now that I have all the plot points worked out I will be using that information to finish designing the fairy tale world and its layout. I'll be starting to sketch out some rough layouts tomorrow and hope to have one finalised by the weekend.

Trying out a new colouring technique

One thing that is always suggested to me by tutors at work in progress meetings and tutorials is to try mis-aligning my colour a bit more, in the way that would occur in a screen print.

This isn't something I'm particularly keen on as I don't think it will suit this project, but I thought it best to give it a go anyway, so I tried out a new technique for colouring in my illustrations. I would say this process is almost like a digital version of a screen-print, creating negatives for each colour and layering them all together at the end:

First up I drew my illustration in my sketchbook as I usually would, this time it was a character design for Rapnuzel.

I scanned in the drawing and edited it digitally, tidying up a few mistakes such as the hand and the face before printing it out onto A4 paper.

Using tracing paper and black ink I then created "negatives" for each of the separate colours in the illustration, e.g. one for the hair, one for the wall etc. 

The tracing paper crinkles up quite a lot when its painted on so that helped to create a bit of texture and prevent the layers from being perfectly aligned.

Next up I scanned in all of these layers and used the magic wand on photoshop to pick out just the black shapes and get rid of any of the creases in the background of the tracing paper. I have a selection of colour palettes saved to my computer so I picked out one of those and decide on which colour to use for each layer. I coloured the layers in by adding a new layer in photoshop, filling it with the colour and setting the blend mode to screen. I chose to do it that way rather than just filling it in as that helped to keep the paint-like texture that the tracing paper had helped create.

Finally I brought all the layers together, with the lightest colour at the bottom and the line drawing at the top, and set the blend modes to multiply. It took a little bit of adjusting and resizing some of the layers, but the above image is the final result.

For an illustration of this size and level of detail, I think this works quite well. However, my final outcomes are going to have a lot more detail in them (with at least 10 characters per double-page spread, as well as scenery and other elements) and for that I think this technique will start to look too messy. For example, the flowers in the top left of this image are quite detailed and I think they look too untidy, as there are too many layers over-lapping each other in a small space (in fact there was meant to be another layer for the leaves but I left that one out as it looked to messy).

However, I do like the slight texture that this method produces, which can seen a bit clearer in the wall in this version (it is clearer when printed out):

I will be discussing this technique at my tutorial with Jonny on thursday, but at the moment I don't think I will be using the mis-aligned colour in my final illustrations, however I am likely to create some more paint/ink textures to use so that the images aren't too flat. 

Week 8 (In brief)

- Experimented with a new colouring technique

- Research and planning
- Tutorial with Jonny
- More planning

A visit from Brian Grimwood

Yesterday Brian Grimwood (illustrator and founder of the Central Illustration Agency) came down to uni to help out with the Self Promotion crit and then to do a talk on his work.

Self Promotion Crit

We spent the morning all gathered in the Fishtank whilst Jonny, Pete and Brian took turns opening up everyone's Self Promotion work and giving feedback on it all. Overall it was pretty successful and not a lot of work went in the bin, but having to wait around til very near the end (so after around 40 people) did make me quite nervous!

When it came to mine though I did get some good feedback. To begin with Jonny recognised the image of the envelope as a looking glass straight away, which was good a that was something I was a little worried about whether or not it made sense. They said that my pieces had been well designed and well printed, and contained a good selection of my work whilst sticking to a clear theme of story-telling. Pete was also quite keen on the Hansel and Gretel illustration, as well as the typography I had designed.

I told them which art director I had sent the work to and they had a couple of other suggestions that I might want to send my extra copies to: Nobrow Press, Bloomsbury Books.

Overall I'm really pleased with how the Self Promotion unit went and its definitely something I will be re-visiting once uni is over.

Brian Grimwood talk

Brian Grimwood spoke to us for an hour and a half about his career and the work he has produced. He started at the very beginning of career and showed us the development of his styles over the years. It was really interesting to see how his work has changed and developed as he has progressed through his career. He has worked for a lot of big clients such as BBC, Sony, ZSL etc. and it was really quite inspiring to hear how successful he has been in the world of illustration. 

Designing Palaces

I mentioned in a post earlier this week that I need to try and be a bit more adventurous with my scenery designs. So today I tried out a new working process when designing a palace/chateau for the story (where Cinderella lives at the beginning, and where Rapunzel will be up in a tower).

I started off by finding a few images of palaces/chateaus that I liked on Pinterest:

Using these images as reference I then started to do some quick sketches of some of the interesting elements of the buildings, joining them together as I went, to create a new building with an array of different turrets, windows, roofs etc:

I then used these drawings in the same that I used my observational sketches from the Zoo and the New Forest, developing them into my own style of detailed line drawings:

I scanned this drawing in and gave it a bit of colour just to see how it would look:

I think this process has worked pretty well for me today and helped me to be much more adventurous and creative with my designs. I would definitely not have come up with something like the above image if I just drew from imagination or directly from photographs of palaces. I think I'm going to continue using this process over the next week whilst I continue to work on the scenery illustrations.

A Fairytale Land

My priority this week has been to make some progress with designing the world that my characters will inhabit. Using my photos and sketches form the new forest, as well some other reference images I've found on Pinterest (and some imagination) I've started to design elements of this world such as the gingerbread house, streams and tree houses.

I mentioned in yesterday's "finding inspiration" post that I think I need to start being a bit more adventurous with these designs to make them feel a bit more "fairy tale like". Some of the drawings I did after that have started to go more in that direction, particularly the ones of the tree houses and the bridges in the trees, but I think I still need to push this a bit further.

I'll be carrying on with these for the rest of the week, and possibly starting to add some colour later on in the week.

Finding Inspiration

1. I like the lack of perspective in illustrations like this one by Nicholas Stevenson, and I think its something I may need to use in my own work in order to successfully fit all of the characters and scenery onto the page.

2. My photos from my trip to the New Forest have been a big help this week. I've been particularly looking at the ones that include a "strange" or "unusual" formation of trees, such as this one that has two trees crossing over to form a sort of arch. This is helping me to design scenes which are slightly more interesting and dynamic than if I were to just draw lots of the same trees in a row.

3. This illustration by Kazu Kibuishi came up when I was searching for additional images of forests to use as inspiration, and I love the"make-believe" feel of it. So far a lot of my scenery designs have been a little too realistic considering they are based on a fairytale world where Rapunzel is a Giraffe! I think I need to be more adventurous with my scenery and try to come up with something like this, with houses in the trees and bridges in the skies.

4. I stumbled across these paper dolls on Etsy the other day and I really like the idea of them. I am a long way away from anything like this yet but I was thinking a couple of paper dolls of the characters might be a nice addition to the project, for example in an envelope at the back of the book.

Self Promotion complete

Yesterday was the deadline for posting the self promotion work off to Jonny and 5 Art Directors/Publishers etc. of our choice.

I had most of it all printed off and finished last week and I just needed to find the addresses over the weekend, and I got them all sent off yesterday afternoon.

Here's what I sent:

A little folded book (slightly edited from my previous post about self promotion):

This is whats on the pages of the book:

And it folds out to reveal this image on the back:

I also included a set of 3 postcards (with rounded corners of course!) with a selection of images form my work; one character design, for line drawing, and one piece of typography:

It was all sent away in little envelopes with an illustration of a looking glass printed onto the front (which can be seen in the first picture of this post).

Seeing as everything I was sending off was based on book illustration, I decided to send mine to the art directors (or similar) at 5 different book publishers:

Deirdre McDermott, Publisher at Walker Books

Anna Bilson, Art Director at Puffin Art and Design, Penguin Books

Art Resource Co-ordinator at Candlewick Press (no name was provided for this one)

James Stevens, Art Director at HarperCollin's publishers

Stephanie Amster, Head of Design at Nosy Crow Publishers

Of course I've also sent one to Jonny for the crit on Thursday morning where we'll all discuss how effective (or ineffective) everything is.

Designing the scenery

 Over the weekend I made a start on designing some of the scenery for this project (mainly trees at the moment). Each scene will be quite full of characters with a lot going on, and the story will follow the characters taking a journey throughout the book, so in order to do that I am planning on creating my own "fairytale world". I'll be designing this (and possibly making a map for it) before I start really placing the characters into the scenes.

Here's the designs I've got for the trees so far:

Over the week I'll be looking at all the other aspects of the scenery such as the Gingerbread house, the Palace, lakes and streams etc.

Week 7 (In brief)

- Made a start on drawing the scenery

- Completed Self Promo
- Finding Inspiration
- Designing a Fairytale land
- Tried out a new working process
- Self Promo crit and a talk by Brian Grimwood

The New Forest

 Yesterday morning me and Selina got the train to Beaulieu Road Station, and followed some directions I'd printed off to Ashurst Station. Along the way we came across a few little streams, ponies, donkeys, and lots and lots of mud! We did some sketching whilst we were there and took plenty of photos for reference:

The main aim of the day was to find some inspiration for the scenery in my work. I'll be creating my own fairytale world for the story but I needed some references of trees, streams, views etc. which I can the combine together. Over the weekend I'll be developing some of these sketches into more detailed illustrations, and make a start on designing the scenes.

Colouring

All of the above images have been coloured using the same 6 colour palette (I've also been working on my self promo piece and want all the images to work well together) but these aren't necessarily the colours I will be using for the rest of the project, just an early experiment.

I've been pulling some colour palettes from some images I like on Pinterest, and experimenting with using them on the characters. To start off with I've been using an illustration of Snow White from earlier in the project, and these are some of the results:

At the moment I quite like the two versions on the left, but this is only for one character. I think later in the project once I am starting to put larger scenes together I'll be able to get a better idea of what colour palettes will work best, although I'm pretty certain I'll be sticking to a maximum of 6 colours to avoid over-complicating the images.

Today I'm finishing off the self promotion work before heading to the New Forest tomorrow to make a start on illustrating some of the scenery. 

Self Promo WIP

This morning we had a work in progress meeting for the self promotion brief.

I took in the little mock-up book that I had made (pictured below) and showed it to Jonny and Pete. The general feedback for my idea was pretty good and they had a couple of suggestions for improving the pacing of the pages:

-Put the double page spread (red riding hood and the wolf) in the middle

-Make the cinderella image slightly smaller and add a backdrop to contrast more with the page next to it

After listening to everyone else's ideas and feedback I came up with a few other changes I also wanted to make:

- Change the front cover to something a bit bolder: forest scene, with title in white circle laid on top?

- Also include a postcard or 2: 1 image of a character, and 1 with the "Once upon a time" typography piece?

- Make stickers/labels to put on the back of the postcards and on the envelopes

I also need to work on something for the envelope, which I'm thinking could be an illustration of a looking glass as a frame for the address.

I'll be working on this for the rest of today and tomorrow, ready to get them posted by monday morning.

More character designs

I spent most of last week after the Work in Progress working on more designs of the characters (which is also working towards my self promotion piece). I'm having a bit of trouble with some of the "evil" characters as thats not the sort of thing I'm used to drawing (I tend to stick to animals, nature and other "pretty" things) but I think I'm starting to get there with them. I'm particularly pleased with the designs for Cinderella (top left, top middle, and middle right) and Hansel & Gretel (centre).

Next up I'll be adding colour to some of these to use in my Self promotion, and on wednesday I'm heading to the New Forest to make a start on some illustrations of scenery.

Week 6 (In brief)

- Character Designs

- Self Promo WIP

- Colouring the characters
- New Forest trip