Major individual project

Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN The aim of this brief was to illustrate and re-imagine classic scenes and characters form a selection of Roald Dahl’s work. Three or more illustrations were requested, with the broad specifications that the illustrations needed to be derived directly from chosen Roald Dahl texts, and include a child character, one villain and one ‘fantastical’ creature.

I was drawn to this brief because of my interest in children’s illustration and my own experiences with reading Roald Dahl’s books as a kid. I also liked the fact that they were willing to consider any style or format, so it seemed quite open to interpretation.

Having said that, The openness of the brief did in turn provide me with some difficulties. The first decision I had to make was deciding on what books and more specifically texts I wanted to illustrate.

The Brief provided a wide selection of titles and possible sections of text to work from - although they didn’t necessarily have to be taken form their suggestions. After reading through a few of them I realised that the pieces they’d picked out in fact didn’t feature the three mandatory character’s required in the illustrations. I made the decision to pick my own pieces of text to illustrate, which included Matilda (pg.130-137), George’s Marvellous Medicine (pg.43-48)and The Witches (pg.64-70).

Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN Research and Initial work I started my research by reading through the suggested texts provided by the brief, however as previously mentioned I discovered that they wouldn’t work form me due to the missing specifications of characters. So off the back of that I decided to just re-read some of my personal favourite books and the key scenes I remembered that did feature these things (the child, the villain and the fantastical creature) That was a lot easier and I could connect more with the text having already had that pre-concieved image of the scene in my head that was familiar. The next thing I felt was important to consider was the previous adaptations of these books and the ‘popularity’ factor. The most well known books where placed at the top of the suggested list by the client, which implied to me that they believed these ones would be most successful. However, in the brief they also stated that they wanted to appeal to a younger audience that may not yet identify as a Roald Dahl fan.

To me this seemed like an opportunity to introduce book that possibly a new generation of children hadn’t heard of or already seen in the form of a recent movie adaptation (such as Charlie and the chocolate factory or BFG). I also thought to consider books like Matilda which actually was adapted in 1996 - but given that was 20 years ago it’s fair to assume a new generation may not be aware of it’s existence.

Another important factor to take into account was the previous artwork done for Roald Dahl, which quite predominately comes from the well known Quentin Blake. It’s hard to ignore the iconicness of his illustrations and clear links to the Roald Dahl brand. The brief it’s self was very open to a range of illustrative styles, the only request was it needed to be in-keeping with the current logo. Personally I’ve always loved the artwork for Roald Dahls books, so moving away from that style was quite daunting. I thought about what it was that made me like the illustrations in the first place and what i concluded was that it was the fluidity and the hand drawn nature, so that’s what i’d like to retain.

Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN Development Starting with my sketches I started to play around with colour, although I did experiment with paint I wanted to move away from the painterly effects of Quentin Blake. I scanned in some drawings and roughs and looked at colouring digitally.

These are some of the drawings I took to group crits where I got a few comments that the colours were perhaps too ‘garish’ and that illustrations like my Matilda portrait had a much nicer aesthetic. I also got comments that some of my developed drawings where more rigid looking than the previous sketches - which I had to agree. I understand that people have different preferences about colour but I didn’t particularly feel the ones I had chosen where that bold, also when taking into account the bright colours of some of the more recent Roald Dahl covers that are already out there.

Having said that I was still looking for a feedback on that because I was unsure. The style of Matilda was quite neutral and maybe more relaxed that I wanted to approach the brief with, I didn’t think it met with the specifications of being an exiting new vibe for them.

I needed to find a mid-ground that retained my sketchy qualities and a colour palette that didn’t overpower my illustrations.

Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN

These are some of the sketches that formed my final outcomes along with more colour experimentation. I stuck with using pencil crayons because they gave me a nice textual look and retained their hand drawn qualities when scanned and coloured under. I also kept the sketchy feel by not going full colour, and taking on board my feedback - I decided to go primarily with using accents of pastel primarys which have a fresh feeling to them without being overly ‘acidic’ looking.

Roald Dahl Literary Estate - YCN These are my final three illustrations that I submitted to YNC. The last concern I had with these was how I was going to place the Roald Dahl Logo - which was required. I was provided with a few different options of layout and colour etc. in the project pack, the mandatory was that the logo needed to be visible and complimentary. Dealing with digital type or design layout isn’t my forte so I was stuck for a while on that, eventually I decided to just keep in simple. I colour picked an accent colour in each and used the same chalky textures I’d used throughout. I think it’s effective but not overpowering.

Overall I’m very happy with how they sit together cohesively after having so many colour concerns along the way - I really enjoyed working on this brief and this new way of working I developed for myself. In the future I will definitely continue to experiment with combining my traditional sketches with digital media/colour.