Research
The majority of my research for this project focusses on children’s book illustrators, the methods they use and how they interpret the stories they are responding to. The main focus of my book is character so I wanted to look at illustrators who successfully communicate emotion through facial expressions, posture and colour. Starting this project I felt that I didn’t know enough about composition. I wanted to learn more about how to position key elements on a page, how to highlight focal points and and simply what makes a composition appealing. At the start of this project I did not feel like I knew enough about combining illustrations and text successfully. I looked at a number of illustrators that use a variety of different methods that I thought were successful both in communicating the narrative and compositionally. I read interviews with a number of practitioners to investigate how they approach their work. I wanted to know more about their processes and theories regarding interpretation of the narrative, colour theory and target audience.
Experimentation I experimented with different techniques and aethetics for this project. I struggled to create anything I was happy with. When I started this project I was stuck in a bit of a rut. I felt I had made some improvements to my practice in previous modules and wanted to push forward. I had been working a lot with cut paper and decided to try and combine that process with digital brushes and traditional media. Because I was struggling I think I spent too much time working on a variety of contrasting styles. I struggled to find direction and the purpose of my illustrations became lost. The dog character posed some challenges as I wanted to keep the dog entirely white to maintain the apprearance that he could be mistaken for a polar bear. The problem was that working with shapes meant that it limited the amount of detail I was able to add to the character to distinguish the different parts of him or distinguish him from the background. Although this process was frustrating I feel like I learnt some valuable lessons and gave myself obstacles to try and overcome. Pushing my practice in new directions, even when it didn’t work, helped to come up with new ideas regarding composition and character deisgn. The dog character in particular forced me to change how I think about posture, shape and facial expressions. I then had to create a landscape that would allow the all-white character to stand out and be the focal point for the page.
Process The first breakthrough I had in the development of this project was the trees. In previous illustrations I had always created trees as silhouettes, flat objects in the background. I wanted to find a way to add more depth and detail to them so they could become a more prominent part of the composition. This starting point pushed the project forward. I now had a bright and bold backdrop that would allow the dog character to stand out. I started to experiment adding colour to backgrounds of each page to make the characters even bolder. However I decided that the extra colour made the compositions feel closed in, heavier and almost claustrophobic. The white background gave a feeling of space. The main issue throughout the book was finding a way to silhouette the white dog against the landscape as the background was also white. I changed the colour of the trees and added a foreground of stones and flowers to help isolate the dog from the white surroundings and also add more depth and grounding to the composition so that it did not feel like it was floating in the centre of the page. The other characters in the book are bright bold colors and designed to stand out on the white background almost acting as the negative of the dog pages. I added more details to the characters than I usually do as I feel my drawing loses something when made into shape-based illustrations. I wanted their clothing, their posture and their facial expressions to help communicate the narrative. The mother in the image is striding forward more confidently than the child who looks apprehensive.
Final Outcomes These are my six final outcome. I illustrated 5 double page spreads and a poster to advertise the book. In these illustrations I have simplified the colourway of the trees. I think it helps to make the dog stand out and manages to maintain the depth of the background. I added shadows to the trees, rocks and characters to give more of an impression of space, depth and the connection between character and landscape. I added texture to the characters to give them a more crafted feel and make them feel like solid (real) objects within the composition. The addition of tones and textures to the mother and daughter helps communicate their emotion and give them more character. I wanted it to be clear that the text on the pages was the thoughts and words of the characters so I decided to use thought and speech bubbles. The speech bubbles would normally be white but they would have got lost in some of the white background and broken up the compositions when placed over the landscape. I decided to use a big bold font for the lettering. The book is aimed at helping children to learn so I wanted to make the narrative as accessible and easy to understand as possible. The text in the book is quite simple. It is not arranged in full sentences as it is mainly the thoughts of the dog character so I wanted the text to have impact. The text will often be read by an adult to a child so I wanted the big bold lettering to encourage them to be big and bold with their acting.
Products These are my proposed products for my illustrations, the primary outcome being the book itself. This is the product that the illustrations were designed specifically for and the main focus of my practice. I did not manage to finish the entire book as part of the project but I plan on continuing and finishing the book over the summer. I would like to experiment more with layouts and book binding to learn more about the processes and possibilites for the application of my work. My other proposed products are made up of promotional material such as tile book bags that could be used as advertising for the book or sold alongside it. I also mocked up some children’s clothing. The clothing could be sold alongside the book and would appeal to both children who are fans of the book and their parents/guardians. I thought about products like clothing, toys and soft furnishings because they could be significant additional products that could expand my practIce and customer base. I didn’t want to focus on generic products like book marks and mugs that mostly end up being throw-away items.
Evaluation I struggled with this project. I was stuck in a rut at the beginning and spent a long time trying out different processes and styles to try and find an aesthetic I was happy with. I made a range of illustrations that I felt were either moving away from where I wanted to take my practice or that weren’t appropriate for the subject matter. I think I was relying too much on processes I had used for previous projects and was concentrating on making improvements and changes to my practice rather than creating work tailored to the project proposal. One thing that did help me a great deal in this project was creating multiple storyboards, refining them each time and working to a book template. This helped me to understand creating work for a set purpose and a set of guidelines. I had to use the template to provide structure for my illustration planning and for the way I interpreted the subject matter and applied my research. I think working on this structure helped me to focus back on the purpose of my work and concentrate on communication and composition. I started to research practitioners that create children’s books. I wanted to see how they use visual symbols to help them tell the story, how they show emotion in their characters and how they create a relationship between their illustrations and text. The practitioners that I looked at use a variety of contrasting techniques. In books where the text was entirely made up conversation between the characters the text was placed within the illustration to create a relationship between the words and the character who said them. Where the text was a description of the scene the text was separated from the illustration and often placed on the opposite page. Both of these methods have benefits and drawbacks but they have been applied to best suit the narrative they are communicating. It appeared to me that the practitioners had tailored their illustrations to the narrative, employing problem solving skills to respond to the needs of the brief they were set. I wanted to apply the same method to my own practice for this module so I looked back at my project proposal to get a better perspective and remind myself of my aims. In my proposal I set myself the aim of creating a “bold, fun, colourful” book that would appeal to children. My illustrations up to that point had been too dark and didn’t fit the aesthetic of a children’s book. I kept roughing characters and landscapes concentrating on bold interesting shapes and emotive characters. The aesthetic for my book came from a set of trees I drew, and became the starting point for the entire book. This felt like a huge breakthrough at the time and made me feel much more positive about the project. The problem was that this was just as we started the Easter break and I realized I had work to do for other modules. I took a break from the project and when I came back to it I had lost momentum and direction. It took me a while to refocus. I started to doubt my work again but group crits and discussions with tutors helped me to once again gain some perspective and rediscover the positives in my work and where I needed to make changes. I had started to doubt everything I was doing and was panicking because time was running out, so getting some feedback helped me to step back and gain the perspective I needed to make decisions and finish my illustrations. My time management in this brief was not good. I think my work would have benefited from more refinement and I feel I rushed the finishing touches. I would also have liked to spend more time experimenting with materials and processes involved in applying my illustrations to products. In future projects I think I should refer back to my proposal on a regular basis and try to take a step back whenever I start to second guess decisions I have made. I think this module has helped me to improve my practice and expanded my understanding of applied illustration. However, I would not see my work as wholly successful. I want to continue to work on my illustrations, complete the book and explore the processes involved in creating the finished product.