The Brief
Beginning this project I knew I wanted to focus on children’s book illustration as this is where I usually find my main inspirations and enjoyment of illustration comes from. Choosing the Macmillan brief to base my project proposal on was a way in which I could lay down a solid foundation before I’d started the project to guide me and keep me from losing focus. I found I had two options with picking a story, that was to chose an already existing one or too collaborate with a writer on a new story, I decided to investigate both and began by posting a query on the forum of the ‘Writers & Artist’s Yearbook’ website. However the story’s I received I found to be sub-par and therefore I decided to illustrate an existing story!
The Beginning I chose the poem ‘The Owl & The Pussycat’ because I have fond memories of learning it as a child. It is a simple story which is full of silliness and nonsense which provides great illustrative material. I decided to begin this project by working out the characters first. I began quite rough, just letting idea’s run onto the page, something I’ve learnt this past year is that there is always more paper, it doesn’t matter what comes out of the pencil, just keep doing more!
The Cat
These green circles show the ‘yes moment’ in the development of my cat character. I found the cat very easy to develop because I’d spent so much time drawing them on my last module.
The Owl
It’s at this stage of my developmental work that this project began to steer away from book narrative and became much more focused on the character development, I never expected to get so involved with the character design aspect of my brief but it was a very additive process trying to form not just the aesthetics of character but beginning to look at how personality and identity comes through, subtle quirks which make a character both life-like and endearing. So I drew until I felt like I actually knew these two!
The Story
Even though I was spending most of my time developing the characters I still had the story in mind, roughing out the story was helpful in making the characters real, seeing how their personalities interact on the page after having drawn these characters out so many times was really awesome. I know that when it comes to illustrating narrative again I was begin with the character development first as to really know what I’m drawing.
Final Character Designs
I feel like these characters are well developed and have the charm and quirk which I was aiming for. The colour palette isn’t too adventurous but I felt like keeping them in the same hue enhanced their partnership. The bulk of my work is summed up in these two characters, they are my project, and although I didn’t set out to investigate character design I’ve surprised myself by my commitment to properly developing these two. Character design wasn’t an area I saw myself in but crafting these two has been so enjoyable and rewarding that I won’t ever push it aside again.
The Printing
To transfer my designs onto fabric I decided to venture into digital print, I quickly learnt it wasn’t as easy as it looked! I had followed the formatting instructions and decided to go with a disperse ink print as opposed to a reactive ink print as I would have to steam and prep the latter which would have taken longer (but yielded brighter colour results) the colours actually came out much lighter then I had hoped, which I found out was due to the nature of the cotton fabric along along with the saturation not being at the highest point. However I was happy to have my work on fabric and I know how to properly prepare for my next fabric printing adventure.
The Puppets
Before I began to make these I brought my printed fabric to a local haberdashery to seek advice on the best was to construct them, I did already have an idea of how I would build them but I wanted a second opinion. I was advised to make the back and front separate with toy stuffing in each and to then stitch these two sides together. This ended up being difficult as both sides didn’t match up exactly which resulted in the stitching not lining up properly. But as prototypes I am happy with them, it’s just lovely to see my work in 3D form.
I have absolutely loved this brief, it was the brief which I rewarded myself with doing whist I was slugging through all my other work. The points of which I felt my practice grow was the continued repetition of work within my visual journal, I wasn’t precious about my drawing and I let myself be free but at the same time I was working in a methodological way of crafting. Although I didn’t end up completing the Macmillan brief I am happy with how my project ended up, I feel like it’s a great base to grow on next year in which I do plan on completing and submitting to the Pan Macmillan brief. I would have liked my final puppets to have been brighter more professionally crafted but I do understand that they are a prototype and not a finished product for sale and as such they do fit thier purpose. I will keep working on this brief in the summer to produce a fully realised book, this will be good practice for next year and also could go toward a portfolio piece.