Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Exercise: Children's book cover

I went to visit my friend Yuval, a talented artist who is nearly eight, and he showed me some of his favourite books. 
He speaks Spanish, Hebrew and a little English. I love the illustrations in this Hebrew book because they’re clear, colourful and vary in style, some of them being quite surreal 





The map in this one is excellent, as is the characterisation of the animals





 This Spanish book has some wonderful illustrations of animals




and also a great one of the world


 I also love these illustrations by Lucie Mullerova for their simplicity and fairy-tale darkness




 I had this scrap of wrapping paper in my collection featuring some funny vector animals


And I love these illustrations by Federico Delicado (http://www.edicioneseljineteazul.com/web.php?seccion=colaboradores&idioma=es&id=83) in the book ‘Lili, Diango y el sheriff’ which I found at a flea market, for their simple lines and complex colours and textures




My first idea was to design a square cover with animals walking around the circumference of the world but I did a quick web search and this cover on a book published by Dorling Kindersley was one of the first I saw...


 https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRLx50nDbzd0xmBWWJ2oy6mIcxx-S_n8ea3F2OqthmxEACNjs4E

I also like this one by Madeleine Dunphy http://www.mdunphy.com/

 And this one
As well as these animal based ads by Herve Moran:







There are some lovely animal illustrations on this site:
especially this one

WWF site, good source of species info http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/species/
I used their list of priority species to help me choose which animals to include
I also looked at other OCA Illustration students’ work for this project:
And then I made a spider diagram and some thumbnails and sketches, representing each animal with just its head



And did some further research finding these beautiful, charming and incredibly skilfully drawn animal illustrations by Alexandra Ball http://www.illustrationweb.com/artists/AlexandraBall/view which are really inspiring
I decided to make a map of the world by collaging in photoshop, combining this lovely paper as the sea

and this photo I took of a rusty piece of farm equipment as the land mass, 




using a map I found on the internet as a template. I made two versions to cover both book shapes I had in mind...maybe the background colour is too dark for a children’s book?





These are two versions of the first colour line visual, I made digital sketches of the animals with my tablet using my thumbnails sketches as a guide. I think the colours may be too muted for a child audience but the colourful text makes it more eye catching.




So then I played with the map to make the colours a bit brighter and decided to simplify the animal aspect by just including one, I chose the panda because he’s instantly recognisable, striking and ‘monochrome’, and played on the ‘around the world’ part of the title by sketching the panda snuggled up to the globe. Maybe this is too young for the audience age group?



The size of these square covers would be 25cm.
For my third line visual I decided to develop the hot air balloon idea using the wider format version of the lighter map and my tablet sketches from the first LV. Ideally it would have a couple more balloons and animals and the size would be 24x17cm.


I chose simple fonts in lower case for all the LVs to make them more legible.

On reflection:  After an enthusiastic start I found this exercise pretty hard going and had a longish break after doing the thumbnails because I felt stuck. I could blame the upheaval of the festive period but I think this was also because my technical skills lag behind my ideas generation and I balk at having to develop my ideas beyond the thumbnail stage and because there are so many incredibly impressive illustrators for children that I don’t feel I have anything to add in this area. I made a big push today and finished it, which is a relief.

My favourite is the panda design, as it’s the simplest but as I said above I think it might be too young for the target age group.

This was the first time I'd drawn with a tablet and I'm pleased with the result, it's quick, simple and has scope for more complex drawings.

3 months later (April 2013) I was inspired to draw the winking giraffe in the opening credits of David Attenborough's Africa series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acs5Ic2RFuA and have another go at this.

This is my drawing, in charcoal and chalk


and my three line visuals which I worked on in photoshop





                                                   


I much prefer the warmth and humour of the giraffe to the sketches I made with my tablet and out of these three, I think the final image works best, as the close crop exaggerates the height of the giraffe and the text is well spaced. I chose a mix of fonts to make it more lively and appeal more to children.






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