Hooray another Giff based on the Book The Wolf Wilder

Final images

Book Cover gif and three illustrations

Smelly dog gif

Contextual piece for digital processes

After looking at the book list and researching the various themes, I decided that the book that interested me was My Family and other Animals by Gerald Durrell. A delightful and entertaining read. Gerry’s mother and her chaotic existence of family life and often over bearing children, with their quirky unique characters on a foreign island sums up the story. I felt this is the sort of book I would like to illustrate.

Primary sources were travel magazines of Corfu where the book was set, my own photos of Corfu and some images from the Internet. I wrote lists/ bullet points of things I thought were of use as images or notes of the characters and scenes in the book. I looked at the era, and location set in Corfu in the 1920-1930’s. Researching fashions, hairstyles, textiles, transport and a little history.

 I experimented with watercolours, gel wax crayons, pencils, collage, textiles, fine liner drawings and photos. Most of my drawings focused on Gerry and his obsession with animals, those he collected as specimens, his pets and various aspects of Corfu’s nature. Things he would use on his mini expeditions including butterfly nets, binoculars, magnifying glass, reference books and microscopes. Various compositions were tried before final thumbnails were decided on.

I didn’t want a vector type style of Illustration and so chose to work in Photoshop for that reason. I scanned the variety of images I was to use and set everything up to work bigger than needed. I would change the sizing later.

I looked at Illustrators who used drawing and pattern in their work. I researched Laurie Hastings and Lauren Child. Although these illustrators use lots of drawing, collage and pattern work, I knew I only wanted to use this in some of my images.

Laurie combines patterns and textures beautifully with digital processes. Despite having a full page she doesn’t overload or overwork her images. This is something I have tried to consider with my images. I really like her collaboration work with the poet David Troupes. I found this image after I had created my student in a hoodie image below in Illustrator. I can see a similarity with the digital colour work and use of sketches.

Lauren Child’s work however had similarities to that of Hastings. She also uses patterns, textures and drawing work but both illustrators have very different styles. Lauren also uses items such as photos, bits of books, magazines and other found things. I think she works in this way because like me, she can see use for things other people would throw away. I have used this same type of image making with the dreams/ nightmares and opposites brief using found photos, textures and drawings. There are pros and cons to using this way of illustrating as it can be very time consuming working on both the analogue and digital side of work.

Another illustrator I researched was Patrick Leger. I chose Patrick because I love his simple vintage style and hand drawn digitally enhanced compositions. He seems to make the most ordinary scene look extra-ordinary. He achieves what I think is key to a good image. It makes you want to see more of it. It questions what’s beyond the border of the picture? What does the woman look like? What does the guy have in the bag? Who or what is he looking at?

His colours reflect the era and style of a bygone age. I have tried to keep this style in my mind when creating my images for the book cover. The colours and loose hand drawn elements I have used help represent the fun, lighted hearted nature of the book.

I struggled to use Photoshop at the start my technique being quite clunky, despite having my notes. As time went on I sped up and recognized my mistakes more quickly. This allowed me to be able to correct my work and feel happier with the results. As my images developed I felt more confident to add things and be bolder with them and the colours I used. I sometimes got a bit lost with knowing what I wanted to achieve, but couldn’t quite remember how to get there. I have had lots of trials and errors before feeling more competent.

Overall I am happy with what I have achieved and in particular like the tea party and smelly dogs images because they are fun. Looking back the tea party image could also have worked as a book cover and a gif.

As I feel more confident with Photoshop now I will find it easier to achieve results quicker. I have found that by using digital processes I have been able to achieve better results than solely by hand.  Experimenting with my images in a more varied and rapid fashion.

In hindsight I feel I should have included more of the processes I have learnt over the past few weeks.  Although I did experiment with the pattern and brush tools with one or two ideas, I didn’t use them in my final images. In the future I would like to use more patterns/textures and some of my found objects, once I find the right project for them. I also need to get more practice with other tools in Photoshop and on Illustrator as this is a useful tool to and would like to use it in the future for possible laser cut imagery.

Bibliography

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Thumbnails

Thumbnails

These are some of the rough ideas i have had for my book cover