Narrative Illustration/ Evaluation

This project simply began with a Brief and list of novels to choose from. The task was to create at least Ten Illustrations to accompany the text of your chosen book. A cover for the book was also required. After some thought I chose “James and the Giant Peach” by Roald Dahl as it was one of my favourite novels as a child. Also I struggle with reading and by choosing a shorter book that I was familiar with I was relieving myself of a lot of unnecessary stress. 

I already owned a copy of the book, so I began reading it straight away. I read the book twice and also listened to an Audio Book version.  I bookmarked everything I found interesting in the book with sticky notes. This was to help me in the future, I had an idea of what I would illustrate but it would be useful to have everything noted and easily accessible. I find working like this really helpful in the long run as everything is easily available.

Alongside this I began to research the basics of Illustration and depicting text to image. By doing this I began to realise what parts of a story would be illustrated and what would not. Illustrators tended to focus on more important parts of the story whilst ignoring the les visual aspects of the story.

The target age of the book needs to be considered before creating Illustrations. The book was intended for children between the age of 4 and 12. The broad gap is because there are two copies of the same book, a picture book for young children and a novel for slightly older children. This left me with quite an open audience to work with. As long as it was child friendly then it would be ok. I do think my final illustrations are more appropriate for the older children in that range. I think this is because illustrations for young children tend to be a bit softer in tone compared to my Illustrations.

After reading the book I decided to watch the movie interpretation. I was in two minds weather or not to do this in case it influenced my development work. In the end I did watch the movie but I wasn’t too impressed. The animation was good and I liked the character designs but there were too many changes to the story in my opinion. I think it was good that I watched the movie but looking back it really didn’t help me with my development.

Mid-century is an Art Style I have been looking into for quiet some time now. I wanted to incorporate this style into my Illustrations. I looked into a lot of different examples and tried to understand how the style was applied. I thought it would be good for me to work in an entirely different style for a project as it may broaden my horizons artistically. I also thought the narrative of James and the Giant Peach would suit this blocky look.

When I began my artist research I firstly wanted to look at the work of other illustrators who have worked on James and the Giant Peach. They were Quentin Blake and Nancy Ekholm Burkert. By analysing their work I was also trying to understand why they chose those parts to illustrate and how they interpreted the text. I also wanted to understand how they differed in their interpretations.

As well as the Book Illustrators I also looked into more mid-century by studying the work of Charley Harper, Tove Janson, Maurice Noble and Robert Gillmor. Looking at their Illustrations made me realise how imported colour can be to an image, especially to a blocky style like mid-century. I was also trying to understand their techniques as guidance for when I would attempt working like this. Most of their work was painted but the block work of Tove Janson was achieved through printing.

To have a choice of reference I looked at contemporary children’s book Illustrators Shaun Tan and Julie Morstad. These Illustrators both use a lot of sombre colour palates in their work. I found very interesting as the imagery still looked colourful but very well thought out. At this point I was also trying to understand how Illustrators translate text to image. I realised that the story peeks are almost always depicted as they are the most important parts of a story.

The bug characters in James and the Giant Peach are very important to the story. I wanted them to have interesting designs but before I started drawing I looked at the actual animals they are inspired by. I did my research by looking at some books and appropriate web sites on the internet. The reasoning behind this was that if I understood the animal then I would be able to make a more interesting design. While I was reading up on the animals I was also making some study sketches to use later as reference. 

As the finals needed to be saved in CMYK I wanted to find the difference between CMYK and RGB. It was a small change in colour as CMYC is better for printing whilst RGB is better for digital display. Although common knowledge it’s still an important Fact to know when handling digital images.

I realised that the illustrators I had studied were illustrating peaks from the books they work on. So I wanted to go through my book once again and choose the peaks I would illustrate. I narrowed my choices down to ten important points in the story, which I then book marked in my copy of the book. 

Character design was where I really started to think how my finals could look. This was a fun process where I got to visualise the characters I had been reading and writing about. I got to play with my ideas and try to visualise the narrative. I had to think about the audience at this point as the characters would have to be child friendly.  As most of the characters were insects I tried to make them look less animalistic and more human in appearance, whilst still keeping features of the original animal. I used the same style for all of these designs so the characters would look more natural together. 

Once I had finished designing characters I wanted to play with a Mid-century style. By using gouache and acrylic paint I could achieve the flat look which is associated with the style. Firstly experimenting with the mediums and colours I soon stared recreating my characters in this style. Despite looking good and being fun to produce I felt a bit unhappy with the experimental paintings. I was losing too much of my style by working this way. I know the goal was to work in a different style but I dint feel comfortable working like this. After some thought I decided to scrap the mid-century look altogether and work in a similar style to my character designs.

Choosing colours was made simpler by my experiments with mid-century. I realised how important colour can be to an image. Before this I personally used quiet dim, washed out colours but I began to work with brighter tones. I also found colours which worked well together. I wanted to use earthy tones for my illustrations but keep a bright colour selection to blend into the illustrations. I felt this would also appeal to the audience as they would be young children.

Thumbnails were also used in my design work. To get the illustrations looking right I used a process of elimination, discarding the thumbnails that I did not find appealing. They wear all very rough but that’s all I needed as I was in the very early stages of planning. 

After thumbnails came the mock ups. This is where I combined bits of thumbnails or redrew them in a more clear depiction. These would be used in the production of my final pieces, so I wanted them to look right. Again they looked quite rough but I only wanted the composition and basic shape of the illustration. Theses sketches would be incredibly helpful in the next stage of development.

I found doing the illustrations was made much easier with the use of my mock ups. For my line work I used a light box, which meant I could use the mock ups as a guideline. Although most of them lacked detail they provided enough to base the illustrations on. When the line work was completed I used water colour paint to colour the finals. I used the same colours I had found in my earlier experimentation. The colours were a bit off in some of the finals but I still liked the results, I used Photoshop to enhance and clean the finals. This was preparing them for final entry and making them look their best. I repeated this process with my book cover design. 

This project has been an interesting one for me. I have gone through spats of enjoyment and struggled in parts if I am to be honest. What I have learned about colour will be incredibly useful to me for a long time and I think some of these finals show my best use of colour. The character designs are another aspect I’m happy with. I think they work well together and were satisfying to draw.  I have also learned about the construction of a professional illustration. This would include the importance of bleeds, CMYK and different scanning techniques. The experiments I did with Mid Century were an eye opener to using different approaches and use of Mediums such as gouache and acrylic.

Overall I have enjoyed this project, I have learned a lot and am happy with the final outcomes.