Tuesday, 24 February 2015

COMPETITION BRIEF 2 / MacMillan _ YCN

Macmillan_ YCN 

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Alice in Wonderland illustrations. 


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After reading the brief, I decided to read the book. I know the story, well, but I thought reading it over again and understanding the language and seeing how the story was written would help me to decide the scenes I wanted to illustrate and getting a better understanding of how they could look
    by conveying the language. I had the book at home, so this was fairly simple.

This also refreshed my memory of the illustrations that were used in the book.

There are so many wonderfully imaginative scenes within the story, but two by far stood out to me.


Choice of illustrations_

- Caterpillar Scene
- Croquet Scene
 

Research_  Caterpillar

 



























Croquet Scene_





















I had the idea to create decorative boarders for my illustrations, as this was something a bit different and could potentially work really well. 


I started by making 3 different outlines for frames, printing them off and then completed one half of the design to then scan in and flip to complete a symmetrical frame.  




These are how they turned out, I was very happy with these.









Now that the frames that would surround the illustrations were done it was a matter of creating the illustrations to go inside. 

My idea for the front cover was to try and capture, Alice hiding behind the Queen of Hearts servants, peering over the top. 


I made rough sketches of how the composition could work. 





I started getting frustrated with the cover design idea, so I decided to move on to a different one. 

This one was of the flamingos and hedgehogs. I drew these out and added colour to the flamingos with water colours.

I then scanned this in and played around with different layouts and compositions, within the frame.  

















































I felt like the image needed something else, so played around with a fineliner to see if anything worked. 











































Still not feeling like this was right I tried out other ways of creating the illustration. 











































I liked the idea of having a digital block colour, but also like the illustrative pen work I did before so then decided to put these two together.

I created a much larger hand drawn illustration of the flamingo, this was I could get more detail into it. Then placed colour behind it, and within the frame.













































I really liked how this came out however, felt that the frame was too simply and not quite up to scratch to fit with the illustration style. So I decided to re-do the frame. I did this the same way as I did the initial ones. 





I loved the result of this, so went ahead and created more frames for the other illustrations. 













































The outcomes_








For the illustrations for the next two frames. I decided to think of as many iconic objects from the book. 

Rabbit
Teapot/cup/saucer
Tulip
Shisha pipe
Card
Tart
Hedgehog
Gryphon
Lobster
Mouse


I thought the idea of a teapot could work well in this style. So tried this out. 














I had a few days break from this project and then came back to it. Although I liked the illustrations, I felt that to two inside illustrations needed to portray more of a story. I felt like it worked better as a print than an addition to a story to help convey it. 



I also needed to placed the title with my cover illustration.

I started by testing a few different typefaces to see what might work, and then I printed off my favourite, with just an outlines stroke so that I could put detail into the letters. I then placed this with the frame with the flamingo design and also tried testing it out on a book.  












I was now really happy with my cover design so I went back to thinking about the other illustrations. 

As before I felt like the illustration needed to convey more of a story, and work more as a book illustration. I thought about different scenes, and flipped through the book again. 

The gryphon scene stood out, as I feel like its one that isn't always remembered but is one of the best. So I decided to draw a gryphon and see how this could look within the frame.






































































Again sadly I didn't feel like this worked very well. 


So I went back to brainstorming again. 

As I liked the frames, and thought it bought something different to the brief whilst also fitting with the cover design, I thought that maybe if the illustration inside was more integrated into the frame then possibly it may look better as opposed to more of a print design. 


I started by drawing the white rabbit, walking into the distance with a pocket watch falling from the top. I liked this idea and felt I was moving forward, and this design was definitely an improvement on the last ones. I created different variations of this to try and keep improving it.    









I also tested the design inside the other frame but I definitely thought the other frame worked better with the composition. 

I was at a point now where I felt like I had taken a big step forward but it was finished, or perfect yet. 




The next day I came back to the designs. As I was still not happy with where I had got to, I was in two minds whether to go back to the drawing board or to try and continue the designs I already had. 


I had a think about what I wanted to do. I had always loved the flamingo drawing I had done, so this was a certain design that I wanted to use. I was looking at my wall of illustrations I had done to find inspiration. Looking at the illustrative type I had done, I wondered whether I could use this in anyway as I felt it was a strong area of illustration for me. 
I thought I could produce a typographic cover, with the letter 'A' and then have my flamingo illustration as the interior piece. 

The typographic letters I had done, include pencil shading, and I wanted the cover and the illustration to work as a set, so I decided to shade in parts of my flamingo drawing and the frame it is sat within. 





I scanned these in, then placed them in photoshop to take out the background and parts of white within the drawing. 




I was then able to put pink behind the flamingos, and play around with colour and how this would feature with the illustration. 







I then created the typographic A for the cover. This was Alice in Wonderland themed, with the suits of playing cards intertwined into it. 

I also wrote out the title of the book in the same fashion. 










For colour with the cover I chose to use a pastel blue, as this was significant to Alice, with her iconic blue dress and 'Alice' band. 





I also added in Lewis Carroll, in the same format as the title. 

I played around a lot with composition and layout for the cover and tried mocking it up to give me a better idea on how it may look. 







I then thought that would the cover work with a frame, like the illustration. So I took one of my previously drawn frames and again added shading so then all worked together. 

Then I added this into the layout, and experimented ways this could work within the cover. 










I was now at a point when I had a cover design I was happy with and an interior illustration that I was happy with, I just needed to decide on final layout designs before submitting. I slept on it, before coming back and making my final decision. 

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I felt clear with my illustration design on how the colour should work, there was one design that I felt was clearly the strongest so that decision was made. 





For the cover I had worked it down to two possible designs. 









I spent a long time just looking at both of these designs trying to decide which one I preferred and was stronger. After a long deliberation, I made decision to chose the framed cover. I strongly liked both designs, however something was drawing me to this one more than the other. 


Preparing for submission_


Pan MacMillan wanted the cover design, with and without the sticker logo on it, and the illustration all in a pdf format of 215mm x 270mm. As an extra board, I decided that I would include a mock up of the cover where I could briefly explain the designs I had done. 






Submitting_


It was then time to submit my designs on the YCN website. 








Evaluation_

This brief interested me heavily from the start, as the book is a childhood favourite and illustration is something I am doing more and more of. I did really enjoy doing the brief, however I did spend a lot of time going back and forth. I playing around with so many ideas, I felt my ideas were slightly all over the place. Although this did mean I spent a lot of time getting to the right outcome that I was happy with. I was pleased with my final outcomes, I thought they offered something different that hadn't been done before, and could 'enchant a whole new readership.' 


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