8x8

For the 8x8 brief I was assigned to a story called "Save You" by Cheryl Scott. The story is told from a girl worried about her grandmother who suffers from Alzheimers and has had to live in an elderly home because of it.
I came up with several ideas mostly based around loss of information and trapped/contained.

For my main illustration I decided to go down the loss of information route.

I am really happy with this result. The image is showing the gran as she was before and then the shredder reprisents how she is slowly losing who she is. I think it works well because we assosiate shredders with getting rid of personal information and this is what happens to a person's mind when they suffer from Alzheimers.

After speaking with fellow students, Gary and Jo, I became aware of some improvement that could be made. They weren't aware that the gran is surposed to be made from paper. They suggested I try having the gran as an image on a piece of paper being shredded.

This is what I came up with as an improved version of the first image. I'm not as happy with this one because the paper dosen't look right to me and also the character has had to be reduced in size drastically to fit in the paper. After seeing this version Jo suggested I try having the gran as a polaroid photograph instead of on paper. A polaroid photograph would reprisent a memory much better than a printed image. I intend to create a 3rd version of this image during this week. If I feel the first image is still stronger then that will be the one I submit as my final.

For the spot illustration I decided to go with the idea of being contained.

I assosiate grans with collecting buttons and other bits and bobs. My initial idea was to have a jam jar filled with lots of little interesting things and then to have some of the objects in grey scale to show somekind of loss.

This didn't feel obvious enough so I discussed my idea with Jo and she suggested using a jewellry box or a locket. I really liked the locket idea because it's a contained photo and it's also something I assosiate with memories.
This is what I have come up with so far and I'm really happy with it. I can't see anything that needs changing yet but shall seek feedback asap...

More monsters!

Have been trying out a new working method to give my monsters more personality. These monsters were designed around an object or word rather than just from my own head.
Here are a few examples of how they are looking so far...

...Spanner...

...Triangle...

... Hedgehog...

Deborah Allwright

Came across the work of Deborah Allwright here in a featured artist artical on AOI Portfolios.

http://http//www.aoiportfolios.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=775&Itemid=101

Instantly fell in love with her work. Really love the exciting compositions and the use of textures. Her work is a perfect mix of hand drawn and digital. She creates her images first and then puts them together digitally.
Her work has made me want to be more experimental with textures and has also made me realise that backgrounds are VERY important with children's book illustration. Her images show the worlds that these characters live in very well and would help a child to feel more involved in the story.

The above image is my favorite of all the work i've seen by this illustrator. The use of graph paper for the buildings and then again in the below image for the sky is genius!

More Monsters

Here are a few new monsters... Still think they need to have more individuality to them.

Monsters Improved

Have just been playing around with the monsters using part texture and part block colour. Have also decided to try them with different eyes... Here is how they will be looking in the final versions. Will add highlights to the monsters using a white paint pens once they are mounted on the glass.


The white areas will remain see-through on the glass... So anyone standing behind this monster will appear inside the mouth.

Music Brief: More inspiration

Another children's tv series I have been influenced by is "Chowder" created by C. H. Greenblatt. I really love the use of textured patterns in her work. The characters each have textures for their clothing that remain static as the characters move around.

My characters are also made up from painted textures to give them more depth. I really like the idea of just having cirtain parts textured. I will experiment with just having the monsters fur textured and their horns, eyes and claws as block colour.

Music Brief: Inspiration

I have really been inspired by Craig McCracken's work for the cartoon series "Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends". His characters are so different to look at and yet you can still tell they are all part of the same world.

http://cmcc.deviantart.com/gallery/

Here is a link to his online gallery on DeviantArt.com.

His work seems to be produced digitally, however the lines are done in a hand-drawn style. This really appeals to the way I have been working recently, combining digital with traditional styles.