Characters

As well as the giant in the story, there is of course a handful of animals and now a boy. Drawing a boy genuinely scares me, and after many many many attempts this little guy was created. I made him in parts and stuck him together on photoshop. I like that he is pretty unbalanced looking and that his arms are in a completely ridiculous position - much like some of the animals I have been creating. The scenes he was storyboarded for, would have had views of him front on, side on, and behind, and I think his simplicity would have helped make this work. I really want to do that page. I might do it RIGHT NOW.

The animals kinda developed from my obsession with repeatedly drawing bears in Christmas jumpers, these bears have been really simple, and either collaged or just simple line drawings. They needed to be more in this story I felt, but I had no idea how to create them, or what would work. I eventually went for some scratchy crayons, they need tweaking on photoshop, most of their arms are disappearing into nothingness. An idea from a crit was to take the idea of animals and clothes further and perhaps reflect some of the stories origin through the use of traditional Ukrainian folk clothing, I did a lot of research and found that the dresses and waistcoats worn were quite detailed, I gave it a go on a mouse, but I just couldn't get it to work.

Pick Me Up!

We went to the Pick Me Up show at Somerset House today and it was realllly cool. There were some just awesome things. We especially liked the area were all the collectives were hanging out and selling there work, it was like a dream.

Below is some work by Paul Blow, his work was some of my favourites in the show, I like everything about the piece below. I think it's his use of colour and composition, I especially like the yellow sky. He has done a lot of work for the Independent and the Guardian. And I just thought it was awesomes.

Also all of the things for sale smelt like the best kind of ink and paper combination ever.

Print workshop and rubber stamps.

We had a royal visit to college and got to spend the day in the print workshop. I really should visit the print workshop more often because I do always create useful things. We were experimenting with letterpress, and I focused on the animal names of the story as they are so inventive and a key part to the tale, I also like the idea of the text being part of the image, rather than just stuck on top in a boring font. I also think the language used in the story is key to its charm and it should be emphasised.

After the print workshop I decided to dig out a couple of rubber stamp alphabets I have and elaborate on the animal's names, I like that the different use of colour, positioning of the stamps in relation to each other can reflect the character. Like the mouse, is simple and dainty, where has Snout Rout Boar is boystrous and pretty dark.

I really hope to include these bits and pieces in my final images, letterpress or rubber stamp, or even hand drawn/painted. Maybe I should look at that next!

Giant.

I basically avoid drawing people at all costs, and this problem was quite tricksie with having such a giant in the narrative now. I initially started drawing him from behind (for some retarded reason i figured this was easier), and he was cool but he was missing something. I had a tutorial and we came to the conclusion that he was not LUMBERING enough, so I set about creating a lumberer.

I like how he looks a bit gormless, and a little spindly, not your usual stereotypical hefty giant.

Mitten not oven glove.

A encountered a quite HUGE problem with the main part in this story. THE MITTEN. I could not create one, I could not draw one, I could not even thinkk. I just kept creating oven gloves, which are entirely different things. I think I was quite worried about the quality that the image had to portray too, it had to be knittedy, soft,and it also had to be in a position in which animals could crawl into and I just couldn't get that across, I tried really detailed drawing, painting, collage, a bunch of triangles stuck together and I just couldn't do it, nothing was working. Until...

I decided not to focus on the outside straight away and instead focus on the interior, the idea that there would be a selection of various animal eyes blinking into the darkness and a bunch of animal feet poking out the bottom. So I painted what felt like a hundred black ink mittens and oven gloves, selected the best one and photocopied it. I used the hand feed on the photocopier, onto this really lovely greenygrey sugary like paper, and I got really excited with the result, blown up it created a lovely grainy soft looking texture! So I've been playing around with the inside, the eyes, the feet and I really like the way things are working out.

I'm still however unsure of how the mitten will look on the giant, so i need to figure it out, i used the above technique to make this orangey coloured one and i think witha little more work it could go upon his giant hands.

Trees Trees Trees

These are some of my initial sketches that I did for the story. I filled piles of paper with these various trees, in shades of brown, rust, peach and pale blue. I can't explain where the shape came from, they are just simple, identifiable shapes. I like the starkness, coldness they create and I think in the right composition could create many different scenes of the wintry world I have to create. The two small houses were just simple line drawings of what I think could potentially be the Giants house and the small boys little house, I don't know if they have a place in the story, but I like the idea of adding in detail with some really fine black pen, onto what will be quite a group of cold, sparse looking images before any characters or narrative are added.

Some Inspirational things.

I really love Oliver Jeffers work, I think its beautiful and charming and really simple but really good at telling the reader what it needs to. I think it has a really peaceful, spacious sense of atmosphere and I think that vibe needs to be reflected in my story, perhaps through the use of space and composition, or with a restricted colour pallette?

Julia Pott is completely different from Oliver Jeffers, her work is incredibly detailed and wonderful and beautiful, and ANIMALS IN KNITWEAR. Her work is super complex and at the same time naive. I like the use of detail, especially in the scenes and environments she creates for her animals in her animations. The composition of her pictures are also something I really like they are flat, and wonky yet they have so much depth and detail, they really are just WOW. Her work is also incredibly good at portraying emotions. I really admire her work, and hope to take things that i have learnt from it to my own; need to experiment with composition, adding really fine detail to blank areas and thingggs.

New brief - ebook time!

Got a new brief to produce an ebook, the idea is that we stick to a children's story so there is potential for entering the Macmillan prize with the end product. After much dithering about stories, I decided it was definitely best to use a story that already exists rather than try and create a narrative - as we had to last year, very unsuccessfully. Stephy told me about a story called 'The Mitten', its a traditional Ukrainian folk tale,about a mitten, that all kinds of forest animals clamber in to shelter, with various interpretations and variations. The version I found was really lovely, and has amazing language, with words like HULLO! And the animals in the book have really visual names, like Howly Prowly Wolf, Snout Rout Boar and Munch Crunch Mouse. However there are some flaws in the narrative, like how on earth do they all fit in the mitten! After a tutorial with Johnny, he suggested that it belong to a giant who has lost it, and I think this works much better. Another problem was the ending, in the traditional version, a hunter comes by and shoots the mitten, in another the bear causes the mouse to sneeze and the mitten shatters. I thought about it for a while and did some more dithering, but decided that perhaps a Boy is walking in the forest and comes across what would be quite a scary sight, a GIANT mitten with a multitude of legs, and being inquisitive he pokes and prods the "monster", when out of the distance getting louder is sound of very large footsteps, immediately he is just as scared as the animals inside the mitten and they let him in to stay safe.

Im really looking forward to getting stuck into this one, i must STORYBOARD. I'm thinking green sugar paper, brown, rust, baby blue, newspaper, graph paper and pencil crayons!!

This is just a quick forest based thing I did, I quite like it.