Project 3

I want to design a set characters with a high level of detail to push and expand my skills. Children’s Illustration is the industry I am most interested in, I kept that in mind when creating a brief for this project. For this project I am to design 3-4 characters for a children’s story, the story I have chosen is “Father Frost". I must show research into other artists styles and sketches of my ideas. From this research and sketches I must produce 3-4 fully rendered images. 

I have chosen three characters to focus on and if I have time I will work on the final three. The three I have chosen are Father Frost, the poor father and his daughter the nice girl. Here are some basic sketches of ideas I have been working on for each character. 

Finished Book Cover

Finished book cover design "The Brave Tin Soldier"

Finished Vignettes

All Three completed Vignettes.

Enhancments

Each image has been enhanced in different ways, some methods are similar and some images require less editing than others. Here is how I enhanced one of the more complicated images.

I added two more colour layers and set one to “Color” and the other to “Overlay” the combination of the two added more intensity and depth to the colours of my image.

I found a free stock photo online of rippling water for the background. To this layer I added the “Sponge” filter in filter gallery.

To shade the tin soldier I added a second colour layer and used the dodge and burn tools to add shadows and highlights. These tools on a high strength can add very intense tones, which gave the soldier a shine and tin like appearance.  

In the previous image I felt the fish and water looked disjointed, as if they were two separate images and the fish was not submerged in it but simply on top of it.

To fix this I added a layer of blue on top of all the other layers set it to multiply and lowered the opacity slightly, giving the image over all a slight blue hue.  

I wanted to give the impression that water was moving fast and the fish was thrashing around to get to the tin soldier.

I found another free stock image online of water splashing and spiraling. In photoshop I edited the water so it looked like it was wrapping around the fish. I used various filters to take away the realistic appearance so it suited the drawing style. I set the water layer to multiply, duplicated it and set the second water layer to overlay to enhance the colours.

 

 

To create the classic children’s book appearance I put each of the images I created into vignettes. This also created a focus to my images and framed them nicely rather than having the images scrawl off the edges of the page.

Processes

I have been working on my vignettes for "The Brave Tin Soldier" I have chosen to use a process called grey scaling to shade and colour my images.

Each image starts with a basic sketch of the idea and then on a new layer I will refine the line art for the final image.  

Using the magic wand tool I select around the line work and inverse the selection, so only the area between the line work can be edited. I add a new layer beneath the line art and fill it in grey, to this grey layer I being to colour in rough shading and highlights, using a darker tone of grey and white. Once all the basic shading has been added I select filter, blur and use “Gaussian blur” to blend the tones together slightly and create a smoother appearance. This method of shading is what I mean by "grey scaling". 

For the colour layer I create a new layer above the line art and set this layer to “Multiply” which allows the shading on the layers beneath to show through.  

Character Design: Brave Tin Soldier

As part of my second project I have to produce 3 different character design sheets.

Paper Ballerina

Tin Soldier

Goblin

Brave Tin Soldier

For my second project I decided to set my own brief based around children's illustration. I searched for existing children's stories, preferably looking for lesser known stories by the general public. I came across "The Brave Tin Soldier" originally written by Hans Christian Andersen. It's based around toys and tells a love story between a tin soldier and paper ballerina. 

I set myself a brief listing various criteria I had to meet for this project. 

•Design a book cover for the children’s story “The Brave Tin Soldier” by Hans Christian Andersen front and back.
•Research children’s artists
•Make character design sheets for three characters in the story
•Sketch image ideas for 3-4 scenes within the story
•Create 3-4 finalised vignettes from basic sketches 

Below are three different ideas for book cover designs.

Owl

I was watching a friend drawing various human expressions, animal eyes and faces as part of a character design project and decided I'd join in as a bit of practice, the image that interested me most was of a close up of an owls face. Here is my version.

Completed Cover

I searched online and fount a free font called "Hazel Grace", I felt it's scrolling edges and almost etched appearance suited the feel of the story. I added a simple boarder that I felt complimented the typography and a few more autumn leaves to connect the inner image with the exterior.

Little Details, Big Difference

For this cover I wanted to create a snowy scene to one side and autumn scene to the other. combining both of these elements was tricky but using varying opacities throughout the different brush tools I feel I was able to achieve a nice blend between the two seasons.

This project has required me to create my own brushes to add the different winter aspects in my image. The two main brushes I created were "Frost" and "Ice", with these new tools I am able to add ice, frost, fog, mist and snow both on the ground and falling from the sky.  

 

To centralise the image and highlight the focus on "Geraldine" rather than the scenery I added a vignette, this also will make adding font and boarders easier later on in the project. 

Intense Shading

Despite probably being the more complicated design of the three, I chose layout 1 having fall transition into winter in the background with a full body image of "Geraldine".

The brief specifically stated that the author wanted a realistic mouse, similar to the style of
Beatrix Potter. I wanted to try create very realistic looking fur and chose to use an old technique I taught myself a long time ago, using a block base colour to fill the image and then one tone dark and one tone lighter to add shadow and highlights. Using a brush on low opacity meant I could add the different tones in gradually building up the different layers.

Page Layouts

After deciding that a Harvest mouse suits the style and setting that Kaufman has written in her book, I worked on different basic layout ideas for how the cover could look.

         Layout 1                                                   Layout 2                                                 Layout 3

Karin Kaufman

For this semester I had find or design commercial briefs to work from. With the help of Jen in college I was able to find some past contests on 99Designs. As the contests had finished I could not enter them but this particular brief appealed to me as it's within the line of work I hope to go into.

The Brief:


"I want an ebook cover that, if possible, can also be used with Amazon's CreateSpace. The title of the book is "The Adventures of Geraldine Woolkins," and the author is "Karin Kaufman."I'd prefer not to use a photo, at least as the main element. Rather, I'd like an illustration of the book's main character, a young female mouse. I'd like the mouse to look detailed in a *realistic* Beatrix Potter way, and I'd like her to be in a dark brown coat (not the same tone of brown as her fur). I'd also prefer not to have a dark/ominous cover. Also, the stories in the book are set from mid October to late December -autumn leaves to winter snow.It's important to me that the cover NOT look like a typical children's "cartoony" cover. This book is really for adults to read to children, and even to read themselves, so it can't have that pre-school look to it. Other than that, feel free to be creative with everything else! Below I'm attaching three covers that strike me as interesting for the way they look -- more for their flavour than anything specific in them (probably don’t want a dark, nighttime cover as in the last two illustrations)." 

Before starting the actual layout ideas I decided I wanted to try my hand at drawing a variety of mice species to help me decide which one best fit the story settings and themes. 

Messing Around

Quick doodle in Photoshop, testing out different shading techniques, lighting effects and some different brushes.

New Year

Happy new years! Random doodle. A gift from me to you (: