Initial Story Ideas

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Jess Claxton

Firstly I tried to come up with a story for my book and then develop the illustrations from there. I found it quite difficult to come up with an actual story. I had parts of a storyline that I wanted to incorporate but did not know how to put this into a full plot. Initially, I wanted to write a story around inequality but eventually decided against this and focused on the topic of death and grief.

My first idea was to focus on a young girl with her parents. One of the girls parents would pass away and she would be followed around by a dark storm cloud, indicating her sadness. However, as the story progresses the cloud starts to disappear and it eventually passes, showing her becoming happy again.

These were my original notes for writing my story:

Beginning

Happy family – shows them doing things together

Middle

Her dad dies. She is shown doing all the activities she’d do with her dad but she is followed around by a rain cloud

End

The rain cloud starts to disappear and everything becomes brighter and colourful again.

This is the main character that I had drawn.

I found it quite difficult to draw people and ended up moving on from this idea, although I am not entirely sure why as I quite like it.

Researching children’s books

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Jess Claxton

I don’t particularly have much interaction with children’s books anymore, so I did not know a huge amount going into this project so I thought that it was best to research them thoroughly before I began.

I started by looking at a few children’s books that I remember from my childhood.

I wanted to do a children’s book that involved fairly simple illustrations as I like these style of drawings, and I can’t draw so they would be easier for me to do.

I also looked into different illustrators that I liked that followed the simple style that I wanted to use.

Alexandra Ball

I liked this style of illustrations as they are fairly simple but they feature various textures that make them more interesting.

Duncan Beedie

Again, I liked the simplicity of these illustrations and feel that these are something that I could use in my own.

(this particular image was the one that gave me my inspiration for my story)

Xiao Xin

I liked the use of colours in a few of these illustrations.

Project 4

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Jess Claxton

The fourth project is design and make an illustrated children’s book that deals with a difficult topic, for example death, conflict, anger or inequality. The book has to be suitable for children of my chosen age range, but must be between three and eleven. I must choose the dimensions and format of the book, the topic, the style of illustrations and the balance between text and image.

My initial thoughts on this project was to base my story around inequality, as I thought that this would be easy to illustrate, although I am unsure of a storyline.