Ideas

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Jess Claxton

Although I had moved on from the original story idea that I had, I still wanted to keep it on the topic of death. I got some inspiration from this illustration from Duncan Beedie, which I posted in this post.

I thought that it might be interesting to use animals rather than human characters, it would also be easier for me to illustrate. I came up with a simple story line that focused on two rabbits, one of them dies and it sees the other one becoming lost in the woods during a storm, which links back to my original idea. The story would resolve with the rabbit finding his way out of the woods where it is sunny again and full of colour.

I wanted the characters to look cute so the children liked them but I wasn’t sure at all how to draw them. I googled illustrated rabbits and found various images but many of them were incredibly detailed and far more complicated than I would ever be able to draw. I then found this website. I liked the simplistic way that the rabbits were drawn and wanted to see if I could use a similar style in my illustrations, although I would like to draw the rabbits so that they are recognizable as individual characters, so there must be something different about each rabbit.

I drew out (half) a storyboard to plan out the illustrations that I wanted for my book.

From here I could then start drawing the real illustrations that I would use for my book.

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.

Cut Out

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Jess Claxton

I was beginning to get stuck for ideas again when I found a piece of typography on a poster I have in my room.

I liked the differences between the stroke weights of the letters and so I tried to copy this into my sketchbook, which did not go so well. I then moved on and researched fonts by Tumblr searching it. I came across this font below:

I found the cutout shapes in the letters interesting and wanted to replicate this in my own work. I merged the two fonts that I have been talking about to create a serif font with thick and thin strokes with cutout shapes in the letters.

This is my favourite design so far. There is a lot of work needed to it before it would be a complete, working font, for example, I need to work on the sizes and shapes of all the letters so they are all equal and matching, and I am not happy with the ‘R’ at all, however I think for a first draft of a design I think that it has gone quite well. I like the serifs on the ‘T’ and ‘E’ and I am happy with the shape of the ‘C’, although I do feel that it needs a bit of work (straightening up etc). I am particularly happy with the ‘A’ as I believe that this gives the font a different edge to it and makes it a little bit quirky.

I chose the diamond shape inside the letters to start with just as a shape to put inside as I didn’t want to completely copy the font that I had found. In reflection, it has inspired to me to look into playing cards and the fonts used there and if I continue on with this design I think that my product that my font is designed for would be for a pack of cards, which I will look into in more detail at some point.