Starting this brief I read the mandatory requirements first off and went from there. The brief asked for a series of illustrations depicting scenes from Roald Dahl novels. The brief requests that there be one child character, one villain character and one fantastical creature from any of Roald Dahl's children's novels.
I began researching which novels I felt had the best characters for me to illustrate in a scene. I felt that the best characters for me to illustrate would be those that are more well known and that have with them certain objects that could be symbolic representations of scenes in a given novel.
The novels that I decided would have the best characters and scenes to illustrate were as follows; James and the giant peach - fatastical creature, Mr Twit - Villain character, George's Marvellous Medicine - child character.
For my 'fantastical creature' character I chose the Old Green Grasshopper of james and the giant peach. I began sketching out ideas for the character first off by using a very loose expressive technique - similar to that of Quentin Blake the Illustrator of many of Roald Dahl's novels, I did this because i wanted to make my work to befit the brief and the Roald Dahl's key demographic. I felt that a looser illustration style might work better than something that is more composed due to it having a more playful approach to it.
As this was only an experiment I moved on to experimenting with a more considered approach. What I think did not work well with this loose experiment is that it doesnt encapsulate much of character that we find when we read the book or watch the film adaptation of it.
This image is the second experiment using a more considered approach to line and defining the features of the face, whilst still being loose in the application of colour. With this attempt I felt like it was an improvement on the depiction of the character in relation to his apparent candidness and approach-ability in the story. However i was still not satisfied with the composition of the different parts of his face - it felt too busy and difficult to understand what each feature was, especially to a younger audience.
This Next image Is the character design that I would bring through into further developmental work as i think that it is not over complicated and the features are easily recogniseable.
Whilst developing how I would envisage the character I was also concerned how I might depict a scene from James and the giant peach. An idea that came to mind was to show the scene where the grasshopper is atop the giant peach and playing music whilst James listens.
This idea really stuck in my mind and I felt that it would really be a recogniseable scene to have illustrated from the novel.
I experimented with putting the character in different poses playing his instrument, trying again to incorporate a more expressive approach to bring out a more natural stance - however this was not what was achieved due to being out of practice with figurative drawing.
The sybolic element of this illustration would have to be the giant peach. So I feel i was right to be concerened how i put this across to the audience. I thought about having the peach just out of full view showing the stalk as a signifier for what this big orange thing could possibly be.
I then decided that this idea would not be obvious enough/ would not communicate very well the scene that I was trying to illustrate.
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