After deciding on writing and illustrating a book, I decided to start looking at different illustration styles and writing styles for the book. My initial idea is that I want to do a dark version of a children's book, aimed at 14 to 18 year olds, so I looked into illustration styles and writing styles that could work.
Illustration
Illustration is something I do a lot in my fee time, I personally love stylised art to an extent, but when it becomes abstract I'm not such a big fan. Since I spend so much time looking at art and drawing I have an extensive knowledge of a lot of drawing styles and techniques.
The genre of art I prefer above all and draw in is anime/manga but my personal style is far more realistic than most as I prefer my art to not look too cartoony. A lot of artists influence me in my personal style, for example Tite Kubo the creator of the manga 'Bleach' and Tetsuya Nomura who designs game characters for Square Enix, but I want to experiment with my style to make a unique version of it specifically for the book so I've been looking into other styles.
Children's books illustration
The first area I looked into was the illustrations used in children's books. Books aimed at children first appeared in the 1600's but the earliest illustrated children's book was made in 1658. Most modern illustrations are often highly stylized and made of simple shapes but back then more realistic illustrations were used. Since I want my book to look old I decided to look more into the style used in the older illustrated books, as the modern children's books illustrations are too childish and it would make the whole thing look amateur, especially if I want to do a grown up/dark take on the story.
I personally really like the work of John Tenniel, the illustrator of Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking glass, I especially like the lack of colour and the reliance on cross-hatching for shading, it gives the work a really original look.
On the other hand the actual style it's drawn in isn't that adventurous and I'd personally like to try something a but more stylised.
Semi-Realism
http://sakimichan.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/#/d4leob0
The second area I looked into was semi-realism, an area I was already interested and experimenting in. The reason it interests me is that it gives the art a realistic feel, but still gives you the freedom to draw fantastical things, I especially love the look of it when it's digitally painted as seen above but I like less realistically shaded pieces too. Drawing in this style would challenging as the more you veer towards realism the harder it is as you have to get every detail correct, because since we are so used to the human face mistakes are obvious.
The downside of drawing in semi-realism is that I don't think it will give me the freedom that stylised can, as even though it looks amazing when fantasy is incorporated into the style it'll be hard to make the fantasy aspects not look out of place. Also if I'm illustrating a whole book then spending ages on every picture making sure I had all the details right it would be incredibly time consuming, and since I want the illustrations to not be coloured a lot of the whole effect would be lost in the lack of shading.
All in all I think it's a beautiful style and would look amazing but I'm not confident that I can produce all the images to the quality I want with the time I have.
Stylised
(From the ending credits to the Disney film 'Tangled')
The third area I looked into was stylised images. Unlike the anime I'm used to these have far less detail and anatomically correctness, instead characters are distorted more to extenuate their most predominate features, which gives each character a unique look. I think this style would be great for any non-human characters I'd have to draw as it would enable me to give them expression too and overall it would give my work a unique look.
Unfortunately I want to do a darker retelling of a fairytale and I think this style would ruin any atmosphere the writing would build up because of it's simplistic nature, I could manipulate it to be more creepy looking though so there is still a possibility to work in this style.
Dolls
The genre of art I prefer above all and draw in is anime/manga but my personal style is far more realistic than most as I prefer my art to not look too cartoony. A lot of artists influence me in my personal style, for example Tite Kubo the creator of the manga 'Bleach' and Tetsuya Nomura who designs game characters for Square Enix, but I want to experiment with my style to make a unique version of it specifically for the book so I've been looking into other styles.
Children's books illustration
I personally really like the work of John Tenniel, the illustrator of Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking glass, I especially like the lack of colour and the reliance on cross-hatching for shading, it gives the work a really original look.
On the other hand the actual style it's drawn in isn't that adventurous and I'd personally like to try something a but more stylised.
Semi-Realism
The second area I looked into was semi-realism, an area I was already interested and experimenting in. The reason it interests me is that it gives the art a realistic feel, but still gives you the freedom to draw fantastical things, I especially love the look of it when it's digitally painted as seen above but I like less realistically shaded pieces too. Drawing in this style would challenging as the more you veer towards realism the harder it is as you have to get every detail correct, because since we are so used to the human face mistakes are obvious.
The downside of drawing in semi-realism is that I don't think it will give me the freedom that stylised can, as even though it looks amazing when fantasy is incorporated into the style it'll be hard to make the fantasy aspects not look out of place. Also if I'm illustrating a whole book then spending ages on every picture making sure I had all the details right it would be incredibly time consuming, and since I want the illustrations to not be coloured a lot of the whole effect would be lost in the lack of shading.
All in all I think it's a beautiful style and would look amazing but I'm not confident that I can produce all the images to the quality I want with the time I have.
Stylised
The third area I looked into was stylised images. Unlike the anime I'm used to these have far less detail and anatomically correctness, instead characters are distorted more to extenuate their most predominate features, which gives each character a unique look. I think this style would be great for any non-human characters I'd have to draw as it would enable me to give them expression too and overall it would give my work a unique look.
Unfortunately I want to do a darker retelling of a fairytale and I think this style would ruin any atmosphere the writing would build up because of it's simplistic nature, I could manipulate it to be more creepy looking though so there is still a possibility to work in this style.
Dolls
By complete accident I came across a very creepy looking doll on the Internet, she had big heavily lashed eyes, red lips and a blank stare and I immediately realised that I wanted this kind of imagery in my illustrations. It still had that young and innocent look but it also had a darker side, so I started to look into dolls. Unlike semi-realism the faces of the dolls were way more simple but still more human looking than the stylised images, and I really liked that as it would transfer well to illustration.
The only downfall is that it is more like how I want the main character to look instead of the rest of the world/cast, so I would have to take inspiration from other sources when drawing other characters.
Creative Writing
After looking into illustration I started to look deeper into different styles of writing. I read a lot in my spare time so I already have a grasp on what kind of style I want, my target audience would be teenagers and as a teenager myself I particularly like the the writing of authors who give their work as specific feel, it's not just 'Barry went to the shop, then he saw Margaret' the writing had its own feel and personality without being in first person so it really stood out. The best example of this kind of writing is the work of an author called Derek Landy.
After looking into illustration I started to look deeper into different styles of writing. I read a lot in my spare time so I already have a grasp on what kind of style I want, my target audience would be teenagers and as a teenager myself I particularly like the the writing of authors who give their work as specific feel, it's not just 'Barry went to the shop, then he saw Margaret' the writing had its own feel and personality without being in first person so it really stood out. The best example of this kind of writing is the work of an author called Derek Landy.
Derek Landy
Author of the 'Skulduggery' book series, Derek Landy is one of my favourite authors, he has a very informal and humours way of writing which is easy to read and I'd really like my work to have aspects like that. He achieves this feel by using modern terminology in a lot of descriptions as well as similes, and the use of dry humour is extensive through his work and characters.
Unfortunately he likes to explain everything in detail, which is good for most of the book, but it really drags down action scenes and can make the events seem to take ages, which is very off-putting as the story itself takes place in a matter or days.
All in all I like the way Derek writes but I don't think it would suit this project, as I think the humour aspect would effect the atmosphere and I really I really don't want to drag the story on, but I really do like the use of similes while describing things and I think the use of these or maybe even metaphors would be effective in my writing.
Lemony Snicket
Author of the 'Series of unfortunate events' he has a very distinctive way of writing where he himself is narrating the story. Although I'm not a fan of the books I do really like the way her writes as it gives the impression of being physically told the story but without the story being constantly interrupted like other books with a narrator. The narrator is actually a character and he even uses the narrators name as a pen name, like Darren Shan, another author who uses a name of a character (in his case the main character) as a pen-name to add to the illusion that the story is real.
Although the narrators character doesn't intrude much into the story I still think it kind of takes attention away from the story at certain points but for most of the time you don't notice it.
All in all, I really liked the narrated feel as it gives the work far more character but I don't think I will give the narrator too much personality incase it distracts from the story.
Lewis Carroll
The final author I looked at was Lewis Carroll, the author of 'Alice's adventures in Wonderland', a great inspiration to me for this project. Although unlike the other two authors, I'm not just interested in the the way he writes, I also love the atmosphere using old-fashioned words gives his work and I really want that in mine. He also uses poems and riddles a lot, as well as play-on-words, all in all his writing is extremely witty if a bit confusing. I also really like how 'proper' the writing sounds.
Unfortunately you have to re-read quite a lot of conversations from 'Alice's adventures in Wonderland' as they are rather nonsensical but then this just adds too the feeling of the work.
I really love the way Lewis Carroll writes and I'd love to give my work the same kind of feel, so I'd really like to use his kind of writing, but I'd like to try and incorporate the sarcasm and dry humor from Derek Landy as well as the narrator aspect from Lemony Snicket.
Combined works
For this project I want to combine the illustration aspect and the writing aspect together, and there are a few different ways to do that.
One of the most popular combinations of writing and illustration is graphic novels. They are a series of pictures set out like film storyboards with bubbles for the dialoge and are aimed at early to late teens, unfortunately they don't require much actual writing, just dialogue, and although it would give me more to play with in the illustration aspect I'd rather do an illustrated book where the writing and drawing both are equal, also instead of having to draw every single action in the comic, I can draw more symbolic things.
Therefore I've decided I want to do an illustrated book of a dark re-telling of a fairy-tale. After a few experimentations with writing I decided to aim to have 10 short chapters and an epilogue in around 72 pages, each with 300 words approximately or one illustration. From experience a drawing usually takes around 8 hours to draw with full colouring, most of the time is spent on sketching. But as these are illustrations for a book I won't be shading them so that will make the work quicker. I intend to do my illustrations digitally for ease of transport and because I am experienced with digital art.
I've also started looking into book-binding and I have decided I would really like to bind it as a hardback, which would involve buying glue, card, and fabric as well as printing all the pages out, all of which I am willing to pay for.
For this project I want to combine the illustration aspect and the writing aspect together, and there are a few different ways to do that.
One of the most popular combinations of writing and illustration is graphic novels. They are a series of pictures set out like film storyboards with bubbles for the dialoge and are aimed at early to late teens, unfortunately they don't require much actual writing, just dialogue, and although it would give me more to play with in the illustration aspect I'd rather do an illustrated book where the writing and drawing both are equal, also instead of having to draw every single action in the comic, I can draw more symbolic things.
Therefore I've decided I want to do an illustrated book of a dark re-telling of a fairy-tale. After a few experimentations with writing I decided to aim to have 10 short chapters and an epilogue in around 72 pages, each with 300 words approximately or one illustration. From experience a drawing usually takes around 8 hours to draw with full colouring, most of the time is spent on sketching. But as these are illustrations for a book I won't be shading them so that will make the work quicker. I intend to do my illustrations digitally for ease of transport and because I am experienced with digital art.
I've also started looking into book-binding and I have decided I would really like to bind it as a hardback, which would involve buying glue, card, and fabric as well as printing all the pages out, all of which I am willing to pay for.
No comments:
Post a Comment