Initial Research

Creative Writing

http://mojowritin.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_archive.html

I chose creative writing to look into because I'm an avid reader of many books and I enjoy creative writing a lot, therefore this really appealed to me, especially the fantasy novel area.

The creative writing market is massive, almost everything needs creative writing, from tv shows and films to games and graphic novels, but the area with the most freedom and creativity is creative writing in the form of books and novels, while the other jobs are plentiful and pay well it's not quite the same as writing a book. 

Selling books isn't a great way to get money as while you're writing it (which can take years) you're not getting paid, that comes after the book is finished and only if a publisher really likes your story. But books can lead on to a lot of other merchandise when they get published, like comic versions and films.

The reason I chose this image is because it's the closest thing I could find to what I see creative writing to be, it's not just writing some words down, it's creating your own world without the limitations of drawing or making a film, as long as you can write well, you can write anything, your words become more than just words.

Illustration

http://makananjugaseni.deviantart.com/art/Alice-in-Cyber-Wonderland-163004425

I chose Illustration because I love to draw and I'd like to pursue Illustration as a future career, as well as the fact that I believe I have a skill for it, especially drawing stylised humans and worlds.

Like with the creative writing industry the illustration industry bleeds into a lot of other industry's, for example advertising, web design and even creative writing. I would like to look more into book illustration as it is a mixture of two things I really love.

A problem to this side of the industry is that the work may not be frequent, and, like book writing, you still need a main job.

I chose this image because it is not only a very original and interesting piece, but a work of skill as well, that's what I think illustration is, a work of originality and skill, I don't really like abstract art and even the most skilled artist can draw boring things. That's why I think this is a good representation.

Motion Video

http://www.theoptimusprimeexperiment.com/2009/06/james-camerons-avatar-concept-pictures.html

I chose to look into motion pictures because I really enjoy watching them and seeing the various atmospheric effects, camera angles and CGI.

The film industry is massive and films can have a budget ranging from $300,000,000 (Pirates of the Caribbean: At worlds End) to $15,000 (Paranormal Activity) or even lower. With the expansion of sites like youtube a lot of low budget amateur movies are getting more exposure but with other sites that let you watch film's for free and expensive ticket prices are damaging the cinema business as less and less people are going to see the films of the big screen.

Personally I'm really interested in the world of the film, I find most films set in the present time boring but I love film's set in a slightly different world to our own, film's like Sweeny Todd, Alice in Wonderland and Avatar. The films themselves may not be amazing but the look and atmosphere of world is what I like about them.

I think the image I've chosen is a good representation as even though it's only concept art you can see all the effort and work put into the world around the characters, it's not just some forest, it's a whole new world, that's why I think the image is a good representation, it's not just about the characters, plot or dialogue, it's the world behind it all that I believe is important.

 Game Design

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/05/art-alice-madness-returns/?pid=3621

I chose game design as one of my two hero's, Tetsuna Nomura, is a game designer and his work is amazing. He not only designs characters, he designs the monsters, the world and the plot, his designs are really unique and they really inspire me.

The game industry is ever expanding, and with the development of technology there's more room for creativity as you can pretty much do anything. The game industry is a lot like the film industry, as there is a massive team behind each game and from brainstorming to the finished game it can be years.

Like in film's, the area I'm interested in is the world and the character designs in it. Because sometimes the world is only a backdrop in films and in a game you have to travel through it, the games usually have more interesting designs and from that unique clothing and weapons for the characters. I especially love games like Final Fantasy and the two American McGee's Alice games (Alice and Alice madness returns) because of the designs.

For the image I chose one of the concept art pictures for Alice Madness Returns because I really love the world of the game, it has the look of the original wonderland but with a dark twist, and that's why I think this image is a good representation, it shows the work and effort put into giving a game a unique word and feel.

Animation

http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2010/11/disneys-tangled-character-design.html

For my last area I chose animation, I've always loved animation form a young age and at one point I even wanted to be an animator. 

The traditional animation market has shrunk over the years and now is only really seen on TV, instead 3d CGI animated film's are getting more popular which is a bit sad. With traditional animation techniques like rotoscoping (tracing over a live action film as reference of movement) are being abandoned for things like motion capture. 

The thing I really like about animation though is the characters and how they are portrayed through expressions and movement, unlike live action, animation gives you so much more to play with, even characters like animals can be given personalty, a hard feat in live action.

The image I chose is a series of concept sketches for the character Rapunzel from the film Tangled, and even though the film is in 3D you can see how they develop her expressions, movements and character on 2D first. That is what I see as the most important part of animation, getting the characters right.

Idea development

After looking at these five area's I have a clearer idea what I want to do, originally I was going to make an animated trailer as I had never really animated before and I thought it would be an interesting challenge, but after working out how long it takes me to draw a picture, and the fact I need 24 per second I realised I would never get it done in time. After that idea fell though I was stuck for idea's, I really wanted to show my talent at illustration but I didn't want to just do one or a series of pictures, after some contemplation I decided to make a digital book full of concept art for a game I would design, this idea seemed fun and I started to brainstorm ideas and decided I'd add some narrative to it, and then I realised how much I liked the idea of doing narrative so I changed ideas again, and decided to write a short story and illustrate it. I think this will be challenging because even though I'm playing to my strengths with illustrating, it'll be a challenge to illustrate the whole book and it'll also be a challenge to write the story but I think I'll be able to do it. 

Detailed Research

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

http://www.johntenniel.com/view_art.php?art_id=1359&min=0&max=1000000&portrait=&original=&sub=&sort_by=alice&sold=

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

http://reigninggifts.com/dolls.htm

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. 

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.