Rationale

I began this assignment by analysing school reading journals brought to class by the client Simon. He then provided us the brief, outlining the characters and illustrations necessary for the story ‘Benny’. From here, I visited the various locations of the story set in Eastbourne and took a variety of photographs I could use to develop accurate concepts. I also researched anatomy variations of different ethnicities, in particular Asian and Caucasian. This would help me initialise my character concepts, which I developed working back and fourth gathering feedback from Simon.

As illustrated in my final compositions, I adopted a vector style strongly referring to works by Ben Newman. I integrated a bright colour palette to appeal to the target demographic of 11-12 year old New Zealand students (reading year level 8). Overall, I feel my illustrations tell the story of Benny successfully and I was able to implement a professional work process thanks to experience of working with a live brief.

Final Illustrations

Illustration Developments

Character Development

After discussions with Simon, it was established that my character style was too childish for the demographic. So I re-designed them, looking closely at Stephen Silver as an artist model. Silver is great at character silhouettes, which Simon stated is vitally important in distinguishing Benny and the narrator from one another. 

Developed Chars (Narrator left, Benny right)

Stephen Silver character designs

Composition Concepts

I drafted up some initial compositions based of the provided brief, then experimented with colour and added filler text to gain an understanding of the overall layout.

Character Concepts

These are my initial character designs which align with the descriptions given by the client. 

New Brief - Benny

After receiving the new brief, I decided to analyse the story and create moodboards as reference for when I illustrate. Most the pictures I sourced from the shared dropbox the client set up, internet, or went to the location and took them.

Character reference boards

Illustration reference boards

Rationale

My chosen Maori myth for this fold-in image brief is the tale of Whaitere. Whaitere tells the story of an enchanted stingray, whose role is to maintain peace between humans and sea creatures. She gained this responsibility because humans were poaching and over fishing, leaving little to no sea creatures left in her harbor. Whenever peace was disrupted, Whaitere would appear asking them to stop.

With this in mind, I decided to have my unfolded image display human hands reaching into a rock pool taking paua from their home. The unfolded image forms Whaitere, who has come to keep the peace and stop them from taking too much and prevent greed. This encapsulates the overall moral of the story which is ‘not to be greedy, and only take what you need’ which is relevant to the demographic of 7-10 year old children.

I included important elements in the centre of the composition, to draw the viewers’ eye away from the stingray features strewn about the sides of the image.

Paua is mentioned a lot throughout the myth, as it represents Whaiteres’ holiness and journey she experienced visiting Rarohenga (ocean underworld). It embodies a sense of magic, spirituality and importance throughout the story.

Overall, I feel my image engages the viewer and provides a pleasant surprise when they fold the image together, and also evokes a feeling of fantasy and magic.

Final Composition

Montage of development

Composition flow

I feel that having all the elements flow in one direction would help guide the viewers eye around the image better. I did some rough sketches over my current image to get an idea of a good direction of flow. 

Composition change

I had to step back and have a re-think about my composition. I feel like the stingray wasn't obvious enough because his shape reflected the rock pool too much, and his tail being cut off ruined his unique silhouette. 

Therefore, I decided to change my composition layout and have the stingrays full body displayed in the folded image. Although this might make it more obvious when unfolded, I feel that through tone if I can draw focus towards the unfolded center that will fix this.

Progress

After critique today, I felt there was not enough contrast in my image and therefore the stingray was lost when folded. After making many adjustments to the paua locations and colours of the rocks and ocean, I ended up with these-

 However, I still felt there was not enough attention towards the stingray, so I made some more adjustments to the ocean colours and light rays.

Progress

I tried to make the folded image appear more magical, so I added a shimmering effect around the stingray.

Progress

Here is my progress so far. I've begun adding textures so it doesn't appear too flat.

unfolded

folded

I have also played around with adding ripples, as I feel there needs to be more depth in the folded image so the perspective is clearer. Not sure if it works cutting through the background rays of light though.

Progress

Some shots of my work in progress...

Style test

A quick style test for my fold in. I decided to make the paua shell colourful even though that's not how they're typically found, because that's what children of the demographic recognize and associate paua with.

It took me a while to get the paua looking okay and fitting with my style... I had to experiment a lot.

Cleaner line work

Cleaned up the line work a bit, readying it for illustrator.

Colour and tone

I experimented with colour and tone to figure out the best combination for my image. I want Whaitere to seem ethereal, so the tone of the white/ light blue is very important to get right.