This is an illustrated children's book based on a story by Rudyard Kipling. The book is the final project for an illustration class that was meant to be a way to execute all the techniques we had learnt in the class. The thumbnails and the character designs were made in two days. The thumbnails spanned up to more than 40 pages but we only had three days to execute the final product so my teacher suggested that I make the main characters into animation puppets. The whale, the fish and the mariner are all made with cut-out puppets painted with watercolour and the other fish that briefly appear are drawn in watercolour as well. The rest of the book has been painted digitally.
This project taught me a lot about how to simplify illustration and still make it appealing to the audience, I was originally planning to make the background a lot more detailed but found that the plain dark blue colour fit in well with the story. Making the main character puppets allowed for an interesting book-making experience and made the entire process a lot more hands-on. I also largely focused on making all the spreads cohesive units. Even the front and back covers open out into a single larger illustration
This project taught me a lot about how to simplify illustration and still make it appealing to the audience, I was originally planning to make the background a lot more detailed but found that the plain dark blue colour fit in well with the story. Making the main character puppets allowed for an interesting book-making experience and made the entire process a lot more hands-on. I also largely focused on making all the spreads cohesive units. Even the front and back covers open out into a single larger illustration
