These are some trees that i have designed in illustrator, i wanted to give them a blocky hand-drawn kind of feel. i experimented in my sketchbook with different textures and styles and eventually came out with this idea. i've used autumnal colours because in the book it has a scene where they are enjoying the last of the summer sun. underneath them is a river. i want to draw Ratty and Mole on the river and have Toad in his car on the grassland. i'm using lots of different effects in my final image to try and create an interesting piece.  

 these are 2 book covers for the wind in the willows that interest me a lot. I think the natural earthy colours work really well, and in my own book cover I'm going to use a lot of green/brown yellow and orange. the original ink illustrations is where i am heading with my own design as i feel these reflect the book best. i want to design a cover that mixes the original covers to something more modern, although i dont want it to be so different that you dont relate to the wind in the willows. so its trying to find that happy medium that works best. on the top cover the engraving down the spine of the book works really well for adding detail without being all over the cover and the simple tree in the right corner of the book is effective too. the typography in my opinion is to simple and i think it would of benefitted from a more detailed font face. the pale blue background works well to accompany the bright illustration on the front. the illustrations are again by E.H. Shepard one of my favourite illustrators of the time.

the second book cover is a very modern interpretation of this classic book. it has a  printed willow tree in the background with "toad" on the front cover. the illustration has captured his image well as an extravagant creature. the colour scheme is very bright so is really good for a children's book. i want to use some bright colour but also some dulled down colours in my cover. i don't want the colours to over power my illustration/image.

so far I've had the idea to draw all of my images free hand a scan them into the computer and touch them up in photoshop or maybe trace them in illustrator. either way i will choose the software which will best benefit my design.

Second brief : penguin competition book cover

Im choosing to do "The wind in the willows" because its a children's book and i feel i will put my strongest work into this. 

To start with i am going to research different covers, look and the similarities and also what makes them different from each other. I'm also going to look at past and present designers so i have produce the best style of design for this cover. 

some artists i know I'm going to look at are 

• A.A.Milne
• E. H. Shepard 

Because these where 2 artists famous for their illustrations for this book. 

In my sketchbook i am going to create a series of illustrations using different media to finalise the best outcome using different colour palettes and tools. 

Once i have achieved all of these i will work on different software to find the most appriate to digitalise my idea. 

 These are two book covers that i have found and they are two of my favourite covers i have found. i love the simplicity of the top cover, the added imagery that flows from the spine is very effective yet simple. and the centred illustration is by E.H Shepard. the bright colours work really well against the soft coloured background.  i feel the typography is just slightly to simple and would of benefitted from being a bit more eccentric, this would of worked because of the simplicity of the rest of the cover. I'm thinking of basing my final design on the cover, but i have yet to sketch some rough ideas.








The second cover i have favourited is very different from the first because of the bright, full paged, detailed design. i think the colour scheme works really well for this cover and brings the character of toady to life! because he had a big obsession with cars and in this he is holding a steering wheel, with his driving goggles and scarf. he has lost his hat in the wind and his scarf is blowing. which i think is a play on imagery because of the book title being "the wind in the willows"
im not sure who the illustrator/ designer of this cover is but it is a penguin book. its helpful seeing past published penguin books of "the wind in the willows" because i can get an idea of what imagery/typography they like because they have past been published.

 

fonts!!

these are the fonts that i was looking at. i ended up using "motor oil 1937" because i feel that reflected the orginal font the best. 

my final poster

this is my final poster and the original one i based it on. 

gradient mesh

because i chose to do a women in my poster i have been experimenting with gradient mesh. 
 this has proven to be really difficult and has really frustrated me. i first started on her arm as i felt this would be easiest and i practised the most on her hands and arms and am really pleased with the final outcome, although i tried to do it on her face aswell as this hasn't worked as well as i would of liked. i started to use brush strokes on her face to shade in the darker parts also keeping the orginal gradient mesh there. i feel this has helped but i need to try using smaller brush strokes. 

                                      

i tried out some thinner brush strokes and i feel these work alot better, her face isnt as smooth as her arms are but i like the feel in different textures on her face. you can tell where her chin is and also see where the darker patches of her skin are. shadows under her hair work really well too. also the shdowing against her nose and abover her lips give the impression of a 3dness. i think if i would of had longer i wouldnt of used gradient mesh because its my first time using illustrator i didnt realise how hard it would be.  although i think it has been a really good learning curve for me and now i have experince on how to use gradient mesh and i can further my skills in it. 

in this screen shot you can see that i have added a bottom banner and added anouther twitter logo with a font that is very similar to twitters. also i had added a slight grain to the background. i really like the effect and feel it adds a nice texture. overall i am really proud/happy with how my poster has turned out 

things i would of done differently 

• i would of used brush strokes in stead of gradient mesh to achieve a 3d ness to my character
• i would of tried to use a bird effect in her bandanna (but i did like the polka dots)
• i wouldn't of changed the colours because i think these really reflect my time period 
• i would of worked more on her shirt because i feel this is the weakest part of my poster and is letting me down slightly, it doesn't have a movement to it and still feel it looks really flat, although i tried didn't brush strokes and effects i couldn't overcome the flatness of the shirt. i tried my hardest and am still proud of the outcome but would of  asked more opinions on how to change her shirt.

Crit Feedback

Critic - monday 5th november 

• take the birds away from the shirt
• the letters are to close to the edge
• the colour of the text box is to dark
• gradient mesh needs finishing on her face and arms
• move her eyes to look at the person looking at the poster
• add a banner on the bottom
• put birds on the head scarf
• twitter tattoo on her arm finishing
• add 3dness to the shirt and headscarf
• move the gradient up in the background
• add twitter logo to bottom banner 

These are some of the suggestions i got for my poster. I don't agree with all of them such as the twitter birds on the headscarf; they would be to cramped and you wouldn't be able to work out what they were. also I'm going to keep he text box one colour as i feel this contrast nicely with the yellow background, the shirt and the background already have gradients so i don't want to many. I need to finish the gradient mesh on her arms and face but i need slightly more help with this, i've been practising at home but it isn't going very well so i think i will try some brush strokes and effects in the mean time. It was helpful to get comments from everyone because each individual person sees the poster in their own way whereas i'm looking at it from my point of view. It was also helpful to see where everyone elce's posters looked like and how they were developing on the suggestions. 

On my project i've been trying to add gradients to her shirt and also add the marks to her shirt to make it look like she is wearing it and the fabric is moving. I've struggled trying to get the fabric to look like it is moving and I've tried using lines, and also gradient shapes. the gradient blocks aren't working as well as i thought they would of, I'm going to try using different colours as i think the colours could be half of the problem. 

I've started drawing the birds on her shirt aswell but i think these are too crowded and doesn't really work with the overall look of her shirt. I'm going to try to make them smaller and see if it works, if not i will just delete them and leave her shirt as just blue. 

The gradients of her shirt are using a pale blue and a dark navy i think these colours work really well and I'm pleased with the overall look of the gradient colouring. 

on the original image (the poster of my choice of inspiration) she has a logo on her shirt collar, which would of been a work logo. I have made my twitter logo and placed that on her shirt colour instead. i think it works well and when its blown up loos good and also when its really small it still works, finding the right stroke point took some time as i had to keep changing it to find out when it was still readable when scaled down small.