In this project I was contracted to illustrate and create a children’s book based on a story written by Edin Sedic. I wanted to explore a different style and create something different by fusing traditional painting with digital. I was highly inspired by the classic 1950’s Disney film ‘Alice in wonderland’ where the backgrounds/environments appear to be hand-painted and the characters animated, you can clearly see the difference in style, but the characters look alive in the surroundings!
The Story follows an eagle chick that gets stuck in a chicken coop and soon starts behaving like a chicken.
Testing the approach
Before starting the project I wanted to create a visual sample and test my method and approach, so I tried to replicate a scene from the film. I started by drawing and inking my own Rabbit character. Then I painted a landscape scene using water and acrylic. I was quite happy with the end result and so was my client.
The Characters
I wanted the book to be full of life and characters! So I imagined the little eagle to be young and have similar characteristics to the chicks, but as he matures to grow into the eagle look. I also wanted lots of little insects throughout the book.
To begin I pencil sketched all of the characters individually and then Inked them using various fine point pens. Once completed I did a high-resolution scan, and brought the characters to life digitally by adding full colour.
The Background scene
The Scene is mostly set on a beautiful country farm. So I wanted to create a big mountain range in the background, lots of ponds, green grasslands, colourful flowers and a classic barn house with a red roof to act as an anchor for the illustrations.
I wanted to stray away from painting on canvas because of the textured background, so I used thick A3 paper instead.
The goal was to paint 12 different scenes, I wanted them to be constant and colour pallet to look similar throughout. With my background in landscape painting I was able to measure the amount of paint mixtures just right.
Putting it all together
After the paintings were complete it was time to scan them in high resolution and bring in the characters. Once the illustrations were finished I could start the book layout. I selected the font ‘Bjola’ which was big and bold, suiting the book perfectly.
