Final Images

In the end I completed 8 images, and they were the following:
1. The warped, evil mirror smashing over the earth
4. Gerda fleeing the garden once she becomes aware of how much time has passed, and her meeting the raven on the way
5. Gerda entering a castle through the back door, on the advice of the raven who tells her that kay must be the prince who lives there
6. Gerda waking the prince, only to realise that he is not Kay
7. Gerda being captured by the little robber maiden
9. Their meeting with the Lapland Woman, who tells them to go to the Finland Woman to seek help, and gives them a message on a peice of dried fish.
11. Gerda is taken to the Snow Queens' palace by the reindeer. She is attacked by the Snow Flakes who guard the palace, but is protected by Angels who appear when she repeats the Lord's Prayer.
12. Gerda finds kay in the huge ice hall of the palace and brings him back to himself.

Again, I thought it would be better to do 8 well rather than 12 badly, but i ended up missing out most of the illustrations I had planned to complete for the first part of the story, which prevented the two main characters being introduced in visual form. It was not a compromise that i wanted to make, but it also turned out not to be the worst of the situation. I hadn't been exactly hopeful that I would have the time to make a PDF and get a book printed, especially as I would have needed to consider what text to use, the layout of text and image and the size of the book, not to mention the need for a front cover; but considering how important it is for my work to be of a professional standard, what i produced was not nearly sufficient. I didn't consider how long each image would take me, and while I feel that 2 or 3 were really quite effective, the rest were either unsuccessful in terms of layout, over-painted or lacking in depth. It was a similar situation to the difficulty I had in progressing to 3D, in that i jumped ahead to painting without fully and carefully realising most of the drawings in detail. I was too impatient.

In short, my Final Images would have been greatly improved by being better considered and further developed from beginning to end - allowing the slow process of each stage (taking the photos that i used to draw from, experimenting with layout, drawing and finally, painting) to inform the next step.

A New Direction

As I explained below, I have decided to progress in a 2D manner from now on. Instead of creating 7 3D 'sets' i have planned to make 12 A3 watercolour illustrations depicting key moments in the text. They will be as follows:
1. The warped, evil mirror smashing over the earth
2. Kay and Gerda together, before Kay is struck by the shard of glass from the mirror
3. Gerda following the river to the flower garden in the first part of her serch for kay
4. Gerda fleeing the garden once she becomes aware of how much time has passed, and her meeting the raven on the way
5. Gerda entering a castle through the back door, on the advice of the raven who tells her that kay must be the prince who lives there
6. Gerda waking the prince, only to realise that he is not Kay
7. Gerda being captured by the little robber maiden
8. Gerda, having been set free, riding the reindeer north
9. Their meeting with the Lapland Woman, who tells them to go to the Finland Woman to seek help, and gives them a message on a peice of dried fish.
10. Their meeting with the Finland woman, who tells the reindeer that Gerda already has all the power she needs to save Kay
11. Gerda is taken to the Snow Queens' palace by the reindeer. She is attacked by the Snow Flakes who guard the palace, but is protected by Angels who appear when she repeats the Lord's Prayer.
12. Gerda finds kay in the huge ice hall of the palace and brings him back to himself.

I have been inspired by the work of P.J. Lynch, an irish illustrator who works in a fairly realist way, often on a large scale in watercolour, gouache and oil. His work is highly coloured and descriptive, realising the ambition I have always held to create a world that the viewer feels that they could simply 'fall into' and inhabit for the time that they read the story. He too has illustrated 'The Snow Queen':

3D Attempts

It took me a while to realise that the reason why i was having such difficulty with my 3D work was because I hadn't fully realised the 2D images that were supposed to inform them. My attemps were under developed and the entire process was highly frustrating. There are many ways to execute work in paper 3D, as I examined below, and none of them can be done without careful planning: I needed more than a basic drawing to progress to 3D. It is with this in mind that I have decided to instead work on fully realising my planned layouts in 2D form, in A3, using watercolour. These can then be used to inform any 3D attempts, if I have the time to make them. Having already lost 5 weeks of work time due to my dissertation hand in, it was ambitious in the first place to plan to achieve so much in the time left to me. I think I felt that I needed to push the boundaries, rather than present something simple, or 'boring'. This attitude actually anded up stunting the natural progression of my work, especially since my strengths lie in drawing. It is important to try new things, but not at the expense of creating something well considered and suitable to the text. I thought it would be better to produce good 2D illustrations rather than bad 3D work. In any case, the photos above illustrate my attempts at 3D execution.

Progressing to 3D

In the last two weeks my already slower than average work production has suffered further due to my indecision about how to progress to 3D. I am very entrenched in my routine of working on pencil drawings (that are always, regardless of how much i try to avoid it, controlled as opposed to abstract, free, or messy), and have always found it difficult to progress from this stage. This tells me that I'm starting in the wrong place, but hey, it's been started now...

I am beginning to feel that my initial ideas of 'stage sets' are rather limiting. I accept certain of the limitations of my initial ideas, the main one being that it is unlikely that i will be able to make every element of my final 7 'sets' 3D - . I cannot predict whether that will remain true, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. The other thing is that i do not have the time to create very detailed, realistic 'scenery', which in any case I wouldn't want to do. The issue I'm considering (and all this before I've even started) is the way the 2D elements - likely to be the characters - and the 3D elements - likely to be the scenery - work together.

What I am able to do , however, is look at more inventive ways of constructing each 'set' in 3D.

First Visuals

These are my first character attempts. I am beginning with these because a children's book is centered on its characters, and they need to be consistent and expressive. I have to say I'm astounded at how bad my drawing skills have become all of these took me at least three attempts to get even nearly right.

Lettering Research

I would like to have the title of each chapter suspended in the box as part of the image. This will help to give it some form of anchorage. Even if I don't end up using it in the 3D image, the lettering will definitely be useful elsewhere. I came across this dutch-style font and thought it could be good as a starting point - for inspiration.

Fleet Foxes - 'Mykonos'

The lovely Lewes Jillet put me on to this fantastic video for the Fleet Foxes' 'Mykonos'. Simple paper shapes have been animated with amazing energy that seems to tell a story that crosses landscapes - from deserts to forests, to seas, to a tumbling castle. The use of colour and lighting is vital here, (the animated parts being so simple) in creating depth and drama. It has made me think about how I plan to create my own landscapes, and how simple or complicated they will need to be. I imagine I won't come to the right conclusion until I've tried several different methods, but what works for one 'stage set' will have to work for them all, as there must be a continuity between the images.
P.S. Please excuse the crude images - i had to screen grab them from youtube and i couldn't get rid of the time bar at the bottom!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT-dxG4WWf4