Specialist Personal Investigation.

For my most recent assignment at college i have the opportunity to create my own brief, this has really excited me... i have all the creative input and can say exactly what i want to do!

After a bit of consideration i have decided to do a series of illustrations for a children's picture book, there are a number of avenues that i can follow, watercolours, acrylics, inks and pencil...but to make it difficult for myself and to push my abilities i have decided to do a bit of 'mixed media' incorporating my own drawings with digital manipulation (photoshop and illustrator) although i'm becoming more adept with these programmes i'm still not totally familiar with them.

To make things a bit more tricky, my story has no words, I wanted to create something that would appeal to all ages and reading levels of children whilst also making it accessible to children in other countries.

There are a number of illustrators that i am looking at, some for their techniques and others for the fact that they have produced successful wordless stories.

Dave Mckean:

Dave Mckean is one of my favourite illustrators, as well as doing a number of collaborations with one of my favourite authors Neil Gaiman, he has also done some great work of his own, his graphic novels are a unique blend of digital and autographic whilst also conveying a dark and atmospheric outcome.

He uses photoshop for his illustrations, incorporating photographs and textures into his drawings and layouts.
His layouts are brilliant and his use of hand drawn typography gives his children's books a sense of innocence and naivety





Raymond Briggs:

Ah 'The Snowman', always there at Christmas and always likely to make at least one person in your family cry.
It is also a great example of how books don't need words, the whole of the story is told with images and is a great example of how a successful story has survived for generations. it has also been made into an animation (also silent throughout with the exception of the soundtrack) and a stage show which tours every year around the country.

Raymond Briggs' illustrations are soft and easy on the eye, he uses mostly coloured pencils, from what i can gather and watercolours.

These are the two main illustrators that i will be looking at, although there are other factors that must be considered; layout, composition and use of colour.