Monday, 18 April 2016
Overall
Originally I wanted to create minimalism for the books. That idea changed to symbolism after designing the "Watership Down" cover as I enjoyed making the black rabbit in the Rabbits pupil. It can give some sort of the story away without telling and would make readers want to read it. The black rabbit is basically the rabbit death god in their tribe. As most rabbits are fearful of trespassers, new environments and survival, the black rabbit is mention numerous times in the film and book. This gave me the idea of having the black rabbit as the pupil in the eye, to show that the rabbits are staring at death everytime, everyday.
This also helped when designing "The Last Unicorn" as I wanted something thats not just a unicorn. By creating a Unicorn skull from a real horse skull and adding the horn it shows loneliness, extinction, death and isolation. In the book no one has seen the unicorns for centuries including the main character, who is a unicorn. When people meet her they are shocked, amazed and sad knowing that she might be the last one. Skulls in museums or in history are shown for extinction of an animal and this ties in well with the theme
For the final book, "The Doomspell" it was a hard book to interpret as symbolism without revelaing the character. I have read the book loads of times and decided to use the eye as symbolism again. There are loads of eye in the book (Witches eye, the eye tower, children s eyes, buttons that are eyes) but I wanted something different. What striked me the most is that when a child in the bok has magic, their iris's change colour for using that spell, e.g. blue for flying, brown for killing curse, yellow for glow, etc. Instead of using just one colour I used different colours and gradients for the eye. The main character, Rachel, can have loads of spells and her eyes at the end have multicolored. This shows strength, power and mystery with just having one eye in the black background with nothing else to give away.
I want to keep on researching book designs in the summer and different mock ups for different medias such as leaflets, posters and even postcards. I enjoyed this class and finally have something for my final portfolio, which I am very happy for.
Thursday, 14 April 2016
Final Book Covers - Presentable
Blurbs
The Last Unicorn - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Unicorn-S-Beagle-Peter/dp/1631401270/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460641877&sr=1-1&keywords=the+last+unicorn
The Doomspell - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doomspell-Trilogy-Book/dp/1858818508/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460644332&sr=1-1&keywords=the+doomspell (I have re-worded the blurb to make it less)
Watership Down - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watership-Down-Puffin-David-Parkins/dp/0141354968/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460644392&sr=1-1&keywords=watership+down
Reason for this is to make the designs more realistic, and I thought adding a blurb and few reviews would help.
Last Unicorn Final!
I have went with the radical black and purple gradient which goes well with my geometric unicorn skull and white text. I left out the book texture as the mock up does this for me and it would be too textured.
mock up THE LAST UNICORN |
The purple colour sets a tone for this kind of book as it has more of drama and tragedy. The skull brightens it up a little bit, even if its a skull. I may go over the title and look for more fonts that look a bit more gothic in a way.
Tuesday, 12 April 2016
The Last Unicorn - skulls
Looks good for art but not for book cover |
As this was a problem I looked for a solution. I love geometric designs of portraits (You can find it on my behance) giving them unusual colour. I haven't done a skull before so I gave it a shot.
Geometric skull |
I like the geometric design with the different shades in large shadow areas. I will need to work on it such as adding cracks and lining up each shape. I will then place on the front cover of the book. May change the background colour of the book as I think red looks too rich against the skull.
Wednesday, 6 April 2016
UPDATED WATERSHIP DOWN
For this book I got the real dimensions of a book design from this site http://www.datemplate.com/post_create-a-book-template_79967/ and I will be using it again for the rest of the designs.
For Watership Down I went back to the fur. As I changed my project from minimlaism to symbolism I reworked the fur. I got the fur texture from textures.com which is a royalty free site. I changed the colour slightly and darken it. I then added the eye and added shadows and a small light to make it more realistic and 3D.
For the back cover I just added text and had to add a box as the type did not stand out and blended within the fur.
My next step is adding the design onto a mock up book cover. Afterwards I will work on The Doomspell book.
Wednesday, 16 March 2016
Last Unicorn
So I decided to create a Unicorn skull, withered, dirty colours and a dark red background. I looked at horse skulls on the internet and rhino skulls for the horns. I sketched out the skull and the placement of the horn. I already have a font to use for the title and author and the placement. My next step is to redraw this on photoshop and edit in a way that it looks old and deteriorated, similar to skulls you see in museums.
Sketch of Unicorn skull |
Skulls are a great way to represent sadness, loneliness and extinction. Taking the dark road rather than the happy one of just showing the Unicorn doesn't go well with the style of the book. The next step is to outline the skull, colour it, place it on the cover and add shadows and depth. This should be done by the end of this week.
Rough layout of front cover. Not sure to add the spine or not. Will design two covers with spine and no spine |
Monday, 7 March 2016
Time, late, everything, what?
07/03/16 - 11/03/16: Work and Finish Last Unicorn Book
14/03/16 - 18/03/16: Work and Finish Wolf Brother Book
21/03/16 - 26/03/16: Work and finish on The Doomspell Book
28/03/16 - 02/04/16: Work and finish on Neverwhere Book
04/04/16 - 08/03/16: Work and finish on the NightWatch OR The Reaperman
11/04/16 - 13/04/16: Print each book cover and place in folder
14/04/16 : Create evaluation
I have left out some books to manage my time for this semester. Everything has caught up with me, but If I make a start on the Monday night and finish a book throughout the week then I should manage to have at least 6 or 7 books finished and finalised. I will leave out George Orwells Animal Farm as there are too many designs and none are original, so I have lost interest.
Monday, 29 February 2016
WIP, ideas and new design
While researching book covers someone sent me a link to a site of a list of books with their redesigns. Each book has its own style and forms a story on the cover.
http://www.fromupnorth.com/graphic-design-inspiration-1333/
I liked the design of "The boy with a tigers heart" and thought to use it on "The Last Unicorn" book. So much is happening on the front cover and generates the story itself which interests the reader.
For "The Last Unicorn" I quickly sketched an outline of the bulls head. I was thinking if using the body but it was too long and short for the page. Inside the bulls head will be two waves climbing up the side. These waves will be the unicorns trying to escape the sea which was told in the story. It also shows another term for "white horses" in other words the white from the sea. At the side of the head will be a rocky cliff with trees to form the horns. I'm not sure at this point to leave it at that or to add the main character at the top of the head on a bridge. It's a working progress for now but ideas will change once I get to use illustrator.
Also going through my list I'm thinking of leaving out a few books as I may not have enough time or have no ideas for them. One of them is the "edge chronicles" as the idea for that design might be similar to "The Last Unicorn" and want each books to have different designs. Again I might change my mind and have a go to see what I can accomplish for the design.
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
Book covers update!
ehhhh nooo |
very nice |
Monday, 15 February 2016
Animal Farm
I want to produce something like this, involving the pigs, the windmill and certain styles.
Monday, 1 February 2016
Notes from Books
Animal Farm
- Abused at manor Farm
- Mr Jones prefers drink than care for animals
- went with other bad farmers
- came home drunker one evening, animals terrified
- night animal gathers for meeting by old Major - oldest pig when farmer went to bed.
- pigs are more clever, horses strongest, animals follow suit
- Old Major dying, wanted to say few things before too late.
- "few of us will never know the blessings of a peaceful old age. Boxer when you have given the last of your strength, what then? what ever we produce is taken from us, stolen from us and sold. our children are born cold and hungry, look at them while you can. You porkers, do you know what the future holds for you. do we deserve such a fate? is this farm too good to support us all? No comrades. When the farm is rich, but we would never get our share from farmer jones. Over throw this tyrant, so that we can be rich and free. comrades, revolt! But remember when you have got rid of jones. Dont adopt his vices. We animals are brothers, large or small, clever or simple, now and forever all animals are equal. " - Major
- animals starve as food is locked up. break in but farmer catches them. animals revolt and run the farmer out of farm. Snowball in charge gathers forces to go against other farmers that come to invade but they all defeat them.
- All apart from Napoleon will stay out of the house. Snowball thinks of laws of animal farm.
- Story similar to Russias change of power?
- Napoleon and Snowball strive for power. Snowball about setting a good example, providing a power source. Napoleon wants fear and brings up a pack of dogs as his army.
- army of dogs attack snowball, runs him out of farm. Napoleon takes over, puts the pigs at top, lesser animals at bottom.
- Orders them to work, lies about Snowball, calling him a traitor that he was going to bring back Jones.
- Pigs breaks the laws (learns to walk on two legs, lives in Jones house, pigs get more food while others starve, kill off animals that can't work any more or against Napoleon)
- Pigs make deals with other farmers by selling their work behind the animals backs for food for the pigs.
- Pigs become richer while the other animals become poorer and starve. beleive they are better than other animals.
- All animals unite against the pigs after pigs changed law that they are better than other animals. They tear down Jones house with the pigs still inside. Basic revert to the start.
Inspiration
"Anatomy of a Murder" http://www.saulbassposterarchive.com/gallery/film-posters/ |
"Schindler's List" http://www.saulbassposterarchive.com/gallery/film-posters/ |
He uses very simple shapes to come up with the object and has designed his typography using Futura, widely known for the Pink Panther title.
The Pink Panther http://www.chud.com/articles/content_images/117/PINKPANTHERcartoontitle.JPG |
Saul Bass was an inspiration to artists all over and some have used his style to make their own movie posters such as Star Wars, Batman, etc.
Star Wars by Malakh http://orig05.deviantart.net/f867/f/2014/143/d/5/empire_poster_2_by_malakh788-d7jgjte.png |
Hunger Games http://deathlytriforce.deviantart.com/art/Saul-Bass-inspired-Hunger-Games-Poster-334092927 |
There are a number of artists that are inspired by Saul Bass designs, however I want to use this style as well as another artists style which inspired me to create my portraits a few years ago. Magnus Voll Mathiassen inspired me by his Rhianna portrait. While he used curves for the shapes I would use points, and was also inspired by my class when they took up the style. While they would use the smallest points of the shadows I used the largest parts and made up my portrait.
Rhianna http://agentpekka.com/artist/magnus-voll-mathiassen/ |
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
List of Novels I will be re-designing
Monday, 25 January 2016
New project - proposal
Minimalist portrait of Sarah - Hocus Pocus |
Geometric portrait of sister |