1. The Brief

To whom it might concern, 

We're looking for an illustrator to create a picture book for children ages 3-6 about the topic "The days of the week". The main goal is for parents to introduce kids to this basic concept, however, we're open to add some extra information as long as it's not overwelhming. 

The book should be somewhere around 8 pages (4 spreads) and the format we are looking into is square. We would like to have illustrations in a warm style (no vectors, for example) and easy to understand for the target audience. The materials, colors and style is for the illustrator to choose. 

We'd love to see the concept, thumbnails and any type of visuals that would help us agree in the final product before completition. 

Thank you.
​

4. Color Palette

So, to choose my color palette I used different tools that I'll share below: 

coolors.co/

colorhunt.co/ 

I also consulted a Pinterest board that I've building over the past months and contains color palettes that chatch my eye: www.pinterest.com/astrid_badell/color-palettes/

​To finalize, I'd say that this project wraps up very well everything I've learned in the past ten months. I recognize that I took a long time to complete all my exercises and assignments, but I'm also quite certain that I took as much advantage as possible of it. What I loved about this assignment is that it was an invitation to work on a series of images as opposed to a stand alone pice, and this reveals a lot more of the illustrator than in the other way. 

I'm clearly interested in picture books and in mixed media, even combining analog and digital methods. I'm very happy and thankful for all my learning!

Astrid.

Key points from the brief: 

- Produce an illustrated strip of up to five frames for use in schools explaining to young teenagers how to cope with the onset of puberty. 

- It is suggested that you use metaphor and humour. But take care not to trivialise a serious message 

- Provide a single illustration of your character for use on the front cover. 

- The leaflet is called What’s happening to my body? It’s all going mad!

- You need to submit all stages of the development process – thumbnails, visuals and client visuals for the cartoon strip and the stand-alone illustration. 

This exercise was quite challenging to me since I think the information to be included should be given by a professional on this complex topic. I was a bit doubtfull about how to approach the topic, specially becuase the changes that we go throufg on this age are so many, and it's also different (very) for girls and boys; so to norrow down I chose to focus on gilrs, which by experience I understand better.

I worked on the story with my Ipad and started by creating a strip layout. Then I sketched some first ideas just to see what type of images would come to my mind to represent this topic. That's how I came up with the idea of a "journey", teenage years are a transition that takes you from being a child to becoming an adult. In this moment I also realized that my approach would be more subtle and even emotional, than funny. 

After that I went on to writing the text of the strip. I found this very interesting because it made very obvious to me that I needed to have a text as a starting point to then develop the images that would better serve this text. I worked on layers so everytime when I was developing new ideas, I'd work on top of the last layer and refine what I had. 

For my character I explored some different ideas. At the beginning I felt they were too much in my "fashion style" and I wanted to find something more approachable. It was also challenging to represent a person of this age and to achieve a final result that doesn't look too childish but also not too old.

​After some trying I also though I wanted this girl to be doing something that teenagers would do, so I decided she'd be wearing headphones and listening to music. I also had some thoughts about how the character looks and if girls could identify themselves with her. I went for a blue hair which is more whimsical and bring more inclusion. Her skin-tone is a light brown, trying to achieve a mid-tone skin color. 

Regarding my chosen materials, I went for pencil colors since it's a media that I'm very interested in developing further, and I also considered to be the right one to give some fun/careless look to the character and I chose a vibrant  color palette.

I started the exercise collecting the required images. I created a Pinterest board: www.pinterest.com/astrid_badell/ocas-projects/working-for-children/, and I also visited a small library close to my home where I took pictures of the books that catch my eye.
​

Key points from brief:

- Produce a series of illustrations for packaging to be used for a new range of organic biscuits for children. 

- The client specifically wants three illustrations featuring extinct animals interacting in some fun way with a biscuit to be used on the boxes. 

- The drawings should be in full colour, and the client would like the colours to reflect the ‘flavour’ of the biscuit: Raisin, Choc Chip and Ginger.

- Go to the shops and research the market. 

- Decide whether you will exploit ‘pester power’ or appeal to both adult and child. 

- You also need to decide whether you will have hand-drawn or ‘straight’ typography. 
​
- You need to submit all stages of the development process – thumbnails, visuals for all three designs and a mock-up for at least one. ​

During my supermarket visit I realized there was not a lot of illustration used for this type of packaging, I think the reason is that a photograph of the actual product is one if the best ways to open a appetite for this types of food. It would be different for a packaging for coffee, since all coffee looks more or less the same and from a marketing perspective it could make more sense to represent a specific mood through illustration than photography. 

However, when illustration was present I understand that it was used to connect with kids, therefore with a very childish style.

​I started by investigating about extinct animals and noted those that catch my attention, in this first round I included the Sable Cat, Mamooth, T-rex, among others... However, I started to think that I didn't want to represent the cliché extintc animals (a.k.a Dinosaurs), so thinking about something opposite I looked into the most recently extinct animals. There I found a topic which was more interesting to me and that I considered a good conversation starter between kinds and parents.

Afterwards I was thinking about the interaction between my animals and the biscuits, and I made up my mind about choosing small to medium animals which were more natural to be eating a small piece of food. I finally chose the Great Auk, the Tasmanian tiger and the Paradise Parrot. Then I thought about the type of interaction between the animal and the biscuit and noted that down.

Then I did some first sketches to get a sense on how to draw this animals in the position I wanted to. I didn’t go much into composition because I thought that designing for packaging one should keep it simple since the illustration will be one part of a bigger design. After this, I sketched my three final pieces, scanned them in and started to work in a Ps file.

Regarding colors, I chose a dominant color for each animal and flavor and developed a color palette around this. The with the chose colors I painted the whole piece and added textures and text. The text is a typography from the software, but it has a childish/ handwritten style that in my opinion matches very well the whole concept.
​
I’m very happy with the final result, I think it answers the brief very well and is a piece that I’d consider adding to my professional portfolio. In the future, I’d probably develop the final illustration for the other two flavors.

​Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_parrot

Mock- up: <a href='https://www.freepik.com/psd/background'>Background psd created by rawpixel.com - www.freepik.com</a>

Brief's key points: 


- Begin by taking each pair of words in turn from the list below and writing them in your own handwriting.
     Big Small                      Fat Thin                     Fast Slow                          Fun Boring                    Calm Mad

- Now write each pair of opposites in a way that is descriptive.

- Turning to your computer software, scroll through the fonts and select one that suits your word. Reflect the qualities you were seeking to express when hand-drawing the word. 

- Print off the words in the typefaces you’ve selected in a size that reflects the meaning of each word. 

- Trace the typeface in pencil using the colour that best communicates its meaning.
​
- Use a moodboard to explore other media qualities which communicate the meaning of your word.

- Draw your typed words freehand using a pencil and then render them using materials, media and colour appropriate to their meaning. ​

​After writing the list of words several times in my sketchbook, I went on to illustrator and also played around with different typos. 

My final lists (of upper case and lower case) is the first image bellow. I took that file and opened in my Ipad in Procreate (instead of printing, since I'm out of ink). I highlighted my favorite version of each and went on to trace and add colour. 

​After that, I chose to focus only on one pair of words (honestly, I found the latest stage of the exercise not clearly explained) so I chose: FAST and Slow. I thought these two words where the most interesting to research further since those two concepts are quite popular to be visually interpreted somehow. Then I created one mood board for each word.

​Finally, I moved on to rendering the final two words. However, I decided to go for other words than "fast and slow" to check if the meaning would still be there. I replaced the word "fast" with "focus" and the word "slow" with the phrase "slow down". 

Even though I found this exercise to be interesting and made me think further about the qualities of typographies, it also showed me the difficulties of rendering your own typo. I think I could improve my final rendering with more time and practice, but now I could choose better for the ample amount already available in the market.