The main idea for this final work was to create a final project based on what your dream job might be. We created the objectives of the project and the work that we are supposed to create. For this final project that I came up with, the goal was to create a narrative with illustrations that were strong enough to tell the story without words. I left it open so that I could choose to have words if I wanted to, but I ended up going with no text besides the title. I also left it up to whoever would be doing the project to be able to choose to make up a story of their own or use an existing one. I went with creating my own narrative.
I started off my process by creating thumbnails of what each page would roughly look like. This helped me sort out what the important details were in the story and the ones that I wanted to show through illustration. I also created my first sketches of the full page drawings with main characters in it so that I had a good grounding of what the main points of interest would be in each scene. From there I created a box for each of the illustrations of the size the pages would be. This helped me keep in mind just how big I should scale the characters and scenes. I drew out the characters for each page and the different scenes so that it was just outlines until I added value to it later. Once all the pages were completed, I added value with charcoal.
Since the story was called the Cellar Dweller, I thought it was fitting to add charcoal and only charcoal as the medium. I wanted to keep it black and white so that it gave an eerie sort of feeling. I thought the dingy texture that the charcoal created gave it that more chilling feeling to the overall book and also went along with the narrative I was trying to achieve. After all of the pages had charcoal, I scanned them and went into photoshop to create a more intense contrast of black and white. The black charcoal turned out darker than the original drawing which helped create a darker scene. The cellar would be dark and having an overall dark color scheme to the book connects it all together better.
The narrative that I was trying to achieve was of a little girl who gets bullied by her brothers constantly. I had multiple scenes where the girl with pigtails was being pushed aside and then locked in the cellar. When the little girl gets locked down in the cellar, she is first very afraid because she is alone in the darkness. Then she realizes that there is a creature in the cellar and she becomes even more frightened as the creatures tentacle-like arms grab her. The girl is very fearful until she realizes that the cellar dweller was actually going after the candy bar that she had in her bag. The creature lets her go and she runs back up the stairs through the door that became unlocked. Later the girl comes back to the cellar dweller with a handful of candy bars and they become friends. The creature ends up being friendly and helps the girl get back at her brothers by scaring them out of the house.
I created this project because I am interested in illustrating for narratives in the future. I am also interested in creating those narratives and that is something I would like to continue doing. I think the overall piece turned out how I wanted it to and it was nice to be able to control what elements I wanted to incorporate in this project. I think the completed product was cohesive and I would be interested in creating another story with the same themes.
For more of my work, you can find my illustration portfolio here.
