Feedback point 2

I have attached the revised project plan with up-dated and changed parts:-

My second reflection of the work done so far:-

I had a major re-think after sending off my first feedback point to my tutor, I was having second thoughts with the book I had chosen to illustrate. After doing a lot of the research and really thinking about what impact I wanted to make on children’s illustration, I realised the book wasn’t suitable for this project. I wrote the book out, but it felt quite flat, it didn’t have a moral to the story, and the ending needs changing quite a bit. That’s not say I won’t use it in the future, as I still like the story, but it needs some more work on it, and just didn’t sit with the environmental subject I had chosen to do.

I had an idea of a story I had in my mind for the last three years, and this seemed to fit perfectly within the environmental plan, it had a moral to the story, and also fitted in with my style of illustrating, and would be quite current in todays market, so I decided to change the story at this point.

I researched all the bits I had planned out on my project plan:-

Word counts on pages

Illustration techniques for children’s books (Domestika course)

Steps an illustrator has illustrating a children’s book

Book plan

Prep work

All this was really good research, I learnt a lot about how many pages a picture book should have, what types of spreads, different techniques, textures, different ways of working.

I learnt a lot in the Domestika course, and found this really good to get the basics down, a basic character and compositions, working on colours, both limited and not.

How different illustrators work when illustrating a book, obviously some are author/ illustrators, rather than just the illustrator, so this helped with the writing side of the book also.

A basic book plan, which has helped me to think about placement, and what kinds of spreads and pages I want, and also how I will be setting this out in In Design.

I also started working on the prep work, just to get the basics started, the ideas, the key words, a mood board, a brief, and looking at other illustrators and the inspiration they have given me and ideas moving forward.

I feel this second project has given me a good grounding of what I need to do, and how to do some of the steps. I know how many pages I need to write and illustrate, I know some good ideas for compositions, and I have started to think about the characters. I have come away with some new techniques for helping with the writing as well as the illustrating, and have a basic book plan ready for In Design.

Working on short mini projects on the research has really helped me to stay on track, and helped with the energy levels of this project, I’m really excited to start the third project.

I have thought more about the work I need to do further down the line, and lucky I left one project space open, as I realised I would need more time working on the illustrations, annotating them and re-working some if they do not go right.

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