Alice in Wonderland - initial designs of the book illustration

For the book illustration, I found myself taking influence from the designs that I had created for the book cover, especially with the Mad Hatters tea party designs. I felt that the content in the imagery was perfect for a book illustration in which can obtain more objects and characters compared to the front cover design. I noted the strengths and elements that I liked from each design from the book cover compositions and began drawing refined layouts of work that would be successful for the illustration page. I knew that I wanted the illustration to fit inside the page with a white border, rather than take up the entire page, therefore I need to consider if the illustration needs a border to help it blend with in the page. From the feedback I obtain from my peers from the book cover designs, I wanted to absorb the use of the perspective with the table, and add the items that I had included along the table. I took these ideas and began to sketch different portrayals of how the characters would interact in the scene, and whether a different perspective of the table would work more successfully than the original idea for the perspective.

I really enjoyed designing the book illustration, as whilst I was drawing I began to think of ideas to turn the image into a storyboard for a possible animation, much like the idea of the front cover containing a password in which you can then watch the animation on the books website. For the thumbnail designs I felt that 1 and 2 were the most suitable and worked with the narrative of the iconic scene in the book, mad hatters tea party. It allowed the audience to see depth, an inclusion of a foreground, middleground and background that gives the image an aesthetic appeal, for both the young audience and the gift buyers. Design 3 and 4 worked well, being suitable for the the audience and visually appealing however the imagery felt more sequential, a frame from a storyboard/animation in which I wanted to take these designs further to match with the final illustration to make a possible storyboard. Thumbnail 1 did not work well on its own through how distant the Mad Hatter was compared to Alice, in my opinion for a young audience the main characters of the scene need to be clearly visible and to be able to see their facial expressions to keep their attention. Thumbnail 2 worked well but it lacked something and needed extra detail in which merging the design with thumbnail 1 worked successfully; it included both of the main characters which draws in the audience, and then the depth of the image allows you to see the mad hatters table alongside the rest of the characters and the background.

Design for book cover

Designs for Illustration taking influence from book cover design 3