Narrative Finals

Below are my final four submissions for my Narrative Unit. Treating it like a submission to a publisher, I selected my 4 favourite moments in my story that I wanted to illustrate. I decided to chose 3 key scenes where Howard interacts with the different animals individually, but also a major scene at the end where we can see most of the characters engaging with each other. I wanted the images to be fun and comical – containing elements that both children and adults could enjoy. My main focus was on characters design – hoping their expressions would help convey the ideas being established by the written narrative text. I tried hard to visualise the characters as though they could be animated – like they could actually walk across the page. I think their placement, dimensions and perspective really helped with making these images very strong!

Howard and The Elephants

Howard and The Giraffes

Howard and The Tortoises

Howard and The Animals

Narrative

The beginning of 2015 has mainly been dedicated to my second unit of this year at uni. The Narrative unit required us to explore a chosen text – identifying it’s meaning and developing illustrations that progress the interaction and direction of the narrative. I decided to write my own narrative to respond to, deciding to produce a children’s book which would promote the idea of individuality and self-acceptance among children. The story took some time to develop and finalise but I felt it was this development that allowed me to visualise and realise my characters of the story when producing responsive illustrations.

My story follows a dinosaur named Howard – the last one left, on his attempt to change who he is in order to fit in with other animals. However it is Howard’s journey and interaction with other animals that brings a natural conclusion to the story as the other animals inform Howard that there’s no need for him to try and be someone else to be accepted, he just has to be himself!

Below I’ve added some images of character designs and development from the unit for you to all have a look at!

I also took part in a Model Making workshop – in which I realised the character of Howard in a 3D format. I took part in this workshop a few weeks before producing my final pieces & I really felt that viewing the character as a 3D form help me realise his realisation in 2D – with regards to placement in scenes, perspective, size & dimensions.