wonder – chalon joy collingwood

Well I’ve been productive this week…~

(haha but no really, I essentially just finished the Wonder Penguin Project in 4 days). It was intense, but it worked!

I didn’t mean to take such a small amount of time for this (my initial timetable gave me 4 *weeks* from mind map to final cover), but having so much downtime in my life made me reevaluate how long I really had to complete this brief. I have so much in store for PP2 that I didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary on what was supposed to be my ‘shortest’ project- that thought took on a while new meaning…

I had already researched into some existing source material e.g. book covers and film posters before the Christmas break, so I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a rough idea of what I wanted to do. With this research in hand, I started to draft out some concepts of the cover, evaluating each one and choosing the most successful to take forward to development. This was all pretty run of the mill development work that I completed over the course of a day, so I’ll move onto the more interesting stuff~

I worked in Procreate again to bring the final product to life- I feel that my workflow has really come into its own since I started using my iPad as a key tool in my process; it’s the perfect balance between familiar traditional technique and the ease and innovation of digital painting. I was able to scan in my final concept from my sketchbook and work directly on top of this in Procreate, where I could fine-tune the details, proportions, etc.

Procreate tells me I clocked in at just under 8 hours with over 7000 strokes to complete the cover- that’s quite an interesting stat! I’m pleased with the final image:

screen shot 2019-01-25 at 12.31.31 — *Wonder* Final Cover Art (Collingwood, 2019).

I’ll be making a mock-up final product by laminating my printed cover onto an existing copy of the book before hand in too… it’ll be nice to see a ‘finished product’!

I’m expecting to have to make a few wee changes/additions to the project work (particularly the written work) once I have a pre-hand in tutorial, but for the most part I can put this project to rest. ♥

More next week as the deadline draws near!

References

Collingwood, C. (2019). Wonder Final Cover Art [Digital].

It’s been a wee while since I wrote the last post… it’s been a weird few weeks with only a little bit of progress unfortunately! I’ll hopefully be back into the swing of things now, with updates at least once weekly.

In terms of the riso project, I’ve finished everything bar the actual printing of the artwork… so yes, I’m slightly behind. I’ll correct this during this coming weeks while I work alongside the Character Design Development project so I don’t fall behind- I can’t afford to lose any project time this year.

Additionally, the list of book titles for the Penguin Student Award has been released- initially I was torn between Wonder by R.J. Palacio, and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. The current iterations of the cover art for both titles are very minimal and follow a specific theme throughout the rest of the author’s novels. Below are the two most recent covers released in the UK:

Screen Shot 2018-11-12 at 11.27.42.png — Left: Palacio, 2014. Right: Murakami, 1987.

Ultimately, I’m marginally more partial to Wonder, especially as I think some of the key imagery and thematic elements that are featured in the narrative lend themselves towards my style and interests slightly more than Norwegian Wood. More on this next month when I start production on the project~

I’m also due to start my Character Design/Animation Development project this month- I’ll do an update soon about my initial research and where I’m going with the characters and storyline. This is a project that I’ve had in mind for *years*, so it’ll be nice to finally bring it into realisation ♥

It’s been a rough few weeks but I’m excited for what lies ahead and for the upcoming projects I’ll be working on- but for now, I’ll be mostly focusing on finishing the riso project (e.g. doing some initial test prints while we wait for the new ink colours to arrive)- at present I’m in the dark as to what the test prints will yield. It could be that I’ll have to completely re-do my artwork, or alter some of the design, or a number of other things. I’m worried about it, but I’m also too excited to start the next project so my mind is all over the place! Hopefully I’ll be able to have some closure with the riso project soon.

Targets for the following month include finishing the riso project very soon (in order to leave ample time for the other two projects), as well as continuing to promote ‘radial thinking’ in my process, particularly as part of the experimental nature of Semester 1.

References

Palacio, R. (2014). Wonder. London: Corgi. p. Cover Artwork.

Murakami, H. (1987). Norwegian Wood. London: Vintage. p. Cover Artwork.

Tag: wonder

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