For the past two weeks I've been working on an editorial illustration for an article about parents not reading fairytales to their children. We had to choose an existing article to illustrate and this was where I encountered the biggest problem of the project! I found it really hard to choose an article - they're are millions of them all over the internet and I had real trouble narrowing it down. If I'm given something to work on, even if it's hard, I've got no option to change it so I just get on with it. But with this I kept wandering to articles that I liked but wouldn't particularly challenge me. I ended up choosing an article about fairytales and I wish I hadn't - I think I could have produced something much more interesting if I'd had a more difficult article.
Anywaaay...the illustration I produced is based on the idea that parents are shunning fairytales for less 'scary' stories such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In the image the caterpillar has become the scary one and is chasing off the fairytale characters. One of the challenges I faced was how to give well-known characters my own stamp. I created the image on Illustrator to give it a more modern look and I think it worked fairly well. The only character that perhaps doesn't work as well as the rest is Cinderella. Because of the Disney film, her look is so distinctive - so it was hard to make her my own.
I think the way I create figures has improved in this project, I particularly like Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel. The illustration sits well on the page and I like the strong purple in the background. I attempted to make the characters lift off the page by giving them shadows, but in subsequent work this could be pushed a lot further.
Overall I'm happy with the final design - I just wish I'd chosen a different article! (Sorry for the small images - not sure what's happening!)
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