Tuesday 30 April 2013

Keeping in touch with what inspires me...

At this late stage I'm hurriedly planning the size and layout of my book. In my initial storyboards of my images I automatically drew out rough boxes in quite a 'wide-screen' film friendly format. I'm not entirely sure why I did this, but I seem to be naturally comfortable thinking of images in terms of being a scene, like a landscape camera shot. I've needed to reconsider this as it isn't properly taking advantage of the book format. In my talks with tutors it has also been brought up that I should aim to create something that appeals to the child in me; something I can really connect to. So, I've been looking at the books I enjoy the layout of for inspiration. My favourites are old storybooks that appear quite decorative in their design, such as this collection, the Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak:
Here the illustrations are linked comfortably with the text in the book with decorative flourishes, either around the images themselves or alonside them around the titles. Everything looks neat and cohesive, which is what I want to be able to achieve! I think the size of these books is also a big factor in their appeal. They feel like precious objects as they are so small, and reading them is a personal, private experience (not particularly suited to sharing). Until I have taken the photographs of my scenes I can't finalise what size I would like the illustrations to be exactly, but I'm hoping they will be suitable to be viewed as quite small, similar to this.

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