The Bears and The Sheep
For my final project in my second year of university, I wrote and illustrated my own children's storybook. It was based on a short one line prompt I was given that said “Three bears down from the heights of the Pyrenees by snow have been decimating the sheep of the valley of the Lys”.
When we were given the initial brief of creating a visual narrative in the form of either a publication or animation, I immediately knew that I wanted to take the route of making a children’s storybook, as it would allow me to gain a deeper understanding of the disciplines I want to take into the professional world. When we were given the choices for which short story we wanted to work with, the one about bears and sheep stood out to me as being a perfect choice for a picture book, because both bears and sheep are commonly used as characters for children’s media. Many of my peers who had chosen this story, decided to go with darker, more mature ways of depicting the bears “decimating the sheep”, whereas I knew I wanted my work to keep the whimsical and silly feelings that are seen in most of my work.
Step 1. Sketch
Step 3. Flat Colours
Step 5. Lighting and Shadows
Step 2. Background
Step 4. Semi-Rendered
Step 6. Text and Final Touches
Above you can see my step by step process for making one of these double page spreads.
Here are some examples of the initial concepts and character designs I did during the early production of this book. One of the biggest challenges I tackled when doing this project, was figuring out how to render snow in a way that would still be vibrant and visually interesting. Since my art style usually consists of bright, prismatic colours, I wanted my snow to not look just completely white, as I thought it would look dull, and would also make it hard to distinguish the bears form the environment. So, instead I opted for a pale blue snow that had patches of purples and pink in it that was somewhat inspired by the colours found in opalite glass.