Selection Box: Animal Farm

My Chosen Task: Animal Farm

My chosen task that I will be doing is the 'Narrative Fiction' task on adapting 1 of 3 classic novel narratives, and illustrating 3 pieces for them to create a full mockup of a book. The story I also chose was the social commentary concept-novel called Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Story Analysis/Planning:

Before starting the project, I took the time to enjoy the story of Animal Farm through the forms of an audiobook, the book itself via PDF, and the 1950s animated film adaptation.

As I watched and listened, I discovered some differences in tone, story beats and even some additional narrative content exclusive to that rendition.

Concept Artwork:

Character Design:

initially, I was thinking about taking a fantasy, storybook-like approach to the designs. This was before I had realised that it was a very realistic and gritty tale, rather than that of a fictional fairytale that also happens to be on the grittier side of storytelling.

Redesigns:

post my first feedback session with Tony, I had decided to accept that the more animated approach might not be very suitable for the book illustrations, and had decided to utilise more realistic depictions of the farmland animals. And now that I have redesigned them, I am happy that I did, as it definitely feels more authentic to the story.

Environment/Locations:

When designing the locale itself, I wanted to stay true to past iterations, but also inject a little bit of that German expressionism behaviour into the way they might appear from afar.

Colours would also follow abstract examples too, as many German expressionists delved into strange visuals and colours that weren't often associated with their real life counterparts.

Single Page Illustration

Thumbnails:

When designing the thumbnails, I had decided it was important to include some feeling of authority and impending doom towards the animals. In the book, the main antagonist (Napoleon)) was said to have been a borderline, evil dictator akin to that of Adolf Hitler or Stalin.

In my thumbnails, I placed him over on top of a crate that is sitting in front of the doorway to the farm, so that it was simulate gatekeeping, with his shadow being cast over the top of them, to show how Napoleon sees the animals and the farm.

My initial plan with the full page illustration, was to take advantage of the form of the farm itself, and further describe it to the reader visually. Above you can see a more rodchenko-esque approach to making shapes to spotlight the animals, but I had decided against it as it seemed to lay too much into graphic design, and not enough of an illustration's style.

For the double page spread, I had decided to stick to the pencils I had, and made use of the various shades I could get from B and H pencils.

My vision for the double page spread was to show the mill that boxer the horse built, being blown to bits by the farmers who invaded the farm and chased back away to their Inn, as well as the demise of Mr Jones, who blew ignited the explosives in the first place.

My alternative ideas were to depict Napoleon as a business man playing cards, but had decided against it due to the style change from fantasy to realistic.

Final Pieces:

6 x 9 Inches (Full Page Illustration)

My final result was done with German expressionism in mind, as I found the likes of Maria Uhden to show certain elements to be far more intimidating than they really are.

I also positioned the crowd of animals to be backed up away into a corner to show their submission towards Napoleon, and how malleable they are to him in his new political system that he overtook on the farm.

The final piece for the front cover depicts that of a constructivism poster, also inspired by rodchenko, but includes more of a balance between graphics and a distinguished drawing.

The piece depicts Napoleon, menacingly staring at the reader, as a trail behind him leads their eyes to the farm.

6 × 9 Inches (Front Cover)

12 x 9 Inches (Double Page Spread)

Most of this was done traditionally, but to add and play around with what I could alter, I decided to heavily involve the stamp clone tool and create some totally different visuals altogether.

It was here that I also decided on the typeface and text, and was able to attempt a quote into the drawing near the mill, as it stood out to me when I was revising the story.

Mockups:

Front Cover

Double Page Spread

Full Page

Development:

Colour Scheme:

When deciding on the colour scheme, I generally wanted to stay close to the works of Uden's, and experiment with darker colours as it can be a challenge to balance light sources in smaller, enclosed areas such as a barn, but retain just enough colour to make it look somewhat colourful.

Initially I tried to start off with a much lighter colour palette, but it didn't quite fit the vibe I wanted, so I decided to use the lighter shades as guidelines to introduce much darker colours later on.

In traditional constructivist poster fashion, I took to mainly bright reds, darker greys, blacks and light blues. The way I'd implement these colours was to depict Napoleon, the farm, and the typeface all as blocked out colours.

Tools Used:

My first attempt was to try out the perspective from below, with the animals looking upward. The style I initially wanted to go with was advised against, so I decided to adopt a more realistic approach towards depicting the animals, rather than that of the animals you might find in an animated film directed towards general audiences

When choosing my media, I had ultimately decided on going with watercolour paints, letting it dry, and then applying pencil crayon for a German expressionist feeling. When it was done, I aerosol sprayed the piece and adjusted accordingly on Clipstudio and Paint.Net for any anomalies with the lasso and clone tool.

Tools Used:

My media of choice for this piece was to do so again on mixed media paper to hone my skills further in traditional art methods, but also tackle alcohol marker pens as I often steer clear of them. This was a helpful exercise in using them to improve as I had to carefully pick where a certain colour would go.

For the earlier stages, I had stuck to sketching pencils, and had rarely used a white coloured pencil crayon to fix what I could without staining the drawing too much.

When fixing over what was cloned, I had also used some brushes that resembled pencils and crayons to patch them over with.

Much like before with the full page and cover, I used the clone tool, added noise, fragmentation and the lasso tool. However in this segment I show a little more of what that looked like. I also altered the lighting and contrast to make it feel more like a pencil drawing from the smearer look it had previously.

I used a variety of brushes that came pre-packaged with clip studio, and much like photoshop, were able to show a lot of different life-like textures.

Typography:

Hand-drawn/Traditional:

Instead of seeking typography online to write over the top of the paper digitally and run it through several filters to look realistic. I decided to tackle hand written/drawn type for the front cover. This was heavily inspired by the old, papery feel of constructivist posters of the era as well. I needed to fix some inconsistencies digitally, but for the most part, this is all traditional.

Digital:

Refinement:

When using the cloning tool, I was able to make some mostly convincing placements look like they had been done in real life, it was worthwhile to apply this practise as I tried t o keep what I had learned previously and reminded at the start of the semester, and fix any mistakes that were left over when getting scanned in.