Roald Dahl. concept - key art - editorial

Roald Dahl Literary Estate

To illustrate iconic characters and scenes from your favourite Roald Dahl stories

Brief 

To illustrate iconic characters and scenes from your favourite Roald Dahl children’s stories. The illustrations should appear as if they are part of a published series. 

Background 

Roald Dahl was a spy, ace fighter-pilot, chocolate historian and medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG and many more brilliant stories. He remains the World’s No.1 storyteller. 

The Roald Dahl Literary Estate manages the Roald Dahl brand. Recently, we developed a new brand identity to provide a common bond between the many books, films, musicals, and even digital apps based on Roald Dahl’s stories and characters. If you had to sum us up, we are… 

– MASTERS of invention! 

– MAKERS of mischief! 

– CHAMPIONS of good! 

We believe that every child in the world should enjoy Roald Dahl’s stories just as much as we do. If you agree, then we would love to work with you. 

Objective 

This year marks 100 hundred years since Roald Dahl was born. Yet Roald Dahl’s stories are more popular than ever. We want him to stay that way. 

The Creative Challenge 

We invite you to illustrate a series of iconic scenes, featuring at least three iconic characters from Roald Dahl’s inventive, revolting, wicked, or friendly stories in a style of your choosing. None of your illustrations should be boring, safe, or predictable. All styles welcome.

The scenes can be from any of Roald Dahl’s stories for children. You’ll find a list within the project pack as well as a selection of extracts for your inspiration, but you don’t have to stick to these. 

Target Audience 

Our core audience for Roald Dahl’s stories are boys and girls of the future, aged between 5 and 11. They don’t necessarily identify themselves as fans of Roald Dahl – yet! They may prefer YouTube, their games consoles, or messaging their friends on SnapChat. You should aim to make them love Roald Dahl’s stories just as much as you did once upon a time. 

Mandatories 

You can choose to illustrate between one and three scenes. Within this series, you should illustrate at least one child character, one villain character and one fantastical creature — whether this be a witch, a giant, an insect or an oompa-loompa!

You can select scenes from a mixture of novels, although the illustrations should appear as if part of a coherent series. 

The illustrations should also compliment our logo - you’ll find some copies of this in the project pack.

Deliverables & Additional Information 

For guidance on how to submit your work, please adhere to the main Deliverables information which can be found at the YCN website. 

below -  A list of books that the project pack provided. I gave each book a quick study looking for a spark of inspiration. Like a Cle shay the only famous, most known take my fancy, only the famous ones take me back to my childhood...Charley and the chocolate factory, James and the giant peach, the witches and fantastic Mr fox. 
The project pack has a file with full of parts from some of the novels from Roald Dahl. Again the parts that are from the famous, the ones that took me back to my childhood are the ones that started to come to life in my head. I started to create illustrations and test composition in my mind whilst reading them...so I don't think this project will be one that I test myself and push my practice out of its comfort zone. I think it will be one that I let my creativeness guide me through. judgement and dissections will be made by fun and love for the project Not to challenge or test myself to better the grade of the project...just good old enjoyment loving what I'm doing.

James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory The Magic Finger
Fantastic Mr Fox
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Danny the Champion of the World The Enormous Crocodile
The Twits
George’s Marvellous Medicine Revolting Rhymes
The BFG
Dirty Beasts
The Witches
Boy
The Gira e and the Pelly and Me Going Solo
Matilda
Rhyme Stew
Esio Trot
The Vicar of Nibbleswicke
The Minpins 

I decided to start this project with James and the giant peach novel. I was more inspired by the description that was given in the project pack. like I state before it whilst reading it, my creativeness was more active with this one than the others. I was playing the scene in my head and imagine the insects surrounding James as he meets them for the first time, I started drawing the characters and the scene in my head right away as I read this...the characters a little darker, James a little more characterised than my normal style. I was excited...so best that I started with this. 

I don't want to be a million miles away from the original art of the books created by Quentin blake, as they are part of the Roald Dahl franchise and are just as rememberable as the storeys them selfs. I want to take those characters but give them a more modern twist, and translate that through my style.



To do list -
James
grasshopper
spider
lady bird
centipede
earthworm
silkworm
scene/location

Action plan.


To creating a body of work that shows development of character and location Final outcome to have presentation boards that show process and developments of the project and a hard copy of the final rendered piece of the image.

CHARACTER CONCEPT



Below - Issue file of the concept development of the characters 

I made some quick thumbnails for the final image. I knew what I wanted to draw but I was questioning the scale, and composition of characters. 

A quick black and white thumbnail to work out lighting and concepts. the characters in the four ground will be out of focus as if the view is behind the characters in the foreground.



working on the concept of inside the peach. going for warm colours and a dingy setting but needs to appear that the surroundings are thick to represent giant peach.

process developments-
now im happy with the concept of the peach i used that as my background and sticking the the rules of drawing (working center out)  I started to draw the chacarters that are in the midground.



then foreground

 

 I was aiming for an illustration or a kind of key art piece but during drawing this I felt that I wanted to draw something that could exists in the books (an interior piece)  So I decided to keep some thins a little quirky. the hands the overlays and some features of the face left less detailed as they was in the concepts stages.

below - For some reason I prefer this as a submission for this brief...its more striking and looks part of the franchise. maybe because it looks more like the illustrations for the novel the artists uses a white negative space so the resemblance is what is making me like this more.



Final image.



I enjoyed creating this because it was a different style to how I would work. I do feel the concept process was the stronger part of the projIct. I feel I had more fun with that becuase it was creating the characters and more decisions had to be me it allowed my imagination to go wild as for the final image I was held back because I was having to stick with the concept of the scene. obviously I feel that there is so much more I could do with this but the dead line was getting closer and closer to each time I decided to rework part of the image. I feel it works well as an editorial piece and as a key art for a concept project. 

Han solo digital sketch

I decided to take some time and test my digital skills. when I started my illustration degree my practice was all realistic paintings and pencil images. through my degree that was lost I came more focused on comic book style. but with previous contract work it made me realise that I still need those realistic skill in my portfolio but after learning that the industry is heavily digital I had to test if I could digitally paint an image and still get the same results as I would with my analogue illustrations. 

I wasn't feeling too confident as I have never done a realistic portrait digitally and I've not touched realistic illustration for at least 3 years as my practice has been almost 100% comic style. 

So knowing that this was something that I had to do ad practice on, I needed to find an image that inspired me and gave me the drive to make a good drawing. Even though I'm trying my hardest to come away from the hole fan art I felt that for practice I need to work on something that I enjoy I don't want the practice stages to be a chore I need and image I can recognise. I had thought abut doing digital paintings of Georgie, mates tutors but that didn't actually appeal to me as much as drawing a something from my childhood...ya guessed it! STAR WARS. Han solo was my childhood hero but I didn't want to draw the younger Harrison ford but the older one. choosing the older one would be more challenging. the creases the age, the character all would be a good test. also ford has a deep eye set and a wonky nose and a killer grin...if not drawn well this would just turn out a bad representation. again this would be a good test. my attitude to this test is ' if your going to do something, go all out and do it well. I looked for what I thought would be the hardest drawing. high level of lights and shadows, fabrics, double light sourses. 

I chose this one in the end because it ticked all the boxes I was looking for in a challenge. the heavy light source from the left nad side the second light source hitting his right cheek bone the heavy shadows around the eyes and nose. the only downside was that I couldn't find a bigger image of this so I couldn't blow it up to get the detail.  

I knew that the project would take me days but due to work commitments and other projects I didn't want to spend more that 3 days on this painting. and were I am up to on day 3 is where ill post it and work on the painting if it's not finished I'll spend an hour when and where i can to finish the painting.

the painting took me 18 hours over the space of 3 days to get to this level. I'm happy with the results so far. for me the face is looking realistic and the clothes the most time-consuming factor of this project was the hair the hair is about 10% complete but when finished I think it will finish the image and make it look more realistic. through out this project I learnt more about digital painting and how to translate an analogue technique into a digital one. 

below is a link to my development of the painting. a video of screen shots taken at key moments of the developmets  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-5tRhvaCTw 

I got to spend a little time on the hair and back ground.

So I've been thinking about this practice development project iv got going on a lot over Christmas. I have decided that I'm going combine the figure drawing project with this one. both are practice development but one focuses on bettering my knowledge on the the figure drawing, anatomy, portraits, 360 heads shot, etc. the other will be bettering my knowledge and practice with my digital work hoping to get my digital skills to a higher standards.  so in a nut shell there will be two projects running by side each other, both will be bettering my practice to become a concept artists and illustrator. 

as one side of this projects focuses on anatomy and figure drawing, the other will be more free and fun. just me studying/ researching digital painting. spending the evenings having fun painting. 

below are some qucik digital pieces I created during the christmas break ( had to be qucik due to cop)  

below expermenting with depth but trying to use a light sorce to execute it. 

again creating depth using ' into the blue technique' i learnt this effect when I was about 9...good old bob ross but i wasnt that good at doing this effect with paints but with digital it comes pretty easy. not the best but its far better than i used to do. 

below - i learnt this pastle effect that really works well to express little lighting...too big and it goes to mud but if its little it looks pretty neet. I decided to draw a grinch for the excuse to draw fairy light but i didnt want to draw anything cutsy, that stuff just boars. 

During this project Personal project I gained a freelance project working in the concept industry.
there I learnt that i need to develop on more techniques to better my career. I need to work on matte painting and photo bashing. both skills that I'm not as strong as my painting abilities. I will be developing these methods and demonstrating and documenting my progress on this blog post.

This project may seem a little everywhere (as it does to me) but the aim of this project is to develop all aspects of my practice, to document my experiments and developments of my practice. So what ever is uploaded to this project are images that i have created to better my practice it will involve lost of fun and experimental images. digital paintings, mette paintings, photo bashing, anatomy, still life all that will better my practice.

  

Colours may vary - out of order exhibition

The idea of creative something out of order was a tricky one, i knew that others would create something generic. things such as, a series of characters in a row and having an odd one with in it that makes it out of order, good but predictable and none challenging. My original idea was to create the space odyssey scene with the monkey smashing the bones but changing the monkey for a space man…not very out f order if I’m honest I i was trying to find an image that i could create a nice looking piece something that allowed me to draw to be able to create something with technical line work and depth. i saw this as a cop out. 

i have a strong interest in things dark and gritty as we all know and this is something that i know i can comfortably create with ease and still come out with good results. due to work commitments the best thing for me now is to stick to my strengths and use that for quality and speeds. 

again due to work commitments this wasn’t a project that i could spend time on thumb nailing and making tones of references…any at all for that matter. i have been working out in my head of ideas that would work. hospital doors boarded up with wood with zombie hands coming out with a sign saying out of order…most ideas was that things being out of order with zombies in them. I tend to run off in my imagination pretending I’m in the situation or location of my piece…i imagined being in a zombie apocalypse and the story in my head lead me to a car surrounded by zombies impossible to get to..the car would be out of order! i wanted to go more playful with composition so i didn’t want to do a scene but wanted to make a centre piece that wasn’t grounded by location. so stepping away from a vesta and more of an illustration for a change. i decided to make the zombies in the car trying to claw there way out again car out of order. for some reseason the car was always a mini in my head, i tried to imagine the car as a van, a bus, a police car and all just wasn’t right…the mini was slick playful and some what entertaining.

I created this piece in my own time, i started it on my dinner brake at work and it was here that one of my friends there suggested that it would be rather fitting that the zombies should be clown zombies…like the act ‘how many clowns can fit in a mini’ i thought it was perfect! it fits that bill, clown car out of order…imagine your a punter going to go to the show and it says sorry clown car out of order…it works again its playful and interesting and still tells a story. 

I was going to paint blood on the car…hand prints, maybe some guts. I asked Georgie her thoughts on this and she asked “well have the zombies been trap in there or have they turned into zombies inside?..if they have then there won’t be blood on the out side” GOLDEN this illustration now has a story…Georgie looked at the illustration and found a story to it thats what I try to achieve with all my work. leave people questioning what has happened. i felt t would be more of a brain teaser and a conversation starter if there was no blood on the car ‘why?’ maybe they locked them selfs in and eventual died and came back, maybe they was preforming there act and one was infected and once the doors was locked the infected one attacked the others and left them all like that. who knows its up to the viewer to decide what has happened to the clowns but all thats important is that car is now out of order. 

my favourite part about creating this was working with the same weight of line there was something satisfying about working with it, there was no room for error, if you miss place the line it shows it doesn’t run trough with the other lines. everything has to run smooth…i didn’t run smooth through it all at all! but trying to was great fun. colouring the mini was great also was the perfect opportunity to practice that  shine technique by only using colours. regarding the zombies - it was tricky making them look like they belonged in the car and not edited in it. It was important that all the zombies looked apart of the illustration. 

if i had the time i would have made more detail in the zombies even made the hole image bigger so i could get more colour and textures in the hole thing but besides that i don’t think i would change anything else.

 As a concept artist I am forever handing my work over to get approved, it takes many hand overs to get to that approval and each time its sent back with feedback to apply and change i learnt that title bit more about my practice. things such as line weight, hues, composition i learn what doesn’t work and what does. Its made me look at my work differently using there feed back i can make better desitions about colour, weight, proportions. I think since i started working in this industry my work as progressed a lot … definitely my skills with the digital format. 

Its been great coming back to the comic book style…it seems like its been forever but infect its only been like 12 weeks a million miles away from what I am producing at work. its probably my favourite style to work in…line quality and expression, and story telling is key to use them you have to be creative and thats what i like about it its creative and challenging.