8x8

I'm working on a brief at the moment to create an illustration for a publication called  '8x8'.  It will contain 8 stories written by Creative Writing students from MMU, illustrated by 8 Illustration students from Stockport College.  

The story I am working on is called 'In May the Rains Came' by Richard Bell. The story is about a girl who's mother suffers abuse at the hands of her father, and how this girls finds a way to stand up against him. It has a kind of fractured narrative and weaves in and out of an imaginary world the girl has created, based on a computer game about dinosaurs.

For my illustration I decided to go with an image of her father, with an overlay of a computerised dinosaur, which represents his personality in the imaginary world. I then included rain/water coming from the shower, which is mentioned in the story, as I wanted to have the water washing away the dinosaur slightly to make him more visible underneath.

I created it digitally and made it all with mostly straight lines to reflect the computer game idea. I used a black background to make the image stand out as much as possible, particularly the pale blue of the water.

I'm worried it's looking a bit flat at the moment and I think that I might have to add something else to the background to give it a bit more depth.

We also have to create a smaller spot illustration, and for this I wanted to use the idea of a drinks coaster with an image inside it, as this was a slightly more obscure element in the story, but I like the idea of encapsulating an image in the shape, in contrast to my main image that runs full colour to the edge. I've only done a little test piece so far as I'm not sure what image I'm going to put inside, and the colours are a bit light but I wanted to see how the shape and background might work, so this is just a first draft...and don't worry this is not the image I would put in the circle, just a quick filler!

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