Night Sky Background

The night sky be the background used in the majority of the book where the setting is a ‘cold and rainy night in December’. I researched various different night time skies that are used in tv shows and books and a lot of them consist of a purple hugh like the colour below.

I felt that this shade did not suit the idea of the night being cold and in the month of December. It felt like more of a summer sky. I experimented initially with blues, before deciding that grey could work the best. The blue completely took over the book and was far to heavy and dark.

  

Sky Backgrounds

The sky is a part of my book that will be used on the second, third, fourth, seventh and eight page of my book as well as possibly on the front and back cover. This means I must experiment on getting the perfect sky for these pages.

I began my experimentation initially by scanning and browsing through various different ‘sky blue’ shades online. I placed Gonzo in front of some of these shades that I found to be most appealing.

I came across a lovely sky image on google that I tried to recreate in illustrator using the gradient tool.

Developing the correct gradient for the back of the book was the next step for me. After experimenting with some different shades of blues, I stumbled across one that really caught my eye. I created a gradient swatch where I incorporated this shade with a darker blue on the top and made it dissolve into white at the bottom, just above the grass line.

I created a gradient swatch where I incorparated this shade with a darker blue on the top and made it dissolve into white at the bottom, where I plan on putting grass in. This can of course then be altered according to the different pages as I see fit throughout the illustration process.

Finished Sky:

 

 

Gonzo Food Inspiration

Messing around with different ideas led me to taking inspiration from different foods for my main character. I initially made the observation that Gonzo’s chosen body shape resembled an onion, which gave me the idea to illustrate an onion-styled Gonzo in Adobe Illustrator. Again, this gave me more opportunity to mess around with colour ideas.

 

I then continued to represent Gonzo as different fruits, purely for experimentation and visualisation reasons!

Colouring Gonzo

I then began to mess around with some colours for Gonzo. Although creating Gonzo with the use of bright greens, blues and oranges, I felt that keeping Gonzo as a brown or grey shade is important.

I also had in my head that I will possibly be developing the character of Clancy cat in a grey shade, so I decided that brown would be the better option.

 

Colour Palettes

Colour is a huge part of children’s stories! However, I don’t feel the need to drown the book out with colour. After several different trips to the library and looking at online books and videos, I know now that I like a particular illustration style, which isn’t necessarily flooded with colour.

I aim to incorporate a certain amount of colour in my characters that makes them visually appealing to a child, but I like the idea of the background being more minimal. For my protagonist Gonzo, I want him to be a shade of brown. The colour palette below gives the feel of how I want him to be perceived.

For the character of Ruby I want to also incorporate browns and oranges. Ruby is a Robin and this will have to be acknowledged in her colouring in order to avoid confusion for the child. I have attached a palette below that represents this.

 

For the other parts of the story, I need to add more colour in order to be visually appealing for the children reading it. I have two human characters that make an appearance in one of the pages that I will colour prominently. The minimal background will also have colour, similar to the palette that I have attached below.