Idea | Inspiration | Colour

I have finished drawing out a few different ideas in my sketchbook, and after pondering upon which one to do I came up with the idea of having Mole looking up into the trees of The Wild Wood on the front cover as he's about to walk in, and then on the back cover I would have the scene from the stouts point of view from inside The Wild Wood. On the spine I would like to have a tree to complete the 3D view of the scene. 

As I've mentioned before I really like the idea of doing a wrap around book cover that is a seamless image throughout, but with this idea of Mole looking into The Wild Wood it wouldn't work out so well.  I think the solution I've come up with is as unique as they come, which answers a big part of both the competition and the Uni brief criteria I've been given. Visualisations of this idea will be on their way soon!

Moving onto the choice of colour | I think I need to have something desaturated, with highlighted colours for the eyes of the Stoats and for Mole's clothing. Possibly have the scene with snow fall? Dim lighting is a must, without an ounce of sun showing to cheer things up. With these things in mind about lighting etc I've come up with some primitive colour palettes:

The top colour palette being for Mole and his clothing, and the bottom palette for the scenery. I chose as I said before to have fairly desaturated colours throughout to give the impressions of darkness and the unforgiving feeling that the scene in The Wild Wood has. I've deliberately chosen a light grey colour to contrast against the darker ones, which would also be perfect for snow if I so wish to have this as an element.

For Mole's clothing I had thought of having the green for his jacket, and a brick red colour for his scarf. I think his scarf should be blowing in the wind, and his stance should be as if he's walking against the wind whilst looking upwards in awe and fear at the opening of the woods. 

After having these thoughts I went on an inspiration hunt for the project, thinking about a book I'd read many years ago about a heroic mouse. I remember the art style being fantastic but unfortunately I couldn't find the name of it. Instead I found these images below of a cartoon book called Mouse Guard. I think these images are fantastic, especially the first one which is perfect imagery for my front cover if the own had been replaced for The Wild Wood and the mouse replaced with Mole. I really like the way the artist has created the irregular shapes for the snow and how the difference in opacity of each snowflake gives the image depth. 

Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WKkn5yjmZtk/T
pdQOSFN7tI/AAAAAAAAOKU/02D7PpuVd6Y/s1600/MG07.jpg

This second image is a real inspiration for me when it comes to the tree branches in The Wild Wood. I think these are fantastic, and I think the contrast between the detail of the Mice and the branches works so well. It isn't the way I would have initially thought about working had it not been blended so well with this fantastic art style, sheerly because I wouldn't have thought I could make it work. The foot prints are another on of my favourite elements of this drawing, each one unique with different amounts of snow cover depending upon how far away it is in the shot. 

Source: http://www.mouseguard.net/wp-content/uploads
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This third image is another perspective on the scene, it is here just as an example of the rendering on the clothing, and the subtle gradients on the fur of the animals. Again the background is helpful because of the tree element, although the trees aren't nearly gnarly enough for the book cover I want to do. 

Source: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com
/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mouseguard3heroes.jpg