Illustrator | Mole

I began at the end of last week drawing out Mole in Adobe Illustrator CS4. I decided to use David Petersen's art style as a loose inspiration, but not to use it too closely. I took some inspiration from the colours found on a Mouse Guard front cover for Mole's clothing although I need to experiment with some other colours for the jacket as I think it might be too bright for what I want to convey. 

I used the pen tool to create the initial outline and then I went to the brushes palette to apply a more artistic brush. I found a brush which was perfect to use; slightly broken, rough and grainy. I really like the results I've gained from this and so I will be (hopefully) in the next post showing you how it looks with this brush all over my drawing. 

Inspiration | David Petersen

Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9VBANeDNB1XidF2wlr9Q-tRyA-brdCgG1ifh3e_kLEhqTwLIH01GAttDlt6pcz3oCRttUOw5d69YP_MSyTIS8q_rzOuJAWStZf-RLO7vhKBDveDPj3lGJ8pX6t8UWOsyI_ZNr3qoHT5n9/s1600/David+Petersen%25
2Bsample%2B1.jpg

I continued to look at forest imagery today. David Petersen is the illustrator of the Mouse Guard book I've looked into previously, and this image above is an extract from one of the books.

I really like the way he's illustrated the trees, the way the black background smothers and begins to eat away at the edges of the trees gives a fantastically sinister feeling to the image. This is something I'd like to take into my design.

Source: http://quietandred.blogspot.co.uk/2012
/04/art-by-david-petersen.html

Source: http://quietandred.blogspot.co.uk/2012
/04/art-by-david-petersen.html

Above are two more images that David Petersen has illustrated, both in the same style as before. The depth created by different sizes and shadows on the branches in both images is something I'm going to take on board for when drawing my cover out. I like the vignette used on the middle image, I may experiment with this but using it in the opposite way to that with the white being on the outside and the darker colour in the centre. 

Feedback | Pitch

Yesterday I pitched my concept and design choices to my group. After this discussed with the group about any ideas they supported, and those that they didn't.

One thing, that was obvious from the start of the conversation, was that my concept is strongly supported by the group, which i found very encouraging. They like the idea of creating a "fake 3D" view of the scene of Mole looking into the Wild Wood because it is something unique, which again answers one of the criteria that we are asked to meet in the brief for the competition. 

We then moved onto my design choices within my cover. Typography was adressed as being an issue because I had only chosen one font, yet I needed at least two for the cover. One to use for the title, and the other for the blurb text on the back. As I've chosen a serif font for the title I could either continue this with a smaller serif text on the blurb, or a sans-serif font. Within the next post I will have some experimentations to comment about. 

Overall I'm really happy with the feedback I've had from my classmates, its going to help me to develop my design further and iron out any creases I've created so far.