Shelter

My first ideas came to me almost straight away when we were given the summer project. A boy taking shelter from the rain under his Fathers large belly. I wanted the figures to be wearing masks and clothes so that they resembled a tribe. 
My first sketches were drawn in my gross out style, but i didn't feel it fit the cutesy feel I was going for.
I later looked at various artists and pieces of art to influence my further development.

Super Duper Sumos, an old childrens cartoon.

Bob Rafei and his concept art for the Jak and Daxter video games.

 Aku Aku and Uka Uka, the two masks from the Crash Bandicoot series.

The sketches after looking at these references became much smoother and cleaner. Although I didn't draw them together, I felt the 2 characters I had created worked well together. I scanned these in and thn rendered them on Adobe Illustrator.

I used the pen tool to create the above piece, which was frustrating and time-consuming, but my only alternative to my malfunctioning Wacom tablet. Whilst I felt the clean lines added to the drawing, I felt it took away a certain texture and feel that the original pencil sketches had.

Whilst creating the piece, I hadn;t given any thought to the 3 spot colour printing process that was part of the brief. taking this on board, I started again on a different idea, revisiting the style I had used in previous projects influenced by 50's advertising mascots and artists like Gary Taxali.

Gary Taxali

 Artwork for Fallout 3 video game

 Sam Bevrington

Timba Smits

Like Bevrington I wanted to create a character that's body was a basic shape. Whilst brainstorming we brushed the subject of shelters for the homeless and struggling families. I had the idea  of a house being left abandoned so that it was "personless", flipping the subject on it;s head. After rough sketches i went straight into Illustrator and constructed the image as i had done do in previous projects.

For the back cover I considered having the reverse image of the cover, so you could see the house from the back. This would allow me to extend the theme as well, as i wanted to give the house a dog as a companion, but instead of being a dog it would in fact be a kennel. However I felt this made the cover too sad, so i resolved the story by having the house hold up a sold sign, meaning he was no longer "personless."

The main reason for using this method is because I wanted to create a background using benday dots. By overlapping 2 different coloured dots i could create a third colour for the background. Blue, red and black were my chosen colours, and I changed these later on to the correct colours that the risograph can produce.


Below is the image split into the 3 seperate colours. I made master copies of this and  took it to the photocopier to produce a trial copy.

The background on the trial wasn't as strong as i thought it would be, so I inverted the colours of the blue dots. I also moved the Pylon Press logo logo. Below is my final piece for the cover competition.

I would have liked to have seen a mock up produced on the risograph to see how the image could be improved. However I feel I have produced a strong character with a good theme. Below is a version that could be submitted for the inside of the publication.