This is my final outcome for the book cover. The reason I used this text is because its soft around the edges and as this is a kids book I thought it was appropriate. Also, I like how the 'g' in magic fitted nicely between the 'R' and 'l' in Roald. The typeface I used is called Noteworthy, I used AI (Adobe Illustrator) to create the text and it doesn't pixelate it, then I pasted it on top of the image as a smart object. I'm really happy with my overall design for the front cover. I think there is more I could do to it, an idea I had was to add a gun poking up from the bottom.
The reason I added the feathers was because the Gregg family were in the tree above the ducks and the nest they constructed was made out of twigs and feathers. I thought it worked well, especially to fill the empty space.
I darkened the duck as well as the edges around the background. I then created a cloud over the top because I thought it might work with the image as its representing the outside, darkness and the weather. Looking at it I think it works, but there is part of me that isn't sure about it as well. The reason I'm thinking it could work is because I can put the text of the book over the top and it should make it more legible.
This is the duck image overlaid on the background I chose to use. I personally think the colours work really well together. I don't think the image is dark enough though and that there is too much space around the duck. I want the image to be quite dark because the story is quite a dark story.
I usually find it hard to think of backgrounds for work because I really hate using really busy backgrounds when it comes to work as I don't like the background taking the distraction away from the foreground. I came up with the idea of possibly using a tea stained background as its simple and light and I could edit it in Photoshop. Instead of using a tea stained background I used this one. Originally it was a a green/blue colour. I edited it in Photoshop to give it a more camouflage, outside feel to it. I wanted it to seem dirty/outside because the majority of the story is based outside.
Because I liked the idea of having a more realistic image on the cover of the book, I took the painting I did earlier on and edited it in Photoshop as people were saying it may be a bit too light to use for the front cover of a book. That the colours of the paint weren't vibrant enough. I think the way I've edited it works really well, it brings the painting to life, it gave it more depth.
This was literally a tester for my work, this isn't a final piece or even close to being a final piece. I was trying to do an experiment of wetting the paper first then using a big brush and adding the colour and letting it run down the page. Unfortunately on this experiment it didn't work, but I think I know where it went wrong. I wet the paper and adding the colour, however, I used ink, and instead of the ink running it seemed to absorb straight into the paper. I used watercolour paper to achieve this as I thought it would be able to with stand the wetness better. I think if I was to try this again I would try with watercolours rather than inks, as this experiment didn't turn out very well at all.
Because I was a bit disappointed with the paper I used for my duck I decided to have another go at painting a duck close up on better quality paper. The new paper was watercolour paper, 250gsm so I knew it should be able to take the paint and the amount of water I was using. I was extremely pleased with my painting and have actually thought about having it as my final image, or using on the back of my cover to create a reverse between the front cover and the back.
After focusing on the ducks for a bit, I thought about taking other bits out of the story to add into the image. One of the ideas I came up with was having a feather floating out of the birds nest as it describes the nest in quite a bit of detail in the audio. It tells you all about how Mr. Gregg built it and what out of, so I thought it would be a nice little touch adding it into the image. This was a quick first attempt at drawing a feather just with a pencil.
I did a quick painting using gouache to get a feel of colour and shape. The paper I was using wasn't very good quality though and it started breaking up. However, it was a good experience trying to match the colours and learning the structure, I found it very helpful for my first attempt. After doing this painting I decided that natural colours are definitely the way I want to carry on with this project, I know that a lot of children's books exaggerate the colours or change them completely as you will generally find most books to have the generic yellow ducks. But I believe children can learn more from more realistic colouring as there is more to study in the image.
http://s1286.photobucket.com/albums/a605/Kerribear91/Ducks/
To start my project off I went onto the internet and looked up photographs of ducks. I've never drawn ducks before so I thought studying them and understand their structure etc would help me get a better understanding of what I wanted to create for my cover.
After reading the brief, we listened to the audio tape of the whole story, during the audio I made important notes around the section of the story we were given. Listening to the audio was very helpful as it gave a lot of description that our section of the story didn't. For example, the humans had wings and the ducks had arms. Knowing this made it a lot easier to come up with ideas for the cover of the book, and actually made things more exciting. With the small amount of text we were given it was very hard to understand the actual story and what was going on. Listening to the audio helped convey the emotions the characters were feeling during the story, so now I could try and bring them out in the image.
