DD2000 - Design Product

From working on a children’s book project I have done a lot of research and looked at many different children’s books to inspire me with my own work.

The Troll

One book the helped me the most was called “The Troll” illustrated by David Roberts, Macmillan Children’s Books. The story was well written, witty  and I thought the artwork was amazing. The artist used watercolours and ink, which I found really surprising from the quality of the work and the vibrant colours, I would have expected it to have been partly done on the computer from the quality of the drawings. I really loved all of the different characters, all of them had there own unique look which made each character more interesting and engaging. Each page is completely different, some pages are completely filled with panels showing different situations and other pages just focus on one part of the story with few characters which shows great composition, especially when spread across a double page. The layout of the book really help me with my own, as I was struggling to find the best way to show all the information though my drawings and the panels worked perfectly with my children’s book.    

Jump on Board the Animal Train

Another book that helped me with  my work was “Jump On Board the Animal Train” illustrated by Benji Davies. I loved the detailed backgrounds and the flip pages that show all of the animals was a very clever idea.  The characterization of the animals were brilliant and I love the expressions and happy faces of all the characters.  It’s a nice simple story of a boy who is going for a walk with his mum, and along the way more and more animals start to follow him, with each animal that enters the scene the drawings get more detailed which would get any child excited to see what will come next, I wanted to achieve that when I was writing my own story, I wanted the reader to be engaged with the story and stay interested until the end.    

Little Princess 

The last book I looked at was called “Little Princess - I Don’t Want to go to Bed”  written and illustrated by Tony Ross. I love the simple drawings and the exaggerated expressions.  This book really interested me from the story since it seem to be a switch from mine, Little Princess is about a little girl who is a princess doing everyday and quite mundane things, but told in a very interesting and funny way, whereas my story was about a boy who wanted to be  king and imagined himself doing extraordinary things.  The illustrations really helped me with my own work, since I always over complicate my work and try to show to much going on at one, and in this book the drawings are simple with not too much going on all in one page, which showed me my drawings can be minimal but still work very effective to tell the story.