Illustration 1: Key steps in illustration- Part 5: Words and pictures-Exercise 7: Educational strip
You have been asked to produce an illustrated strip of up to five frames for use in schools explaining to young teenagers how to cope with the onset of puberty. You can decide on which aspect you want to tackle. Due to the subject matter and the intended age group it is suggested that you use metaphor and humour when conveying the message – though take care not to trivialise a serious message. The client would also like you to provide a single illustration of your character for use on the front cover.
The leaflet is called What’s happening to my body? It’s all going mad!
You will probably find thumbnailing very useful here to work out how each frame will relate to the others.
You need to submit all stages of the development process – thumbnails, visuals and client visuals for the cartoon strip and the stand-alone illustration.
The style of my illustrations is important. It has to be engaging for pre teens/teenagers, humorous but not loose it’s important message. John Cuneo has an interesting process, he uses layers of watercolours with black lines to create interesting cartoon-like illustrations. This style could work well for the audience.
The brief did not mention a specific size or shape the leaflet will be, many leaflets are a thinner size to the sizing I decided for, but I felt that an A5 pamphlet would be appropriate, especially if containing various information on changes during puberty etc. This would also allow more space for illustrations and text to interact with each other.
I sketched my illustrations and used various mediums to add colour to them including chalk, pastels, water colours and pencils. This was particularly inspired by the works of John Cuneo and Lewis Rossignol.
My aim with the style of illustrations was for them to be engaging for the age group but hopefully not take away from the seriousness of the subject matter. I wanted the colours used throughout the images to reflect the importance of the subject, being a pastel tone blend of beiges, browns, reds and blues. I wanted the 2 images to be cohesive which I feel that I achieved but the colouring may be too bland and not as engaging as I had initially intended.
I aimed for some lighter humour including the style of the illustrations themselves, in particular the final illustration 2 (front cover), the character lay in bed and the character looking down his pants. I am unsure as to whether this works or if more specific/obvious humour was needed for it to be affective.
I began this task by noting my initial ideas. The task is quite open and there are a lot of potential avenues that I could focus on. I decided to move on with the male side of puberty. I continued to make notes and thumbnails of potential ideas, also looking at other more formal leaflets for composition inspiration.
I have previously referenced Lewis Rossignol, again his style of illustration will be influential for my response to this task. I like the line work and almost humorous style. I continued to jot down composition/illustration ideas.
Looking back I am unsure if my end designs are too tactile looking and whether they would be viewed seriously enough for people to engage with the text. Perhaps the use of hand drawn text itself (with intentions for it to look like a teen has scribbled it down to be relatable) is not appropriate to convey the information and a digital text would be for affective.
