When showing Chris what I was working on he brought up the link to Fuzzy Felt. As I analysed my recent Chicken design I noticed the similarity and I think I am going to use the fuzzy felt cartoon characters as inspiration of my character in my picture book. Looking at caterpillars, mice, domestic animals and farm animals.
Project 4
Steve Simpson Pastiche
I took Steve Simpsons style of illustrations and created pastiches of his work in Illustrator. Doing this has increased my knowledge and abled me to create a certain style that I’m gonna stick with in my children’s picture books. The first pastiche I did was a mix of his works, and I tried to create a person. However this didn’t turn out well in terms of attractiveness, however I have taken away styles that I really like and now I know how to apply these techniques in Illustrator I can create my own illustrations. I didn’t finish the human version as I felt like it wasn’t going anywhere and it was just a practise on methods of style.
I then looked at a children’s book that Steve Simpson illustrated which was called “Mise Agus An Dragun” which features illustrations of a young bear and a dragon.
I took an illustration of a chicken and animated in the same style as the previous pastiche. I really liked the outcome of this animation and I will definitely carry on this style. I also feel that creating animals would be a lot easier in terms of shapes and proportions. 
Story Research
The main overall topic that I wanted to cover in my children’s picture book was about mental illness, in particular, Anxiety and Loneliness. I found a few books that have already covered these issues in children’s books specifically aimed at 3-12 year olds. I wasn’t taking illustration ideas from these books, just story plots as I was quite worried that mental illness would write well in a book. Stories I looked at were:
Sweet Dreams and Monsters by Peter Mayle:
Feelings, Aliki:
Tim and the Blanket Thief, John Prater:
Aldo, John Burningham:
I think I’m definitely going to try to convey the topic about anxiety as it is a very common mental issue that kids have in todays culture and society. Its also something something personal to myself, as I know the symptoms so I feel that I could convey it well.
Steve Simpson – Influence
To prepare for project four I had a look over one of my favourite illustrater and graphic designer, Steve Simpson. He has won over 50 awards for his package design and illustrations and his style is inspired by 50’s advertising and the arts and crafts movement. What I like most about Simpsons work is the use of colours, shapes and lines. Its a very unique style which I like, it is quite similar to Tim Burtons film style and touching on Mexico culture. I like his character drawings the most, as he is able to give them all personality through style and colours, whenever I look at his character illustrations I also seem to see the full personality and back story. I also like his typography and the placement of this typography, which is shown through the book cover design of The Wordsmith.
I have taken this style and done a couple of pastiches to grasp his illustrative technique onto my work. I feel that this would go really nice in a children’s picture book, due to its detailed, bright and imaginative feel to it.
Picture Book Brief – Project 4
For our next project we are looking into designing and illustrating our own children picture books aimed at a demographic of 3-7. I started looking at children books that were my favourite when I was younger and looked at their designs, I looked at books such as:
“Eat Your Peas”
“The Tiger Who Came To Tea”
“Little Rabbit Foo Foo”
“Kipper”
Looking at these designs are very illustrative and designs like the ones in “Little Rabbit Foo Foo” and “The Tiger Who Came To Tea” made me decide that I want to go down the simplistic and minimalistic route for my picture book. So I then went onto looking at the pictures books by Simon Rickerty, especially “Monkey Nut” and “Crayon”, I really like how simple these designs are and keeping a simple colour scheme.
I also really like how he has added real photos of objects that are crucial to the story. I am going to keep my style similar to this as it is very visually engaging without being too overcrowded or busy.