Roald Dahl Brief - Ideas and Roughs

The brief:

• We had to illustrate at least 3 of his characters, one being a villain, one being a fantastical creature and one being a child.
• The characters had to be drawn within a scene/background, each with individual backgrounds or use the same for each. 

Here are some of his most popular characters/stories that I wanted to choose from:

James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory The Magic Finger
Fantastic Mr Fox
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Danny the Champion of the World The Enormous Crocodile
The Twits
George’s Marvellous Medicine Revolting Rhymes
The BFG
Dirty Beasts
The Witches
Boy
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me Going Solo
Matilda
Rhyme Stew
Esio Trot
The Vicar of Nibbleswicke
The Minpins

My personal favourites from his stories are The Enormous Crocodile, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Twits, Georges Marvellous Medicine, James and the Giant Peach and The BFG. These are the stories I was deciding between.

For the villain I chose the crocodile...



For the fantastical creature I chose the fox...


For the child I chose George...

Im pleased with these choices, I new the stories well so had an idea of how I would illustrate the stories within my own character designs. I also felt like I chose less obvious/well known characters like the BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Fantastic Mr Fox:

• They had too work as a consistent matching set of illustrations that could work for a publication. So I decided I would tie them together with matching composition and media.
• I would make them all fit around a square format, so the character design would fit within a rough square shape and have relevant objects and icons from the stories to fill the space.
• I will have a consistent media across them all, I will lino cut the characters, and then screen print the background with a colour blend effect - Changing the colour appropriate for each character. But I might lino cut the background, and then turn it into a possitive??
• I have been enjoying working with long exaggerated arms recently in my personal work, so looked at how this could work with the roald dahl characters - The brief said to make it your own and don't be generic so I wanted my person style to show through a lot in the designs. 
• In the story of fantastic mr fox he catches chickens, so I wanted to show this with little chicken characters being grasped by his long arms. Also putting him in a shirt and tie to portray his character.
• I just needed to make sure my fox head doesn't look too much like a dog in the final print.

The Enormous  Crocodile:

• I wanted the crocodiles face to fill the composition to express his enormous size. 
• I still wanted something to boarder the square to help it fit with the others, so I though about having his tail reach around the edge of the composition.
• There went any objects or icons that I could think of to involve in the illustration to relate to the story, especially to fit in the small surrounding space. So I decided to put some triangles to symbolise his snapping jaws. These worked perfectly to fill the space and balance out the composition.

 Georges Marvelous Medicine:

• Similar to the fox, I wanted him holding loads of objects from the story in his arms. Medicine equipment like test tubes, bottles, pills and other weird shaped medicine mixers. I looked at how these could be composed to fill the space around the character.
• I also looked at different ways the character could be displayed/arranged in the square, but I liked him best facing in from the left, matching the crocodile and the fox. 
• His face needed to look child like so I didnt overcomplicate it and used simple shapes for the features. With a small bit of tufty hair on top of his head. The face looks monkey like but I like it.

• Whilst designing George, I had an idea for James and the Giant Peach - James holding a huge peach with long arms stretching all the way around it. This would be an interesting idea but definitely doesnt fit in the set as well as George does.

The set...

Here are the full set and you can see how they match compositionally, they also will have pattern and line qualities that tie them together. I liked designing all three characters at once so I could consider how they will match and work with one another in the final outcomes. It helped me figure out how each can be adapted in similar ways to create a set, rather than making one finished design, and then designing the rest based around the finished one. I will also cut and print all three at the same time, to help save on time scale - making the print process much faster.

I liked the idea of having a really simple background for them, that is mainly blank space to be filled with a colour blend. I had though about including a mountain range and a sun. But I think a simple sunset within a square will be much simpler and effective - because the character designs are fairly complex, i think a simpler background will make them pop out more.