Final Piece - Front Cover

This is my finished book cover, and overall I am very happy with how it turned out. The research I did before creating my book cover really helped me to understand the conventions of children's books  and helped me create an effective final piece. Learning about the history of children's books, through my written study, has helped me appreciate the different ways that illustrators and graphic designers are able to create book covers.

Final Piece - Working Progress

To start my final piece I decided to add in the images that I wanted to use, which included one of the watercolour image of the main character and part of an image i had taken of a piano. To give the image of the piano more of a hand-drawn feel i changed the threshold and used the lasso tool to cut parts out, so that there were definite lines. At first I put the piano image side on, but after adding in some of the text, i realised that rotating the image would create more space on the front cover.

I started to add in the text, which I had already drawn out. I tried to keep these parts of the text small so that they did not over-power the main part of the title.

 
After this I added in the text for the authors name. I thought it would be wise to try and keep the typefaces fairly similar, as many different children's books i have looked at do this. I kept it quite small so it wasn't the first thing the eye sees when looking at the front cover, and aligned it to the right.

When I was adding in the word "Big" for the title, at first I used one of my own typeface images, but quickly realised all of the ones I wanted to use were not giving me the effect I really wanted for my front cover. I searched on DaFont for a type-face that looked similar to my own typefaces, but that would look the way I wanted it to. When I found the one I wanted I typed out the text, and changed the size, so that it was the one thing that stood out on the page the most. I then decided to change the colour of the word "Mr" so as to make sure it was clear that those 2 words were linked, and that the smaller text was not separate, making sure that the text flows well together.

I then added in a colour for the spine, by selecting part of the colour from my watercolored image and pasted it onto the spine, making sure it fit properly. At first this colour looked too dominant, and so I decided to lower the opacity.

After doing this I added in the text for the spine and for the back cover. So that i didn't have the type out all the text I used Lorem Ipsum. I aligned the text to the right, and made sure that it was not too close to the edge of the back cover.

I then made a start on the flaps of the book, and because I wanted to keep the blue theme running, and decided to copy part of the water-colour and fit it onto the flap. At first I added in just the text, again using lorem ipsum, but i noticed that it did not stand out enough on the page, and knew i had to change it or add something to the flap to make the text be easy to read. I added in a white box around the text to do this, but soon realised that having it at its full opacity was too much, and blocked the watercolour image, so I lowered the opacity of the white box until it made the text readable, but didn't block the background image.

 

On the other flap I added information of the author, Ed Vere, and an image of him which I found off the internet. I started off by aligning each text box to the left, and then warped the right side of the text box, so that the text would be aligned in some way to the arm of the character, which overlaps from the back of the book to the flap. After doing this I thought it would be a good idea to try and make the arm look less dominant on the flap, and to do this i selected the whole flap and added a white rectangle on top of the image, but made sure it was below the text and image of the author, I then lowered the opacity of the rectangle, so that you can still see the arm, but it is less obvious on the flap.

I realised that the front cover was lacking something, and so I had the idea the add a large hand onto the cover. To do this i took the original watercoloured image and used the lasso tool to select the part of the hand i wanted, and copied and pasted it onto the front cover. I enlarged the image and placed it right at the bottom of the page, so that it gave the full effect of a man with large hands playing the piano.

From my research into children's books, i knew that a review was usually always featured somewhere on the book cover, and so i decided to use one on mine. I found a review of the original book, and added it onto the back cover. I then added a small background, that was a light red, so that it contrasted with the main colour blue throughout the piece. I also decided to use large speech marks to create a contrast from the thin type.

Finally I added in the smaller things that are usually seen on a book cover, so that my design looked more like the real thing. I found out that Puffin were the original publishers of the book, and so i took and image from the internet of their logo and placed it on the front and back covers and the spine. I also added in the website for puffin, the price of the book and a barcode. Although theses are small details, they are pretty important on a children's book, as without them the book doesn't look like an authentic book cover.

Type Ideas

 Here are some pictures of my type ideas for my final piece. I took inspiration from DaFont, which helped me find lots of different styles of handwritten typefaces. I wrote out the title of the book and the author in many different styles to experiment and create something which I might be able to use for my final piece, or take parts of different styles and mix them together.
Doing this task meant that I was able to come to a judgement about the sort of type I want to use for my front cover and how I can use each one to my advantage. I came to a decision that for my front cover I would use a thin, handwritten typeface for the words "The Story Of Mr" and then a thick, bold typeface for the word "Big". I think this will be the most effective way of using type in my design, and experimenting my ideas has helped me come to a conclusion.

Photos of Subject Matter

Here are 2 contact sheets of the photos I have taken for my subject matter. I took inspiration from the story which I printed out and annotated, and doing this helped me greatly as it meant I knew exactly what images I needed to take and how I would be able to incorporate them into my work and my final piece.

Mr Big Story brainstorm

Here is the story I have taken for my children book. I have printed out the story and annotated the ideas I wanted to develop and use for my front cover and double page spread for my final piece.

I started by labelling things which I would take pictures of, such as; a man sat at a piano, a man outside in the street, looking at the piano, getting on a bus, outside a swimming pool and lots of images of different instruments, including a piano.
Then I went ahead and just annotated certain things that I could include within the book, and ideas that would look good on my double page spread. I came to the conclusion that I would use the letter the character receives, and handwrite it, scan it into Photoshop and then use it within my book somehow.
I also thought about what the themes for this story and came up with many ideas, such as:

• Friendship
• Finding your place
• It's okay to be different to everyone else
• Not judging people based on their looks or before you get to know them.

These themes are important for me to remember, so that I am able to portray these themes in the book when creating it.

Scamps

Here are my drawings of children's book front covers that I have found on Pinterest. I decided to do fairly simple front covers, as I think I may create a very simple design for my final piece. I added in tone to each scamp, and then added fineliner to them to add definiton and make the difference between black and white greater.

Roald Dahl's "Ghost Stories" copy

Here is the front cover of a book by Roald Dahl called "Ghost Stories" which i have decided to copy.

Here are the photos of my progress when drawing this front cover out by hand. To make the design as detailed as possible I used a light-pad and used a pencil to draw the most dominant parts of the image, especially the large branches, the birds, the moon and the text. After this I used a pencil to add in the less dominant branches and other parts of the trees that I didn't trace or that I wanted to add in, which meant my final drawing was slightly more detailed than the image I was drawing from. Then, for the thicker parts of the tree, I used a black Sharpie to ensure there was definite black colour and white colour in the image, much like Threshold would do on Photoshop. For the thinner branches on the tree, the moon and thinner parts of text I used a fineliner to go over them, creating the same effect as the sharpie did. I also used a pencil and then fineliner with a ruler to add a border around the outside of the drawing to make it look like a conventional book cover, this also brings the whole design together.

James and the Giant Peach Copy

Here is my larger copy of the children's book "James and the Giant Peach" which i have drawn out, firstly in pencil and then going over it in fineliner. I'm going to scan this into photoshop, adding colour to it, so that I can create the design as similar as possible to the one I was copying.

Firstly I placed the scanned image into Photoshop and changed the threshold, to ensure the contrast between the white and black is increased, making it easier for me to add the colours into the design. I then deleted the white out of the image so I could add in the colour.

I started by selecting the bottom part of the sea, and picking the colour from the original book cover. At first it was all one block colour, and i noticed that on the original the bottom of the sea was darker. I then used the brush tool with a darker colour to add slight depth to sea, making it look less fake.

I then selected the upper, darker half of the sea, again colour picking from the original.

I then selected either side of the peach, and for the smaller part simply selected the colour I needed, making the outer edges slightly darker. 

For the larger part of the peach there needed to be a gradient, so i selected a small section of the left half of the section and made it a darker orange to the smaller section of the peach. I then selected the other section of the larger part and used the same colour as the small section. Then using the gradient tool, I selected from left to right, and this created the effect that I needed for the peach.

 After doing that I added in the background colour for the sky and the main text. To do this I selected each part of the text and added the colours onto another layer. I also used the lasso and brush tool to either take away parts of the text, or add parts to it.

I then changed the colours for the stick and string. To do this I used the magic want tool to select each part of string and change the colour to white. To make the stick give the effect I wanted, I had to use the lasso tool to take parts of it away and make it thinner than i had originally drawn.

 I then added the birds in, again using the magic wand tool to select the colour and make it white. I also needed to use the lasso tool to take small parts of the birds away to make sure it looked as close to the original as possible.

After thinking I had finished I looked at the sky and realised it had a rusty type of feel to it. I went onto the internet and looked for an image of rust that i could use. I put this into the Photoshop document, adding it on top of the sky, but making sure it was behind the rest of the layers, and put it onto multiply so that it would give the proper effect. I then noticed that in the original that in the centre of the sky, the rusty effect was not as prominent as it was around the outside. To create this effect on my copy I used the rubber tool, making sure the hardness was right down, and rubbed out a large section in the middle of the rust, to make that section look brighter and give the effect I wanted.

 

Here is my final design on the left, placed next to the original design on the right. Overall I'm very happy with how the copy went, and I think this would be an effective process to create my own children's book front cover. This process is one, which through my research for my written study, I have found many illustrators use, and it successfully makes the whole design look fairly hand-drawn, and less digital.