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.