The Hunter

For the final project in our Children's Book class at Pratt, we had to take the text from an existing book and then illustrate it in our own style.  After a whole day at the library, I decided to use The Hunter: A Chinese Folktale retold by Mary Casanova.  It was a great story, and my illustration style was so different from Ed Young's beautifully understated ink drawings, that I knew I wouldn't be tempted to copy anything he had done in the real book.

We started out by thumbnailing the entire book.  I then redrew these compositions at a slightly more detailed stage so that I could create a full-sized dummy of the book.  You can click the image below to see these images at a larger size:

Right during this assignment I saw a Pixar show at the Museum of Modern Art and I was really amazed by the color scripts that they created for each of their movies.  I loved the idea of being able to see the colors for each scene all on one page, so that you can make sure each setting feels unique.  I made a very simple color script using my thumbnails:

I then drew a cover and two interior illustrations.  Again, you can click on any of these to see larger versions.

I have been posting this old work to get it back online after I stopped using Flickr to display my illustration work.  Believe it or not, this is the last old image!  It'll all be new stuff from here on out!