Project Summary
"The Tale of Rhyme and Reason" is a picture book concept presented as my final project for THEA 288, Storyboarding, with Carolyn Mraz. Excerpted from Norton Juster's 1961 novel The Phantom Tollbooth, this book tells a familiar story of princesses, princes, and kingdoms—but with a contemporary twist for today's young readers. Look closely and you'll find a charming world of wit and whimsy. But look even closer, and you just might find history reflected back at you.
Details
28 page Picture Book
created in Adobe Photoshop
Fall 2020
The Process
Treatment
In the project treatment, I provided background on the novel and outlined my artistic direction. My primary goal was to evoke classic fairy tale visuals while paying homage to the iconic original illustration style of Jules Feiffer. I gave myself four "style keys" to focus on during the illustration process.
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"Style Keys"
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Imagery: clouds, mountains, castles
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Limited Color Palette (three or four colors with different shades and tones)
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Large Watercolor Forms with Pencil Linework
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Simple Repetitions of Patterns to fill space
Experimentation
Prior to beginning illustrations, I experimented with Photoshop's brush strokes and finalized my color palette.
Rough Pass
Although The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's book, the original text of the novel was fairly dense. I split the excerpt into more manageable sections and created my own template to re-format the story. The template allowed me to sketch out a rough road map of what each page spread would look like.
Rough Drafts
My project timeline allowed for two rough drafts and peer critiques prior to our final presentations. (Shoutout to Samori and Arjun for all of your helpful feedback during the revision process!)
Draft 1
Draft 2
(Above)
Pages 9-10 showed one of the most dramatic transformations from Draft 1 to Draft 2.
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(Left)
Something I learned: Manipulating text design is a good way to keep large sections of text interesting!
Final
The final version of my project was presented using flipsnack, an online magazine service.