Our latest brief is to create either illustrations or an animation for a story about a naughty donkey named Dusty, who is the main character in a series of stories by Limerick author Pauline Ryan. Pauline worked as a teacher for many years and devised these stories as a learning aid for young children, targeted mainly at 3-8 year olds. It's my understanding that she is considering publishing the stories - hence the need for the illustrations - but she also thinks that an animated version (of each story) could be an interesting alternative. This is a group project and we were given a choice from three of the stories in the series. We decided on animation, not surprisingly, and we might even take it a step further by making it interactive. From the three stories we picked one called 'Dusty takes off', which is about him breaking out of his field and going to the airport. Part of our research involved looking at children's books to get an idea of popular styles of illustration. Below are some of the illustrations that might influence our preliminary style. They are from two books, the first is 'The Butterfly' by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen, and 'Harry and the Dinosaurs Go Wild', by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds.

 

I've also added some of my character and background sketches to date.

 

'Dusty' found a new way of getting out of his field - by digging a tunnel in a corner.

 

The farmer telling him not to go out the gate.

 

I still have to do some inking in and then I'm going to have a go at painting them. I've never really done anything like this - I suppose it'll be like 'line and wash', which is something I've often meant to try but never got around to. Since making these sketches I've been assigned with creating the farmer and his family (characters), I think I'll also do some 'extras' for the crowd scene at the airport. Hopefully I'll have my 'colouring in' done before my next post.