ALL DRESSED UP AND
NOWHERE TO GO (work in progress)
IDEATION
DRAWING
FINALIZING
what is it?
“All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go” is a children’s book written by teacher Jenn Todd about a tapir in the Denver Zoo. It is a project she wants to make come to life for the benefit of her students.
what is my role?
My job is to imagine the best illustrated representations of each page, draw them based on the style the author requested, and use my visual design skills to cohesively organize the type and image.
what is my goal?
Since this is my first official illustration job, I wanted to do my best to establish a distinct style. Primarily though, I wanted to help out the author with her goal and to have fun with the illustrations.
influences
The author requested that my style be somewhat resemblant of two already famous illustrators, Edward Gorey and Ian Falconer:
this presented a slight challenge, because it is difficult to combine two very drastically different styles
tapir
The main character of the story is a tapir, which is a slightly unusual character:
I began sketching, understanding that it was going to be tricky to indicate to everyone that it is specifically a tapir and not any similar looking animal
it is specified in the story that the tapir wears a tuxedo, so I needed to make it stand on its back legs - this required some artistic/biological liberties
storyboard
In order to map out my pages, I created a very low-fidelity storyboard that would guide me through the process:
currently this is in Seattle and I regrettably don’t have a picture
advancing sketches
Every drawing began with a pencil outline, followed by linework in varying thicknesses:
the cuter, exaggerated expressions and features on each character are inspired by Ian Falconer’s “Olivia”
meanwhile, the style of shading using many thin lines is more inspired by Edward Gorey - the direction, weight and texture of each line is made with intention, conveying something about the form of the object/animal
adding type
I used the typeface that the author requested, using elements of type hierarchy to balance each page, have readable text, and importantly, make sure that the placement of the type matched the feel of each page.
more pages (finished/unfinished)
color
I decided to do a minimal amount of muted colors as seen in much of Ian Falconer’s work:
I scanned my drawings into Illustrator and color-selected everything black
I then exported the linework to a new file and added colors on a layer below it
