Decisions

I have started to question my decision making during this project. I am torn between designs that have received good feedback and that I believe are based on a better thought out concept against designs that I think work better as compositions that I find interesting and intriguing but cannot fully justify or summarise the appeal of. I want to use this post as a way to quickly go through each of my illustrations trying to clarify their strengths and weaknesses.

This illustration has received really good feedback in the various crits and I have got some good ideas from the group on ways to improve it. I want to try and focus this image more on empathy so have tried a couple of new variations on this general theme.

This illustration is supposed to show the reader sharing the pain of the characters in the book and learning empathy in this way. Neil Gaiman often deals with quite dark subject matter so I thought this way of communicating his ideas would tie into his various works. I don't think the idea has worked anywhere near as well as I would have liked. The image could be off putting to potential readers and doesn't communicate a balanced portrayal of what a Neil Gaiman article would be about. This image could be easily misunderstood as being about self harm. I need to find an action to portray that creates  thought provoking narrative that better suites an article about Neil Gaiman.

I have made some changes to this design, I did not like the fades I had previously used as a backdrop. Although I originally wanted to create a darker, colder looking atmosphere I didn't want to make the image overly saturated with colour or tone. I have also removed the colour form the floor and instead used the splashes of rain to suggest the floor being there instead. I trimmed down the line of the floor that went to either side of the image, I think the character floating in the middle of the raindrops helps to give a feeling of being in the middle of the weather.