Do judge a book by its cover (Roughs)

 For this brief, we were told to select a book from a specific section of the library, briefly analyse its content and design/illustrate a wrap around cover in any way we can communicate the content of the book in an illustrated form. The book I chose is called 'On Monsters, An unnatural history of our worst fears' by Steven T. Asma. "Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, monsters have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for centuries, we cannot help looking under the bed and in the closet, equally compelled and repelled by what we most fear to find lurking there." I was immediately drawn to this book and have been very excited about creating images based on its context. After reading a couple of pages I have realised that the word monster can be interprated in many different ways and is not just seen as the iconic hairy beast with big teeth and claws. No, the idea of a monster can actually go much deeper than that, such as real life monsters like serial killers. Monsters even go back to biblical times with Satan and his demons, and can even be touched on the idea that many monsters that exist, only exist within our own minds and are a representation of our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities. 

John kenn's Sticky Monsters. I have found this artist who produces illustrations of monsters but is done within the concept of children's nightmares. I really like the way in which these sinister characters are created, they are quite simple but very effective, I will consider this artist when producing my own monsters.

SKETCHBOOK ROUGHS

 I quite like the idea of using pop culture monsters within the book cover as main point in the book 'On Monsters' is about how the idea of monsters have changed throughout time and how certain cultures can creates its own monsters in society. Classic pop culture monsters such as Dracula and Frankenstein have had a big impact on the westernised view of the iconic monster, and as a visual communicator it is always good to produce illustrations that people can relate to.

The aim of the first week of this brief was to design and create five roughs to scale of the book cover, all being approached in different ways. This for me has been a good week because I like having the freedom to be able to generate lots of ideas and its also good to see how each idea can really develop just buy continuing to draw and experiment.

ROUGHS TO SCALE

 This rough design was generated within the idea that monsters are just a figment of our imagination (nightmares). There is a lot that can be done with this concept and I will continue to explore it though the duration of this brief.

Iconic hairy monster with big claws and teeth. 

There is a big section on the book about the future of human fears and the apocalypse. From this I created a zombie scene that runs full bleed over the whole double spread. I honestly do like this design as the zombies have been built in layers of perspective which gives a good sense of depth. But this idea doesn't represent the book as a concept so I may not develop this idea further.

 This is my favourite design so far. I have taken the same layout as the zombie scene and changed the characters to existing monsters throughout time, including Satan, Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Jigsaw and even a monster from John Kenns Sticky monsters that I have mentioned previously. I think this idea represents the book a lot better although I do need to develop this idea further and maybe add more layers and characters to it.

 For my last rough I decided to take a minimal approach, stripping down all of the unnecessary features and keeping it simple and functional. I actually do like this design and I love producing minimalistic work as I like to be able to communicate and idea in an instant, but for this book I am illustrating, I think the design above will be more effective.