ILLU5050 - Choice Illustration: How The Elephant Got Its Trunk

The Brief

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This brief features a choice of 4 possible projects to address:

1. Editorial - Create a series of three editorial illustrations for articles written by one of a selection of writers.
2. Narrative Fiction - Create a front cover design, a single full-bleed page illustration, & a double page spread illustration with incorporated text for one of a selection of short stories.
3. Picture Book For Early Readers - Create a front cover design, a single page full-bleed illustration, & a double page spread illustration with incorporated text for one of a selection of children's stories.
4. Song Lyrics - Create two illustrations & a cover design to accompany a monograph of a selected artist's lyrics.

​I've decided to pursue the picture book for early readers, and the story I will work from is an adaptation of How The Elephant Got Its Trunk by Rudyard Kipling.

How The Elephant Got Its Trunk Story

Additionally I will adopt some appropriate self-imposed parameters for the outcome of this project:​
Front Cover Illustration Parameters:

• CMYK
• 300dpi
• 210mm wide x 210mm high (A5 Square) + 3mm bleed

Single Page Illustration Parameters:

• CMYK
• 300dpi
• 210mm wide x 210mm high + 3mm bleed

Double Page Illustration Parameters:

• ​CMYK
• 300dpi
• 420mm wide x 210mm high + 3mm bleed
• Integration of text

Research & Inspiration

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Illustrated Children's Books

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The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling - Illustrated by Patricia MacCarthy

Atticus The Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths by Lucy Coats - Illustrated by Anthony Lewis

Elephants

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Crocodiles

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Elephants & Crocodiles Together

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Animal Reference Art Tool

Initial Thumbnails

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Front Cover Illustration Thumbnails

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For the front cover illustrations, my focus was primarily on visuals that include the trunk of the elephant as the key element.

I left some visuals without a type treatment applied to them, and some with the type illustrated. I feel that the visuals that include a typographic treatment are stronger and more valuable as thumbnails.

Single Page Illustration Thumbnails

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Throughout the single page illustrations I've explored the interactions within the book that the Elephant has with the other animals to see which ones could be explored to create a more interesting outcome.

I've tried to abstract the subjects into less realistic depictions so that they may have a greater appeal to younger audiences.

Double Page Illustration Thumbnails

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I decided to focus on the interaction between the elephant and the crocodile for the double page spread, as it's the key incident in the story, & has the potential to be a very dynamic image.

Appropriating reference images in a transformative manner allows a greater exploration of a variety of treatments & styles without bogging down the process with needlessly detailed drawing.

Developed Thumbnails

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Front Cover Illustration Thumbnails

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I liked the initial thumbnails that obscured the elephant, showing the trunk in greater focus. The idea of showing the elephant in tall grass and having the trunk revealed is probably my favourite treatment for the cover.

I couldn't resist developing the Dune cover parody thumbnail a little further.

Single Page Illustration Thumbnails

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For the single page illustration, I decided to show an event near the end of the story, the crocodile being exhausted after all the other elephants decide they want trunks too. The struggle for this piece was conveying exhaustion & tiredness using the body language of a crocodile, anthromorphising the crocodile somewhat definitely makes it easier to get the message across.

Double Page Illustration Thumbnails

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The concept I decided to develop as the double page spread illustration is the climax of the story, focusing on tension crossing the double page spread through the characters' body language. Lots of straight lines and pulling motions that go through the center of the spread.

Final Idea Development & Production (WIP)

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Front Cover Illustration

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My objective for the front cover was to establish the setting of the book & its primary character. The intention of showing the elephant with its trunk is to invoke the question of how the elephant got its trunk, which is answered in the story.

The above series of image shows key stages of progression in this illustration as I created it.
After considering my thumbnail visuals I've identified some improvements that could be made:

• An issue with my developed thumbnail visuals was that the colour pallet wasn't warm enough for an African setting, one which I carried into the earliest part of this illustration until I adjusted the colours into more warm hues.
• The typography in my developed thumbnails was really quite weak & generic, I've tried to remedy this in my finished illustration by considering the font choice & integrating the type with some of the illustration elements to weave the two together.
• Showing the elephant by itself in the thumbnails ignores an important element within the story, that the elephant lives within a herd. Including some other elephants in my final piece reinforces the social aspect of the story.
• Only showing the trunk and obscuring the rest of the elephant limits the amount of emotional communication that's possible to just the trunk's gesture. In my final piece, I've revealed enough of the elephant to show its face & convey emotions through its expression.

Final rendered image with the 3mm bleed area denoted by a faded border.

Front cover mock-up image. The image could be extended to cover the spine & rear cover of the book, but for the purposes of this mock-up I decided to have the spine be a single flat colour similar to the sky in the illustration.

Double Page Spread Illustration

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The focus of this illustration is the climax of the narrative, when the elephant gets its trunk due to an encounter with the crocodile. This scene is supposed to convey tension, but with the light-hearted weight of a children's book level of peril.

• To achieve a sense of tension I've illustrated physical tension in the image through how taut the elephant's trunk & the snake is, to enhance this effect, the tree that the snake is attached to is bowing from the force.
• To ease the amount of peril in the scene I've added some silly elements, notice that the snake has tied itself into a knot to secure itself to the tree, and the elephant's tail is coiled around the snake for support.

The composition of my thumbnail visuals was rather flat and uninteresting, as they were all side-on from the action, to address this I've tried to add a greater sense of depth in the perspective. How well this has been executed is debatable, but I'd rather fail spectacularly than succeed tediously.

Double page spread mock-up, showing the center line & revealing that no key elements of the illustration are affected by its presence in context.

Version with adjusted type elements, to improve their clarity & reduce their hardness after feedback.

Single Page Illustration (WIP)

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This illustration depicts the end of the story, at which point the elephants all go to the river to get their trunks pulled out by the crocodile. I thought that this part of the story would be overlooked, so I decided to feature the crocodile being exhausted.

The body language of the crocodile on its back with limbs akimbo is meant to convey its tiredness, meanwhile the elephant with an upstretched trunk looks impatiently at the crocodile.

Single page mock up & possible type treatment for accompanying page.