Book Illustration Explorations and Designs

This is an ongoing project. The illustrations above are in a style that I developed during character explorations and media experimentation. Technique: collage, coloured pencils and digital illustration.

Sketches and ideas

I want to create a children's book with magical characters based in a city like Brighton. I find many inspirations daily when I go out for walks. The little streets with the colourful shops and cafes are a perfect setting for the magical world. One of the characters is a wizard named Albert who is a potion maker. One of the other characters is a dragon who is a University professor rushing to work. There are more characters in development stages.

These works were selected to demonstrate the exploration of the style for the illustrations.

An original illustration using markers and coloured pencils.

I liked the bright colours and textures.

An original illustration using markers and coloured pencils.

Replicating the illustration in Photoshop for the first time. I lost some of the texture quality.

Colours were more dull. Looks too digital and lost the traditional illustration style.

Another try to replicate the style digitally. Much better colours and textures. However, the process was taking a very long time. I realised it wouldn't be efficient at all. I needed to find better digital brushes or a whole new approach.

Research and Inspiration

Jagdish Swaminathan Untitled (Lily by my Window), 1970-74

I visited Royal Academy in London for inspiration. This particular painting by an Indian artist has caught my attention.

I loved the bold colours and the defined shapes. Although this was was done with oil paints only, it reminded me of cut-out art. I also liked that while there were no obvious outlines the objects did not blend together.

Henri Matisse cut-outs

The gallery visit has led me to explore artists who created cut-out paintings with bright colours and defined shapes.

Cut-outs by Matisse were a perfect source of study.

These are collages mixed with coloured pencils that I used as background art. I learned that Matisse would have large pieces of paper painted to a specific colour and tone. He would then cut out the shapes while preserving some of the incidental textures created by the paper painting process.

I used a large thick bristle brush and gouache paint, then cut-out the desired shapes.

The next step was scanning the artwork, fixing the colour balance and painting the characters and some of the elements digitally in Photoshop.

Bye Bye Birdie

This is a fun short animation created during Covid time when the world faced lock-downs and isolation.

Done in Procreate.

The original photograph used for character inspiration.

I started experimenting with different concepts and emotions.

The annoyed expression of the blue bird in the top left image had really grabbed my attention.

Character illustration. Done with markers and pencils.

While I was making some rough sketches, I realised that I would prefer to see that in motion.

That is how I decided to make this project into a short animated video or a GIF.

Rough storyboards of the push. I wanted the push to be comedic and sudden.

I coloured each frame with a pencil tool in Procreate. That increased my work time by a lot but it was a perfect way to replicate a traditional illustration quality. I wanted the birdies to feel like a book illustration come to life.

Armenian National Dance

This project was created during a short animation course. The aim was to learn how to create and rig a 2D character, then animate in Harmony ToonBoom animation software.

I decided to base my project on my national heritage. In this case I focused on the national dancing and clothing.

The dance movements were inspired by the Armenian national dance "Kochari".

I also studied a variety of dancing clothes. In order to create the characters for animation I needed to simplify the design of the costumes but preserve the authenticity. I focused on the shapes and the details.

This is a node view of my rigged 2D character. If you click on the right image you should have an option to zoom in if you wish to do so. Every body part and every detail is a separate object. All of them are connected to each other, can be moved and deformed. This was my first ever rigged 2D character.

If you are interested in how a rigged character works you can follow this link https://www.margoanimated.com/personal-work There you can find a 2D rig of Toadstool from MarioCart created by me.

Final design and animation. When I finished animating the dance cycle for one character, I then added a second character. I attached it to the first one like in a real Armenian dance. It was a little challenging to add a second character to the line but I figured it out in the end. I am hoping to develop this project further and add more characters to the line.

For this animation test I used a photograph of Cascade in Yerevan as a it is a popular part of the city. It turned out quite nice, mixing animation with the real world. Then I was considering finding a better quality photo or trying out more locations for the background. In the end I decided to create my own painted background.

Background Art

The background art was inspired by paintings of an Armenian artist, Martiros Saryan. He used bold vibrant colours to represent sunny and mountainous Armenian landscapes.

The location that I chose is in Jermuk, Armenia. The park is located in the mountains, a mixture of forest and rocks.