Folio Society 2015: The Folio Collection of Ghost Stories

"Each year entrants are asked to submit three illustrations [if you are to the enter the competition. I did not enter the competition and therefore I only had to produce two illustrations and a binding design for my university course] and a binding design for a book chosen by The Folio Society." 

‘The Upper Berth’ by F. Marion Crawford

‘A Tale of an Empty House’ by E. F. Benson

Back-Spine-Front Binding Design
(Text positioning, not actual typography)

Back-Spine-Front Binding Design with print details

 

Water patterns for The Upper Berth

Sand Patterns for A Tale of an Empty House

Pattern on the left used in the cover design for the collection

Mediums Used: Sharpie for the patterns; paint for the textures and Photoshop to construct the images together. 

'The Blue Pet': Children's Book

Continuing on from the previous projects involving 'The Blue Pet' where we had to produce pages for a baby book and a graphic novel. We then had to take what we'd learnt from these two and produce a sequence of images for a children's book. There were four single pages and one final double page spread. You were given the captions for each page [as written below each image] and the character personalities:

Blue Pet: brave, optimistic, positive, outgoing, sunny disposition; Dog; inquisitive, full of opinions, bit of a snob, and nosey; Cat: kind, helpful, looks out for others, has a caring nature, puts others before him/ herself

From then on you pretty much had the freedom to illustrate the story how you liked including those specific details.

SINGLE PAGE 1: The runaway travelled on and met two new friends

Although the main method of colouring these illustrations was through using a drawing tablet in photoshop I also included texture elements, where I sourced images for things like the wood used on the boat and the jetty in this image. I mean that my illustrations would be full of colour but also had real texture on certain elements. I worked hard to keep them on the same level as the flatter colours, and not make them look odd and stand out from the image too much.

SINGLE PAGE 2: They were excited to see a distant light

SINGLE PAGE 3: They hatched a plan...

SINGLE PAGE 4: There was a terrific noise!

DPS: The thief escaped

Mediums used: Line art was done on layout paper using pencil, and was then scanned into the computer.

The colouring was done in photoshop using a drawing tablet and a range of different paintbrushes. Some of which belong to dommifox. I also used a range of textures which I sourced online for things like the map, rocks, and temple wall.