So after all my research, i was certain that i wanted to work with Orwell and got to drawing under the guidelines, working with Characters, locations, motifs, quotes and information on the author. The sum of those parts beginning with some characters from Animal farm: I started with the big bad of the story, Napoleon the pig. I have a very distinct image for how he should look, being a mix of pig and Stallin, the actual person the character was based on (bonus trivia for you). I think i came close to getting that image, but thanks to concentrating on specific characters to draw over the holidays, i feel like I was a smidge rusty when generating new designs, something i feel is present throughout the sketchbook. I think the issue for me is that the image isn't instantly recognizable as a caricature of Stallin, the minimal effort put in to practicing the character wont have helped, so coming to this conclusion later, i do try to address the issue.
Old major was simple enough so i don't have any issues in hindsight. I decided that the character would be nothing without the scene formed around him, so to add one for the scene quota he is placed in his barm, giving the prophecy to the other animals of the farm. Quite like the minimal quality of the outcome, i may harken back to it if there is a minimal colour pallette task later on.
Boxer the horse is, alongside that of snowball the pig, one of the more damming displays of the effects of life under a dictatorship. The character acts as a loyal servant, but eventually is worked till death. Combined with the fate of snowball, Orwell paints quite the impossible situation to escape. But focusing on the character at hand, horses have always been a bit of an Achilles heel for me, so I had a slight struggle finding an appropriate design, never really coming up with one that I deemed a success. What I did find qite effective was drawing the silhouette of a horse body. This is also when I got inspiration for my proudest work in this collection, a pocket watch design that could be spun to show either a healthy boxer, or overworked skinny Boxer. Was surprisingly a bit of a mind bender to create this, but none the less worth it, has me wanting to have a crack at other pop up book style presentations.
I decided to mix both squealer the pig and Benjamin the donkey for a comic page outcome. There weren't necessarily any breakthroughs with this, but working with the presentation of a narrative is something I certainly feel the need to do more of. I don’t feel that the outcome was the best method of portraying the scene, but at least continuing with another simple colour scheme, keeps the specific elements / characters easy to differentiate between.
Switching to 1984 now, I started with the protagonist, Winston. Again I feel the rust in my work is showing again with this one, no doubt that will be sorted soon enough though. I wanted the overalls to look baggy on the character, and in a way I feel they do, but not convincingly I guess is my issue, I think a few more reference drawings on the subject of clothing are due. I am happy with the image at the beginning of this series, depicting the two minute hate. The simple shapes for the crowd do seem to display a filled environment but still allows the detailed character to stand out amongst them. This is something I typically would never do, but it worked, and the forms are quite emotive, an additional plus I guess.
Deciding to concentrate on scenery and motifs here, I was surprised at how not terrible they turned out, mainly with the scenery. It’s probably pretty apparent by my book that character art is my go to subject, but I feel these scenes are better drawings than my character designs, nothing incredible, but none the less stronger than I’d expect from myself with this subject matter. I feel it may be the colour that helps this..