Final Major Project
For my Final Major Project, I have created a Children's Illustration book called Peanut and Onion. This book is about best friends who love, care and support each other. They have their ups and downs but they always make sure they stick with each other, no matter what. The book is based on my relationship with my cousin. We gave each other the nicknames Peanut (my cousin) and Onion (myself) as a running joke between us. I decided to create the book because I was able to visualise the characters.
The following illustrations demonstrate my progress with the character design and the narrative explains my thoughts and process throughout this project.
At the Start...
In the beginning, when my project was still new, I came up with the idea of adding a main character, allowing Peanut and Onion to be considered imaginary friends. I later dismissed the idea as I did not want to take the attention away from Peanut and Onion as they were the main focus of this book.
Experimentation
The digital illustrations below were produced as a response to the digital illustrator Daniel Sulzberg. He uses bright, bold colours to create his illustrations. However, I wanted to stick to my colour palette while I tried to make them as bold as I could.
Here is my response to Henry Smith, another illustrator who brings humour into his illustration to send a message that his clients want to communicate. I also tried to take the same approach and added humour to my illustrations. It is a four panel comic of Peanut and Onion doing a dance sequence.
The following short comic is a response to Kelly Canby, who uses water colour and colouring pencils to produce her work. I started to develop some ideas for stories that could be used in the book. For reference, I used the Covid-19 pandemic as a guideline for this comic.
The Physical Peanut and Onion
In addition to the book, I created a physical version of Peanut and Onion. I used pillow stuffing, off cut pieces of fabric and old t-shirts that I sewed together to create the final outcome. I purchased googly eyes from the pound shop and used super glue to attach them to the faces of the puppets.
Once the puppets were completed, I created a short 1 minute stop-motion animation as a way of 'promoting' the book. The voice overs were recorded by myself and my cousin. I then edited the audio and the video to finalise the animation.
Final Outcome: Peanut and Onion
My final major project titled Peanut and Onion is a children’s illustration book based on friendship. Peanut and Onion are always going to be the best of friends no matter what comes between them. The story mirrors the relationship between my cousin and I. We are very close, and I wanted to express this somehow through my written narrative and illustrations. Peanut and Onion are childhood nicknames that we gave to each other, and these names best describe the shape of our heads (myself – Onion, my cousin – Peanut). After experimenting with different mediums and responding to artists, I decided that creating my final drawings digitally was the best way to communicate the bond between two characters with such a strong connection. Firstly, I drew all the images by hand. I then scanned them in and worked over the top on Procreate, using brush tools that were similar to a pencil and a paint brush to colour the characters and backgrounds. This book has been designed for young children between the ages 3-8. However, I believe everybody will enjoy Peanut and Onion, no matter their age because it has a feel-good factor that is best described as very heart warming.
