Iron casket picture book

[HazelNut-624]

I'm doing an illustrated storybook, an altered rendition of Humpty Dumpty.

In my version, Humpty Dumpty falls from the wall and cannot be put back together, so instead they place his brain (yolk) inside a robotic iron shell. When he comes back to life he is angry and furious and kills the scientist who saved him. It's then revealed that Humpty didn't "accidentally" fall off the wall but was committing suicide. Now that his mind is trapped in an iron shell, he is forever immortal. Which explains the title, The Iron Casket.

I've just started this, and have 12 pages thumbnailed. The cover and 4 of the illustrations are completed and can be seen below. I wanted the book to have the same gothic feeling and lined rendering that Edward Gorey was well known for.

Right now, everything is still in progress, the pages will have text below the pictures and I'm still messing with a few things, but please... GIVE ME FEEDBACK. Does the title work? How do the illustrations look in contrast to the story? I plan on having this printed, so I want it to be top notch.

Cover:


Title Page:


Opening page:


Page 01:


page 02:


page 03:


page 04:


I'll keep this thread updated with what I'm doing, Please give me some feedback!

[sirandal]

I think this is awesome but I guess when I think of iron casket I am thinking of something you keep something in...but were you trying to imply a coffin style casket?

[Symson]

I like the looks of this. Nice start.

[HazelNut-624]

Sirandal- Thanks! and yes, I'm referring to his robotic body as the iron casket, because hes forever trapped in it after "death"- much like an actually casket, which is basically a coffin.

Symson- thanks, I appreciate it

[Arrington]

The concept is dope man! I never would have thought of something like that. It's definitely off to a good start. Are you going to have it colored or leave it as is?

[HazelNut-624]

Arrington- Thanks! And no, I'm gonna leave it completely black and white, i feel coloring it would take away from the gothic feel of it, I dont think color would be as effective with the concept.

[Beastie]

Great idea.

The cover is really nice. The robot suit looks great - the scroll at the bottom works well - and the font you've chosen is perfect. I think the illustration gets a bit 'unnecessarily busy' around the egg's throat area what with the double-chin, cravat and two hands all meeting up - but perhaps I'm being a little nitpicky.

Title page = very classy and simple.

Opening page = yep, like it.

Page 1 and page 2 -- I'm not a big fan of the clouds. They're visually very busy and, for me, they're drawing attention away from the egg. Style-wise, the perfectly flat bottoms on some of those clouds is misleading. At first I thought the ones with flat bottoms might have been bushes (and they were flat to denote that they were on the floor) - but then noticed that they were flat in a later page as well. Going back and looking at those pages again -- my eyes are drawn to the heavy black, negative shapes between the clouds rather than the intended focal point.

Page 3 - nice smashed egg

Page 4 - Love the scientist - but the perspective on the wall is hard to look at - and makes the wall feel 'twisted'. Also, angle of the lamp is out when compared with the wall -- and you've lost consistency with your brickwork (the white top layer is now twice as thick as it was in previous panels). Going back to the lamp - it's position on the wall means that it couldn't, in reality, be shining directly down on to the egg. Its closer to us that the egg - so, yeah. The clouds look ok on this page - because there's plenty of other stuff going on and they don't overpower.

[brokenhill]

Love the cover art and the whole idea.Fantastic concept.
and I agree with Dean's crits.

[HazelNut-624]

Beastie: Thanks a lot for time you spent on this. So what are your suggestions for the clouds? should i erase the bottom two near the wall completely? As for the screwed up brick wall that was pretty much intentional, is there a way to make it more obvious its supposed to look screwy? or does it just come off as lazy? For the title page I can easily erase the double chin area and leave it white, I'll try that and see how it looks. Thanks again man, i appreciate the time you spent for that.

BrokenHill: also means a lot coming from you, don't ask why (cause i don't have an answer) but i always considered you to be one of the pencil jack "gods."

[Beastie]

So what are your suggestions for the clouds? should i erase the bottom two near the wall completely?

The clouds look 'solid' at the moment. Like, they physically look like you could pick them up as 3D shapes. Coral comes to mind. I think it might be that you got a bit happy with the shading - and went slightly too far. So...I would see how they looked with some of that shading removed.

In terms of deleting entire clouds -- I think the least you should do is delete the cloud that's directly behind the egg. At present, the egg is a white object - on a white background - and, because of that, his visual importance is lessened. Get rid of the cloud behind him and he's a white egg on a black background - and suddenly he's much more apparent.

This is a very, very, very rough switch-about - just showing how much more clear he looks with a black background. If you're clever with the placement of the clouds - you might even be able to arrange the composition so that the black, negative space actually directs the eyes where you want them to go. That's maybe not so important though.

As for the screwed up brick wall that was pretty much intentional, is there a way to make it more obvious its supposed to look screwy? or does it just come off as lazy?

It doesn't really feel intentional. I think its because we haven't seen screwy perspective etc on any of the other pages. It just stands out as being wrong. I think that, if you're looking to intentionally go screwy with things like that, you might want to push it slightly further so that there's no confusion.

That's just one opinion though.