For my Illustration workshop of semester 2, I had to develop and create an illustrated zine.
Out of three themes given, we had to chose one to use for our story for the zine.
The three themes were:
- Child in the Museum
- Tiger in the House
- Running Through the Forest
I decided to create a zine with the theme of Running Through the Forest.
Once I had my theme chosen, I created a mind map of the different elements found within a forest as this is the location where my illustrations take place. I then decided on four words to create sketches with mediums to start experimenting.
Using media like pens, gouache and pencil, I created images with color, texture and visual perspectives. Then I cut each drawing out and created three collages to help develop a story to work on.
Originally I wanted to have a 3D interactive aspect to the zine where you could lift up a tree or stump and see the mushroom underneath however as I further developed my idea and started adding the digital element, I came to make the decision to no longer include this idea as I felt like it would disrupt the overall design of the zine.
Gaining ideas from the three collages, I decided to further explore the idea of turning mushrooms into characters. I first drew the mushrooms in pen then created the character in pencil and finally finished the design, adding color by scanning the image into procreated and started to add that digital technique to the zine creation. This was when I decided that I wanted to work in both traditional and digital methods to create the final illustrated zine.
The collages gave me the idea to create a story of the shroomlings going on little adventures. I wanted this story to show the characteristics of the mushrooms being curious in a big world, and that they like to play among the trees like hide-and-seek.
The next step I took to develop the story was creating rough ideas and layouts of each scene that I wanted to include in the zine that I thought would help bring to story along as well as show the different perspectives I wanted to include.
I wanted to create a double page spread for this scene to show a perspective of how big the forest is compared to the shroomlings as well as to have room for many mushrooms to be seen.
The next two scenes include the perspective of looking to the sky through the trees. The first scene used to help place the second one so the shroomling is seen looking up before the top of the trees are seen.
I wanted the last scene to almost mimic the first where the main character is seen alone in the tree, however this time, we can see other shroomlings coming towards the character, where it is then leading to the larger illustration with all the mushrooms being together.
When I had my ideas in place, I created a mock up of the illustrated zine with the front cover and each of the scenes paint in gouache to create the traditional part. Then I scanned each scene into Procreate and created the background along with placing the shroomlings and main character into their positions in the scenes.
I created a larger layout of the zine to ensure that my scenes helped the story flow properly as well as have an overall visual of what the final zine would look like.
I used the same method to create the final A3 illustration that would be seen when the zine is opened fully. The final scene I wanted the main character to be seen with the other shroomlings as a way to end the story. The main character was looking for friends, felt lonely close to the end and in the final scene, is finally with those friends that the reader could see throughout the story peaking out behind the trees.
The final illustrated zine:
