'Place' Project
This was an assigned studio project during my third year of University. The brief stated that we had to choose a specific location and illustrate the perspective of an inanimate object from that location. I decided to explore the perspective of Mary Anning's Plesiosaur fossil which was discovered on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.
Initial exploration of visual language (Sharpie on coloured paper). Looking at creating bold, engaging collage imagery for children, which was my chosen audience for this brief.
Further exploration of visual language, ink paintings illustrating an ammonite fossil and Mary Anning's Plesiosaur.
My digital interpretation of Mary Anning, inspired by the painting shown.
Whilst thinking about the contextualisation of my illustrations, I was inspired by the giftware at a local museum. This encouraged me to design a product that children could physically engage in.
Alongside a physical product, I wanted to create a video which would be played inside of a museum/ exhibition space. Initially I created a storyboard which pin-points the most important parts of the story of Mary Anning discovering the fossil and prior to this, the fossil in its living form.
The developed frames alongside the script which I then created a video from.
Whilst developing a physical object that children could engage with, I considered creating a diorama. This would illustrate the plesiosaur in its living form, design being utilised to allow children to learn about prehistoric animals which may be unable to be displayed in museums.
Prototype of diorama
After some feedback, I looked at re designing the animation and combining text with my imagery which would emphasise the storytelling element of my project. After these new designs were then presented, I was given some more feedback on the importance of hierarchy of text and elements within an illustration and how this can be utilised to emphasise different parts of the text.
Original sketch used in one of the frames from the new animation.
As I still aimed to create physical item, I redesigned the previous jigsaw, experimenting with proportion and positioning of the elements within the frame and perhaps considering something more stylised.
As I decided to illustrate for a slightly older child audience (around 8-10 years old), I wanted to create a more detailed puzzle design, therefore a woodcut puzzle would not have been appropriate for this age range. I then created this design on Adobe Illustrator.
I then had the puzzle made into a physical product.
