Rationale

For the Wellington zoo poster, I wanted to show the colourful and quirky nature of the city. I also wanted to incorporate elements of the city itself; from the houses in the hills, to the cable car, to the strong almost car-speed winds that gust through the city.

As for the Wellington zoo itself, I was really impressed by their dedication to their animals’ welfare and their emphasis on environmental conservation. What I liked most however, was “The Nest”. I really liked that they allowed people behind the scenes to show them the delicate veterinary operations, it really opened my eyes to how much work and care they put into the animals.

In order to show the vast variety of animals the Wellington zoo has, I decided to pick approximately one animal from each continent. I ended up with tigers, sun bears and red pandas representing Asia; giraffes and chimpanzees from Africa; otters from North America; spider monkeys from South America, and kune kune pigs and kiwis for New Zealand – making a total of nine animals. I really wanted the animals to stand out, so I textured them with hatch marks that matched their natural hair growth patterns.

For the final composition, I decided to incorporate The Nest, and the windiness of Wellington into my final poster design. To show the windiness, I had my character’s hair blowing in the wind, and a couple of leaves gusting through. I placed The Nest in the background in the upper left hand corner, as a little nod to work they do every day in the background. The animals (especially the red panda) are clustered around the human characters, to show the zoo’s animal interaction program.

Final Piece

Draft colour test

Drafts

Inspiration

New Project

Design a poster for the Wellington Zoo
- Show the diversity of the animals
-Harmonious and balanced
- Identify the image as distinctly Wellington


Final:
A2 format, full colour

Rationale

            A Trip to the Moon stood out for me due to its poetic quality and the rich imagery within the text. Moreover, even though mankind has already made several trips to the moon, the moon still remains a mysterious and dreamlike destination. Thus, in response to the more fantastical nature of the text (with a snip of a cloud/ we will make a ship), I decided to make my illustrations less scientifically accurate and more like something out of a child’s imagination.

                When I formed the characters, I mainly thought about silhouettes and colour. Firstly, they must be identifiable from a distance, and secondly, they had to stand out against a dark night sky. Ergo, colours such as black or even dark blue were ruled out from the get go. I decided to make the girl have orange hair that had the shape of a cloud, so that the colour would stand out in the mostly dark blue backgrounds while still staying with the theme. As for the baby boy, I decided to give him a rabbit onesie to give him a better silhouette, as babies are generally lacking in the hair department and thus have a rather uninteresting spherical head shape.

                In the first of the three illustrations, I imagined a pair of young children about to undertake the trip to the moon, armed with nothing but a simple plan and their abundant imaginations. I chose a rather simple and bright colour palette, to give a version of what a child’s room might look like. To emphasize their possible obsession with aviation and air travel, I also gave their blue walls some cloud decals and attached a space themed mobile on their ceiling. I also had to tweak my initial composition of this spread, as the original had no area in which I could fit any text. In the end I managed to space apart the girl and the bed and thus make the whole composition look far less cluttered.

                In the second illustration, they are already travelling through the moonlit clouds. I decided to use a bed tethered to a whale cloud because I thought it would be awesome. Also, a natural habitat for a whale cloud would naturally be in a sea of clouds, haha. I tried to continue the theme of fantasy by texturing the clouds in an unusual way.

                In the third illustration, they have landed on the tip of the moon and are looking down on their fields and on their house. The fields are also candy coloured to keep with the theme. I also framed the image with clouds in order to keep the composition dynamic even though the main characters are mostly just sitting down. This way, the readers’ eyes are drawn in a circular fashion from the house to the moon, then to the text, and then back again to the house.