Rat Takes the Win!

The final narrated double page spread. We get to see Rat cheat and beat Ox, who has pretty much done all the work.

Having seen all the other pages with the animals partially under water I wanted this image to be slightly more from above, so there's only a shadow of Ox's body under the water, no detail. I love how rat has been presented here, that combined with Ox's surprise, really captures exactly what the story narrates. As my tutors are continuously telling me, the images should tell the story and I'm quite pleased with this one. I'd like to think it does the job very well.

Front Cover

My front and back cover here. The front is on the right side of the image - you have to imagine that this image has been folded, then it makes sense as to why the image has this type of composition. The title will be to the right and the blurb will be on the left side.

I wanted to keep it simple and to the point, with just a hint of what might be inside once the audience starts to read the story. I also didn't want to give away that this story is actually about the Chinese New Year; I've given it a different title, specially high lighting 'Rat' as he is the important character in the story. 

The Beginning

So this is where we start our story - this is the first page. As I think I've already mentioned, I've used the endpapers to start illustrating the story before I start narrating it. This page is the first which will include text. We are fortunate to join the animals when they start arguing about who should have the New Year named after them. 

Final Concertina

I have here my final concertina book for before entering the Macmillan Prize Children's Book competition 2014! With text, which I still think I will end up changing again, but a final concertina book never the less. I believe that's 8 dummy books in total and I still have a few ideas yet!

The Chinese Zodiac

We have here one of the endpapers to the book. Rather than having each endpaper exactly same I've actually used to start and continue the story, so just to finish the book off I thought it would be nice to see the animals in the order they supposedly finished in the swimming race and therefore the order they go each year for the Chinese New Year! I'm quite proud of this page, I think it's very simply but effective and compliments the ending to the book nicely.

Page 2

So this is what I've wanted to put all the singles towards … page number 2. This is the starting line, just as all the animals are jumping into the river for the race. I currently have 2 versions, this one which is rather crowded (which was what I was aiming for) or one which is viewed from further away, therefore allowing the animals to be spread out a bit more. he problem I have with that version is there is a lot of empty space around the image which I'm not too keen on. However, I felt that having 2 to choose from was better than just the one. I'd love your opinion too! Please don't be frightened to send me a comment or a post! x

Singles Done!

Only a few days since my last post but here's a quick catch up. I've finally finished all the animals on their own. What I'm doing with them next will follow shortly … 

Happy Dog

More singles coming your way! This is what I've been working on recently. The next one to eventually add to my final page. 

Horses turn to Jump

As promised here is the other one. I had to tone this image down quite a bit as the original had hair that was really quite fancy and elaborate. I do however think I'm happy with it now. I still wanted to keep plenty of movement in the image - as you know, that's what I like to maintain in my work and that's why this blog is called 'Dancing drawings.' :)

Tiger Jumps

Again another single image. These are all going towards the page where the animals are jumping into the water at the start of the swimming race. I'll be posting another one later. :) x

Snake slithers past Horse

Trying to decide whether I should have more or less water on this page. Perhaps I need to come back to it later? It's only a minority, but I'm determined to get these images right!

Kind Dragon

So even after catching Snake, Dragon is still checking everyone is okay whilst trying to swim through the choppy waves. 

Monkey tickles Goat

Back to this page again! I've made more changes by altering the angle Monkey's swimming at. 

Ox is Ready to Go!

Another single here, again one I intend to use with other images I've done separately to put together on a double page spread. 

Clever Rat

Final spread - the empty space next to Rat is where the text will go.

Singles

Dragon pouncing - I'm hoping images like this will be used later in a double spread.

Tiger helps Rabbit

Page 10 … 
As you can see I'm not going to do the pages in order necessarily, so I thought I'd work on this one next. I think I need to keep in mind about the water and how I put the watercolour on the page for it. In places I don't want it too dark or too much so I may continuously be going back to it until the deadline. 

Back to Work

Apologies for not keeping you all up to date and apologies for not posting in a while! I have spent the last week or so focusing on my dissertation so annoyingly a few things were put on hold. But I have managed to do some work along the way so here it is! The goal now is to keep producing my final pages. I have about 5 weeks left and counting! So it's time to get going!

This page 4 is gradually coming closer to being finished.