Storytelling

The 3 little pigs:
The Brief asks us to retell a traditional story, changing the context and adding your own imput and style.
I didn't want to choose a long story like Lord of the Rings or Alice in Wonderland because that would mean choosing just one scene from the book and interpreting that. So I looked into traditional short stories. Stories by the Brothers Grimm and Aesops Fables. A number of stories stuck out but none more than the three little pigs.
Originally, the story of the 3 little pigs was based on a wolf trying to disguise itself as the mother of seven little kids (baby goats) in order to get into their house and eat them. But time and convenience changed it to just 3 pigs with their own house.
I did a lot of sketches for the wolf and tried to find out what he represented: Death, Fear, Impending doom. I wanted to create my images without the wolf, but still with his presence.
The artist Ralph Steadman was a big influence for me in the creation of my images. He has always been one of my favourite illustrators, but I've never tried to incorporate some of his style into my own work, which I tried to do in these final images. It was fun to experiment and try out new ideas and techniques. It was also the first time I've used coloured ink in my work.
The basic story of the 3 little pigs is that a mother sends her sons off into the world to learn and survive for themselves. Two of the pigs fail at this because of the wolf, which reflects our own struggle for survival. And the last pig succeeds, killing the wolf. So, in my images, I wanted to show the failure and death of two little pigs and the success of one.
The first idea for my final images were to have a set of 3 pages, each containing a story board with six images. Set in a comic book style.
The first pig is slaughtered by a butcher (the wolf) in the street.
The second pig is killed by disease and famine (the wolf).
The third little pig kills or avoids the butcher first, and stays clean and well fed, avoiding being killed by 'the wolf'.
I still wanted to use this concept for my final pieces, but draw just one single image, instead of setting it out comic book style. I decided to do this because of looking at the work of Edward Hopper. The impact the images have are the effect I wanted with my own images. I love the subtleness and stillness of his images.
So, there it is, some of the thoughts I had for this project. The 3 end pieces should be in A3.

Fresh start

This website has been created for the course I'm doing at Liverpool John Moores University. I'm doing a BA Graphic Arts course, focusing on illustration. I'm currently in the second year and have decided that my work and some of my thinking needs to go online, which over time, will be put onto the internet.