"At Night We Dance", is a book I created during my third year of University at Worcester. The book was designed to be silent for the competition so named, "Illustrated Silent Book Contest 2022".
At the start of the project I wanted to create characters which would fit into the aesthetic of fay / mythical creatures. This was because the story the silent book was going to be based off was that of the legend of the Changeling, a creature which would replace children at birth.
Along with the unique designs of the characters, I wanted to achieve the sense of movement with them. They needed to look alive in the narrative of the story and one way I chose to do so was to make them look as though they were dancing.
All the characters and scenery within the book have been made using foam printing. This was perhaps the most important part of this project due to the fact it added so much detail to the end product. Any imprint I left on the foam would leave a mark to help this further level of detail spring to life.
At first I started with a very crude mock up of what the pages would look like.
However, after a considerable amount of time developing the look of the book in Photoshop I was able to develop it further making it look far more visually interesting to an audience.
Above are some of the final pages of the book. There was a lot of editing done on photoshop while making these pages. Every character has their own specific shading applied to them using mask layers along with gradients being used to create the sensation of light.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to send this book into the competition in time, however I wouldn't let this amount of work I'd put in go to waste and so I decided to print the book myself through Blurb.
At the time of writing, this particular project has to be one of the best I've ever worked on and remains as one of the best outcomes I've ever produced.