www.mrcusta.co.uk

I have recently finished working with Toroca, a web development company, on www.mrcusta.co.uk.

This is a website relating to 'Mr Custa', a radio show written by Philip Whitmore and played on WCR FM. Last year, Philip decided that he would like to turn 'Mr Custa' into a comic strip and I was the illustrator he contacted.

So far I have illustrated two 'Mr Custa' comic strips which have been published in Krash magazine. Below is an example of one of the pages from the comic strip. This can be seen in my portfolio.


When Philip contacted Toroca to make a website about 'Mr Custa', they got in touch with me to illustrate it. Mostly, we re-used any illustrations I had already produced, but I did some extra illustrations for the characters page (below) and I wrote some of the text.

Find out more about Mr Custa.

Download the Comic Strips.

Perfume covers

In this blog, I am posting some possible design ideas for the cover of 'Perfume' by Patrick Suskind. Without having read the book, it is probably quite difficult to decide which works best or what the meaning of the image is.

Therefore, I'll do my best to describe it. In the story, several women are murdered and are left naked amongst a field of flowers. they are murdered because of the murderer's strange passion for different scents. The main character, Grenouille, has no scent of his own, but has a very strong sense of smell and seeks out desirable fragrances.

I have used a doll to illustrate the women, as they as well me be dolls in Grenouille's eyes as he does with them as he pleases. The young women are described as being extremely beautiful and this also adds to my reasoning for using a doll as dolls are made to look 'perfect'.

I have covered the doll in red petals. I used the colour red because I thought it would be a good contrast and also indicates something quite sinister as it may make the reader think of blood. I also chose red as I originally wanted the flowers to be poppies because I found that poppies have no particular scent, much like the main character of the book.

I have placed the main figure at an angle so as to make the composition more interesting. The text is a simplistic font and the tile and author are in capitals as this is more likely to attract attention and it follows popular current design trends.

The back of the book jacket has to be fairly simple to allow for the large amount of text that needs to be included.

The following four ideas are all variations of the same design.

Design 1
This design shows the doll covered in petals but it has been blurred quite a lot.
The petals continue onto the back cover to make the composition more interesting.


Design 2
This design uses several of the photographs I took, layered on top each other. It gives a more abstract look. I did this to focus on the idea that there were several women, not just one. However, this image may be too confusing...


Design 3
This design is the same as the first, but with less blurring so as to leave more detail in the petals.


Design 4
Here I have used a different photograph with the figure angled in the opposite direction. In this design, however, the back cover is a little plain.

Please feel free to comment and leave your opinions on my illustrations. I would welcome the feedback.
Thanks
xx

Children's Book Progress

Here is one of the spreads I have completed in colour for my final project at university.


I have used pencil crayon for the main character with a pencil outline. The sky is taken from a photograph and the texture for her wings is scanned in tissue paper.

I am pretty pleased with how it looks so far. Just to continue with the rest of the pages now. =)

Perfume

I have been working on designing a book jacket for 'Perfume' by Patrick Suskind. One of my ideas involves a similar concept to that of Edgar Rubin's vase:


I want the perfume bottle with the emerging fragrance to be the image that the viewer first sees, but I also want them to be able to see the silhouettes of the faces on either side. These silhouettes represent the two sides of Grenouille, the main character in the story. I have produced this design with both black and white silhouettes to see which works best:


You may be wondering why the facial features on the silhouettes are exaggerated so much, but this is because the character is intended to be unattractive.

Personally, I am swaying towards the black at the moment, as I feel this has a stronger impact. Feel free to let me know what you think. Please remember these images are still at the rough stage at the moment. =)