Negotiated Project: Page #6-7 (Fox)

From the very start of the research looking at the possible animals that I could use, I knew that the fox would be easily granted a place in the zone, due to its almost staple status as a part of British identity.

I really had fun illustrating for the fox, so I produced a number of illustrations, and from this number I picked two that I thought were good enough to put in the zine.

I created a canvas that was at an a5 size, which is what I used for all of the other pages so far, and I scanned these two images in via the high resolution scanner.

I had a lot of trouble however with scanning in the first illustration, as this particular image used very fine pencil shading, and featured a great deal of detail.

You can see that the laser didn't pick up a lot of the image's highlights.

I was disappointed by this, so I attempted to scan the image in using the more advanced scanner, which I thought would pick the image up much more clearly.

I was happy that the scanner picked up more detail, however it still didn't pick up the level of detail that I wanted, as I usually use the magic eraser to eliminate any background, and to make the image look cleaner.
When using this tool, it erased a lot of the actual image, which disappointed me.

I had the option at this point, to either cut this image, or tweak it to use on the page.
I tried tweaking the colour settings, but this didn't work, so I opted to still use the image in some form, since I was really happy with it.
This involved cutting out a large portion of the illustration that didn't pick up well, and this was the mane of the Fox primarily.

The head was salvageable.

Since the trouble did not lie with the head of the creature, I decided to cut the mane out, leaving just the head, which I was really happy with.

Once I cleanly cut the image, I enhanced the colour to enhance the black point of the image, and I felt that this was a really striking, and bold image, and one that I could easily see working on the page.

The enhanced head of the Fox.

Since the head alone was small, I thought about perhaps making the image part of a simple repeat pattern, and I would use my knowledge from my previous education in college, in which I did an entire study on repeat patterns.

I really felt fond of the page so far, so I decided to keep it this way, as it was striking, bold, and quite contemporary looking in appearance and design.

With the majority of page 6 complete, I turned my focus to page 7, also due to feature the imagery of another Fox illustration.

Once the images were scanned in, I tweaked the colour to compensate for the scanners laser, and I tweaked this particular image above, as I felt that the eyes could have been improved.
I used a photoshop brush to do this, and I am happy with the improvement.

This page is in contrast to the first page featuring the imagery of the Fox, as it features an illustration in full colour, rather then black and white.
After comparing the two illustrations in each respective file, I thought that if I made page #7 black and white as well, it would better match page #6.

With my satisfaction of the designs featured on both pages, I moved onto the wording side of the development.

I don't believe that placing any text would suit page #6, as the design works well without it. I was thinking about featuring any text that I use, on page #7, as I feel it would suit the illustration better.
In order to come up with some good text to feature this page, I decided to look into the folklore side of the Fox, and I knew that I could easily find some, as the Fox is an animal that has long been entwined with British culture.

www.google.com < image reference at this link.

I found it difficult to come across any British folklore that stood out to me, so in the end I decided to focus my attention on the animal's traits, whilst using some element of folklore.
I know that it is often said that Foxes are sly and cunning, and a simple google search of these terms back this up.

Image reference at this link > google.com

I decided upon using the words sly and cunning, and I wanted to feature them as part of my design.
I had a think about using black paint to create the wording, however decided to use colourful text, which would stand out against the contrasting greyscale image.