10 // Building the Brief... Update

Since last week's post, I've finished the Meg novel and have marked out several scenes that I'd like to illustrate for this project. I've picked out quite a few that were visually dramatic, and several that were more narrative driven, allowing for more complicated compositions featuring multiple characters. Now it's time to narrow them down to no more than 10, before I decide on how many I can realistically expect to produce in time for the deadline.

I'd like to treat the illustrations as if I had been commissioned to illustrate the novel's key scenes. Therefore I should focus on picking scenes that are spaced relatively evenly throughout the story, as well as being the most visually dynamic/dramatic moments I can find. Besides that, I wish to present illustrations featuring the main character Jonas Taylor in a variety of situations, as well as depicting his dynamics with other characters from the plot such as his wife Maggie, the love-interest Terry Tanaka (female), or his old friend Mac.

Currently I have 25 possible scenes that I feel should be illustrated. They form a cohesive structure, following the storyline and picking out all of the key moments required to tell the story, based on illustration alone. However, I feel like some of the scenes are too tightly packed - particularly in the action-packed sections of the book - so I will have to think of a way to reduce this number, without losing important information.

This has gotten me thinking: should I change the output format of my illustrations into something more like a comic-book? By presenting several images upon one page, I could get across all of the information relatively successfully, though at the expense of full size illustrations. 

Or perhaps, rather than trying to encapsulate the story as a whole, should I simply select the scenes that I feel might present more visual interest to a viewer? If that is the case, then there will still be quite a few to choose from, but I think it might be a more successful way of going about this project. I think I would rather present full-size illustrations, as this will test my ability to present narrative-based compositions on a larger scale.

OK, I will ponder this dilemma over the next few days and come to a conclusion by the end of the week, by which point I hope to have reduced the number of possible illustrations substantially - if necessary - and begin the research and design phase.