Monday, October 17, 2011
I was asked by Nicole the other day to help do a blog design for her Uni Lit project regarding Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which argues that "the inclusion of zombies into the narrative is not one of
intrusion, but rather, this seemingly unnatural inversion is native to the
social critique that Austen enacts in Pride and Prejudice."
I guess we can just concern ourselves with Zombies and old English surroundings, to simplify things.
As in the Malay Dance Project, this kind of topic wasn't something I had attempted before, so I felt inclined to give it a go. She had provided reference photos from both the internet as well as the original book, (I always thought those were devoid of pictures) all of which showed more traditional drawing styles. Knowing that wasn't something I could do, much less attempt in a short span of time, I looked elsewhere for inspiration. Thankfully, I remembered I had kept A Horrible Histories book on *ahem* The Barmy British, something of Secondary School days. So this is what I did.
Here's the result of flipping through the pages and snapping pictures I felt were useable. They were cropped and pasted in rough locations without yet having a concept of how to blend them together.
Subsequently, I traced them out quickly, conjured a setting and filled in some colour. I felt for good measure, though, I should check if I was on the right track. It was quite obvious I wasn't, since it lacked that gothic charm, the old school drawing style and a required sense of seriousness to a uni project. Still, time wasn't on my side, and I felt maybe throwing off the professor for a bit could yield some results.
The man at the side was changed to a woman upon request, I tried to adapt a movie still of Lady Catherine into the same cartoon drawing. Not sure how well that turned out, though. The drawing of her reminds me of how I used to draw cartoons back in secondary school days.
Colour was filled in once the line art was neatened up. I tried to go for darker colours, as Nicole requested.
The crinkle paper effect, giving more texture to the drawing.
The footer was added later. As you can see, he's the same dead fellow whom I originally intended for the header. He looks much more natural here though. In his element, if I may say so.
The finished blog is located here. (I'll add a link once it's up)
Labels: blogskin, design, drawing
posted by joseph at 11:50 AM