A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning

The following illustration is part of an assignment for Illustration at uni. We had to illustrate a character, in this case Count Olaf from a children's story- Lemony Snicketts A Series of Unfortunate Events. This is the illustration only, I still have to work on layout for the page as if it were a part of a picture book. The following extract will accompany the visuals:

                  "What?" Count Olaf asked. "No roast beef?"
                  "You didn't tell us you wanted roast beef," Klaus said.
Count Olaf slid toward the children so that he looked even taller than he was. His eyes grew even brighter, and his one eyebrow raised in anger. "In agreeing to adopt you," he said, "I have become your father, and as your father I am not someone to be trifled with. I demand that you serve roast beef to myself and my guests."
                 "We don't have any!" Violet cried. "We made puttanesca sauce!"
                 "No! No! No!" Sunny shouted.
Count Olaf looked down at Sunny, who had spoken so suddenly.

The idea was to use descriptions from the book to guide your character design, there's a movie as well- but I've not seen it and from what I have read of the books, this would be my first and last encounter with the series. Created in photoshop on wacom.

Rationale:

I have never read the books, Lemony Snicketts: A Series of Unfortunate Events, therefore my first task was to become familiar with the writing style and target audience of the novels before commencing any type of sketches. I was an English teacher for 10 years prior undertaking my current degree and do remember that this series of novels was most popular with both boys and girls in grades 6-8 (approx aged 11- 13). With this knowledge I knew that any illustration had to contain an element of the ‘ick’ factor to bring to life a character that is written to be cold and repulsive in the eyes of the orphans in the novel. It is this vision of Olaf that is most aligned with the sympathies and ages of the readers themselves.


The layout of the illustration was inspired by the accompanying text wherein Olaf seems to tower over the children, I wanted him to seem almost spectre like rising up and over them in an intimidating manner- this also helps to display his role in the narrative. He is reaching out towards Sunny (as stipulated in the associated text) but his attention has been briefly focused towards Violet as his beady bright eyes rest on her for a moment. There is something almost dismissive in the way that his body continues on its original path towards the crying baby, yet pauses for a moment to hear the other children protest (as per the text).

The colour palette in this piece is decidedly cool, blue greys and shades of green add to the sense of coldness in the character of Olaf. Black outline in keeping with a cartoon style enables the character to be drawn in a scary spectre manner without forgetting the sensibilities of the target audience aged 11-13 years old. The description in the novel identifies Olaf as wearing a grey coat complete with stains. Upon further research I came up with the idea that he was clearly a flamboyant individual (evidenced by his passion for the theatre) but that everything he owned was old, broken or in disrepair. This is why I have included gold-threaded brocade around the sleeves of the coat, as it gives me the opportunity to show a faded jaded character- the brocade is faded and threads are coming off it as if it had been worn every day. The stains are badges of ‘dishonour’, they reveal the lie of his character in that he craves to be wealthy and to embody his desired social class- yet everything about his appearance is cloaked in unkempt eccentricity (unshaven, dirty, no socks).

The orphans have been deliberately illustrated in a reversed negative style to echo the way in which Olaf sees them, as orphans- not as individual children with personalities and identities. Their colourless appearance helps to convey to the reader how Olaf interacted with the orphans and additionally conveys the orphans role in the narrative at this early part of the first novel wherein they are predominantly reactionary to Olaf to set up the over- riding conflict for the series.

Photoshop and Wacom were used as these are most pertinent to my animation skill set.