My Digital Media Project - Brief 2 - Robyn Gets Overexcited For Drawing Donkeyskin

The second brief in Scheherazade: Living On a Tale is based around the idea of a book of lesser known fairytales, specifically, the main character of Donkeyskin. The final products for this brief will be designs for each of the dresses featured in the story, and at least one completed illustration.

This is a fairytale near and dear to my heart, but it's one I didn't come across as a child. I found it when I was a teenager, looking up old cartoons. Specifically, in this case, Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, and the episode entitled The Coat of Many Colours.

For this brief, I plan to take inspiration from older illustrations, due to a trend I noticed when I was looking through bookstores. Generally, books of fairytales made for children tend to polarise into two camps, in regards to their illustrations. One with simple, childlike illustrations, and one with more grim, Tim Burton-esque illustrations. In recent times, there doesn't seem to be as much focus on the beautiful illustrations seen in fairytale collections from decades past. This is something that has saddened me, since I fondly remember the first fairytale book my mother gave me, a ratty old thing, but it had gorgeous illustrations. I commiserated with a group of friends in secondary school about the lack of good illustrated fairytale books, so I know that I'm not the only person who'd be interested in such a thing.

In light of this, I'm going to look into creating more realistic, traditional looking illustrations, but through using digital methods to mimic traditional aesthetics. A few artists I'll be looking at for inspiration are Arthur Rackham, Beatrix Potter and a little Glen Keane for flavour.

[Arthur Rackham]

[Beatrix Potter]

[Glen Keane]