Visuals

Project Statement

This was the final project I produced within my graphic design program in high school. It explored the idea of illustration and text-to-image relationships through the creation of a children’s book. Titled “The Adventures of Marley: the mouse slayer”, my children’s book was inspired by my cat, Marley. Loosely taking inspiration from the Home Alone movies, the storyline is centered on a day in his life when he sets up traps in an attempt to stop a mouse named Schmitt from getting into the house. These traps include peanut butter, swinging paint cans, tripwire, and a mouse-trap bed with cheese. Despite a great effort, Schmitt still manages to make it through the house seemingly untouched by any of the traps Marley had set up. I don’t want to spoil the ending so check out “The Adventures of Marley: the mouse slayer” to see what happens next! Beyond this storyline, I digitally drew the illustrations on Sketchbook and transferred them into InDesign to add the text. My goal with this book was to create something that looked professional but still had a slight handmade, childish feel to it. I did this by illustrating Marley as a very derpy-looking cat, using a font that imitated child-like handwriting and setting it all to a comical, ironic storyline.

Reflection

While every project I create is special to me, “The Adventures of Marley: the mouse slayer” is extra in that department. Being able to create a children’s book, regardless of its storyline, is extremely fun. As I said within my project statement, my storyline is loosely based on the Home Alone chronicles. However, it’s equally based on the many times Marley brought or found mice within my house and ate them. Graciously, he would always leave behind some part of the animal for me to find but not to worry, I left that detail out of my book. These instances are what motivated me to make this story and are something that makes it funnier on a personal level. Creating the actual illustrations was challenging, time-consuming, and repetitive but they ultimately strengthened my drawing abilities and taught me the importance of practice and consistency. Beyond this, the aspect of image-to-text relationships within this project taught me a lot about font choice and how much it can determine the mood or feeling behind the words it’s displaying. This idea is something I’ve referred to in recent internships and class projects so I’m thankful I had the opportunity to experiment with it when the stakes weren’t as high.