University News Last updated 09 July 2019
Two BA (Hons) Illustration students have been given the exciting opportunity to work with Tiny Tree Children’s Books to illustrate two of their upcoming publications.
Raluca Farcas and Shannon Cresham were both awarded contracts to illustrate the books after responding to a live brief set by the company and impressing judges with their illustrations. The brief involved creating sample illustrations for one of three books: one aimed at toddlers, another at five to seven year olds, or one for an undefined age.
Raluca (pictured above) chose to focus on the book aimed at five to seven year old children that told the story of a monster girl, Molly, failing to win the talent show at her school every year because of her misbehaving snakes. Whilst creating the sketches, Raluca experimented with different ways to make Molly stand out and the appearance of the snakes, which led to the inclusion of different coloured snakes and albino ones.
Since winning the contract Raluca has been working on a freelance basis with the editor and author of the book to create 12-13 spreads to fit the narrative. She noted how nervous she initially was to work with her first real clients, but how wonderful the experience of her first professional contract has been and how the collaboration has influenced her practice.
Shannon echoed this comment and how glad she was that the project had taken her out of her creative comfort zone. Shannon’s illustrations were for a book that tells the story of Lee, a baby tiger that is afraid of other jungle animals. She was told that the reason her work was selected for the contract was because she kept a level of realism in her sketches of the older tigers, for example she included teeth and claws in sketches of the older tigers but portrayed Lee as typically fluffy and cute.
Winning the contract came as a huge shock to Shannon, who added that the entire project put the past three years of her time on the course into perspective:
Live project opportunities are built into our BA (Hons) Illustration course and as well as Tiny Tree, students have had the opportunity to work with leading names such as Penguin and Moonpig. To find out more about how students work with industry visit our course visit the course page or join us at an Open Day.