My entry for the 2020 Penguin Competition

Penguin Competition 2020

For the Penguin competition this year I picked the book title ‘Goodnight Mister Tom.

I started off the Penguin brief by doing some research by visiting book shops to look at the types of designs already out there and the type of other designs that Goodnight Mister Tom is placed next to.

I also had a look online at other children’s books based around the 2nd World War, to get an idea of style of design.

For my design I decided to go down a different route from a illustrated drawing or photographic one, instead I decided to create a book cover from clay.

I created the three main characters, Mr Tom Oakley, William Beech and Sam the dog. I also made a bomb shelter to represent the one young William helped to build, so I set the scene of the characters in the garden, with Mr Tom resting on a garden fork. I've created William sitting down drawing.

The leaves I made are to present the two trees the characters are based on, an Oak and a Beech tree.

Once figures were made and painted, I set upon finding the right background to go with the figure.

I was not complete convince by the above background, so decided to add to the scene and clay figures by making a tree and a strip which I painted green, this was to represent grass.

I was really please with how the truck of the tree turned out once painted. So I really wanted to use it within the scene.

For the next step, I upload some of the images from above into Photoshop and experimented with typefaces, layout, brightness and contrast.

Still not convince by the background I had tried out. It was suggested to me to maybe try a cardboard or brown paper.

The clay figures against the brown, I found really worked. I also made adjustments to the tree by adding the image of the leaves I had made to it multiple times.

Here is a picture of the final outcome and my competition entry.

I also created some mock-up pictures

Here's hoping it does well and even if it doesn't I really enjoyed making it.