Illustration project
Phantom: A Tale on Plastic Pollution
Client:
Perception Change Project - United Nations
Author:
Kirsten Deall
Phantom: A Tale on Plastic Pollution joins a collection of children’s books on environmental and societal topics published by the Perception Change Project at the United Nations Office in Geneva. These books have been created as a way to teach young audiences about the international issues that the Sustainable Development Goals aim to resolve by 2030. In this installment, readers can follow the journey of Baby Whale and her mother as they warn both sea life and the human world about the dangers of plastic pollution after the tragic death of Phantom, the largest whale in the ocean. At the end of the story, parents and children can engage in the learning section to discover ways they can help end plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.
process
Dummy Layout
At the beginning of the project, I connected with author Kirsten Deall through Trello to discuss the storyline. After receiving the draft, I prepared a dummy layout with digital sketches of how each scene would be composed. Once the layouts were approved I moved on to character design.
Dummy Layout
From the initial sketches, I further developed the design of the whales and crab individually and with backgrounds. Kirsten was interested in incorporating images of real plastic in the illustrations that showed plastic dumping. I tested this concept with the crab scene – this page shows the massive amount of plastic that Phantom ingested.
Illustration Process
Once character designs were approved, I finished illustrating the spreads in this style. To make edits easier to complete, I vectorized all the scenes in illustrator and added textural effects in photoshop.
final book
At the beginning of the project, I connected with author Kirsten Deall through Trello to discuss the storyline. After receiving the draft, I prepared a dummy layout with digital sketches of how each scene would be composed. Once the layouts were approved I moved on to character design.