Penguin Brief: Emil and The Detectives: Initial Ideas

After some deliberation I decided to pick the Penguin Book Brief as my substantial brief, this was because it just seems like the widest variety and I'm interested in publishing. 

I started with Emil and The Detectives just because it felt like it was going to be the biggest challenge out of all three for me. I'm not particularly interested in children's books but the brief for Emil was to create something new from an old book. 
I downloaded a version of the book and read it all, making small notes as I went along, notes on the currency, any interesting or funny plot points and any notes on the characters appearance. 

CREATING EMIL 

For the time being, I wanted to stay away from looking at what already exists for the book covers. Instead I looked into 1920's berlin fashion for men and children.
My first few drawings were just revolved around Emil and what he could potentially look like as well as trying to channel his attitude in there. In the book He is given quite a lot of responsibility (travelling alone with money) so I wanted him to look confident of himself. 

I tried out a few postures just so I could get a feel for the character. Originally I wanted the boy to be a darker skinned lad but after looking at my research I realised that it didn't suit the time period and opted to change that. 









CREATING THE DETECTIVES 

I played around with colours of his clothes and hair for a bit before deciding to move on and start thinking about creating "the detectives". I had a go at drawing boys individually but the book format wasn't particularly big so that was an idea I abandoned quickly. Instead I opted for creating them all in a group, so that Emil could be in front of them leading them. 
At first I created a few at the front in detail before deciding to silhouette the ones in the back to create the illusion there was more of them. This was a decision which impacted the rest of the cover later on. 

CREATING THE BAD GUY + POLICE OFFICER 

I decided that I wanted a wider range of characters to start off with and that if I needed too I could always narrow them down later. This lead to me creating a baddie and a police officer. The police officer was pretty straight forward to draw as there was lots of references for me to use, but for the bad guy it took me a while before I created one. I experimented a lot with facial expressions for this as I wanted kids who picked up the book to instantly identify him with having done something wrong based on his face. 
I drew him quite wrapped up and tried to make him look like he was walking away from something quickly.