SOMETHING'S FISHY: AN ILLUSTRATIVE NOVEL
I was commissioned to illustrate an interactive murder mystery book for the Critical Thinking Company aimed at 6-8th graders that could be used either in a classroom setting or as a personal workbook. I chose to incorporate bright colors and cartoonish images into the cover to provide a sense of levity and fun to a potentially dark subject matter and to catch the audience's attention.
A more illustrative style for the cover and inside pages of the book reinforces the idea that the content is aimed at children/young adults while the use of characters on the cover page hints at the interactive activities that are contained within the novel.
One of the most important pieces I designed was the crime scene location map, which detailed the location of all fishing cabins and could be used to verify suspects' stories. I wanted this to be colorful and whimsical enough to draw the attention of young students while still maintaining its necessary functional purpose as a map of the crime scene. The illustrative style and bright colors also aid in brightening the mood on a murder investigation.
In conjunction with the crime scene location map I created the crime scene evidence map which provides a closer look at where the evidence itself was found at the scene of the crime. Utilizing the same color scheme and several repeated illustrations these two maps coordinate without becoming predictable. The legend in the lower right corner clearly describes what each element is while the illustrations add fun and whimsy to the scene.
In addition, to these bigger illustrations I also completed over 100 small black and white illustrations to go within the book on various worksheet pages. Below are samples of the Bass Lake department badges, bone diagrams, an x-ray, a bullet, and the lifecycle of a blowfly.
The biggest challenge with the black and white images was to make them interesting and engaging while keeping them simple enough that if the pages were to be copied for students in a classroom the imagery would still be easy to see.
Each of these small illustrations were embedded into individual worksheets to enhance the overall design and add some interest to what could otherwise be a plain black and white textbook page.
