Animal Emotions and Bad Graphic Design
In college, my major was illustration at Cleveland Institute of Art. For my senior thesis project, I decided to create a children’s book about animals. I’ve always loved animals, and I believe that they’re full of intelligence and emotions, but I know that’s not how everyone thinks and feels about animals. I knew people who treated their pets quite terribly; it was appalling to me.
I wanted to find a way to help people see animals in a better light, so I thought a children’s book would be a great start. I believe that by teaching children about animals while they’re young, they will grow up knowing more about them, will develop a respect for them, and will learn how animals should be treated.
When writing the book, I did a fair amount of research, trying to find stories that demonstrated intelligence, emotion, playfulness, and other examples, to show that animals are not just objects to be used and abused. I found roughly 30-40 stories that I included along with my animal illustrations.
I had discovered a very cool method for painting watercolors, first using markers, then the watercolors, and parts of the subject would then fade into the background. They were all extremely colorful, of course. (You know me!)
On the flip side, I did some goofy things with the graphic design of my children’s book, but the illustrations were fantastic, in my humble opinion. I still think they hold up really well today. Here is a smattering of my favorites, and if you want to see the rest of them, they are here on my website.
My friend’s dog, Boba, was helping.
All of the illustrations are available as prints, and some of the originals are also still available.
When embarking on this project, I came across octopuses for the first time, and I fell in love with them. I found two or three really great stories about them. Here’s one of them about “Play”:
An octopus in a tank was given a plastic jar. It would push the jar across the tank, making it bounce off the other end and return. The octopus would hit the jar again and repeat the game, the same way a person might bounce a ball. The octopus was amusing itself with the jar so it wasn’t bored anymore.
How do you feel about animals?