Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer is a series of books that features criminal master mind Artemis Fowl the 2nd. Although he's only a teenage genius, Artemis captures Captain Holly Short, of the LEPrecon (Lower Elements Police Recon) and he holds her ransom to exploit the magical fairy people to restore his family's fortune. Foaly is a centaur, a technical genius and a computer geek. He works for LEP and is in charge of “preventing humankind from discovering the fairy civilisation”.
The book itself is highly detailed and has many layers to it but it breaks down into the central premise of a boy genius in a magical world. Artemis Fowl is the only one of my ideas that has been adapted previously. The series ran not only as a book series but as a graphic novel as well. I personally have never seen these but I have seen a few pieces of artwork from it but they differ hugely from what I imagined the characters would be.
Initially, I wanted to model the three main characters from the descriptions I could extract from the book. When I learnt that there was a graphic novel, I felt that I should give this graphic look a spin for my work. When I was reading the books, I always felt that there was a cartoon-esque feel about the novel when I learnt about the magical side to the story. I saw Artemis and his bodyguard Butler as humans but imagined Holly and Foaly as cartoon like people as I’d never seen a film with a ‘realistic’ fairy or centaur at this point.
I want to model Artemis Fowl but I feel that he would not be best portrayed if I didn't have at least one of the other main characters there; namely Holly or Foaly. When trying to take this graphic look into account for my idea, it reminded me of two artists who's work I have adored for several years; Dan Mumford and Olly Moss.
Dan Mumford is a British freelance illustrator. Over the years he has created designs for album covers, branding and screen prints, to new interpretations of classic film posters and albums. His work is unique and revolves around a cartoony feel with a classic tattoo feel. He also uses bright bold colours to accentuate the contrast between the colour and thick black lines. His style would be great to use texturally on characters and for background sets/imagery.
Olly Moss is another British freelance illustrator and graphic artist. He rose to fame reimagining movie posters. His work is regularly featured in Empire the film magazine. His work has a different feel to Dan’s but has equal beauty. Olly’s work is clean and clinical but also relies on colour and contrast. Olly’s work is more relaxed and has a minimalist feel. This approach could also work as well if I keep the lines clean with block colours.
Ultimately, this idea is lacking but does have potential. It's the only idea with some form of pre-existing adaption and if I did choose this, then I would have to be very conscious of this pre-existing work. Although I have never seen this, I would have to be careful not to be influenced by it while making sure that I am not creating imagery that could be seen as replicating this work.
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