Midnight Monsters (project 4 - part 3)

After having focused solely on the artwork for this project, it felt quite daunting to further work on the storyline. In previous projects the narrative actually had always been the focal point in my process. So it was definitely time to make some changes. For Midnight Monsters I started thinking up moments that would be fitting for a story about a young girl afraid of the dark/going to sleep, and drew them in my sketchbook.

I then proceeded to try and fit these images together on a storyboard. Needless to say there were a lot of versions and many images I was quite fond of that - unfortunately - did not make the final selection.

Storyboard 1/12

Storyboard 2/12

Storyboard 3/12

Storyboard 4/12

Storyboard 5/12

Storyboard 6/12

Storyboard 7/12

Storyboard 8/12

Storyboard 9/12

Storyboard 10/12

Storyboard 11/12

Storyboard 12/12

This then resulted in my first dummy book for Midnight Monsters:

Though this version really is the best so far, I at least need to rework the text, perhaps add some to other pages and put in an extra spread after the reveal of the monster. I was really struggling with its introduction and background story. I could easily get lost in a too elaborate extra storyline.

Another aspect I want to further explore is design. With Midnight Monsters it can make all the difference by making the dummy book look quite dark and poetic or a bit of a horror book parody. I am definitely aiming for the first, so I have some more work cut out for me. I found type in particular to be a powerful instrument for this.

These are a few of the options I explored. The type in the middle, for instance, is trying a bit too hard to be scary while the one the right might be too dated for a contemporary picture book. Needless to say, type is definitely something I wil do more research on for Midnight Monsters.