I liked the idea of the image hanging right off the edge of the page, so I went with that for the finished illustration as shown below.
After producing the last two images I started to feel more confident working in this style, and the work began to flow. Here's one that I was happy with first go - 'The Microscopic'. It's all about how the bacteria that live in our oceans consume much of the Carbon Dioxide that humanity produces, and produce much of the oxygen that we breathe through photosynthesis. As these bacteria need certain minerals to live, scientists have been experimenting enriching the water by adding minerals such as iron in order to provide ideal conditions for the bacteria to thrive and consume more Carbon Dioxide. The brown circles in the image are scap iron, and I made the area of 'microbes' blue to represent the oxygen that they are producing. It's simple but I think it works. The words represent what is stated in the Baseline Report as being the major unknowns for each realm - so for The Human Edges the two major unknowns are distribution and abundance of species, for the Microscopic it's knowing what species of microbes there are. I like having the words in the images as they give them a graphic feel, and the typewriter font makes them look like they were written in a lab by a researcher - I have to be careful to not overdo it with the typewriter though, as if there is too much of it in there it will just look cliche.
As I was happy with this version I didn't want to risk over-complicating it, so I've left it for now and moved on - below is a first version of 'The Ice Oceans'.
This is based on the idea of the ice oceans being un-explored, upside down worlds full of strange sights. There is a huge mountain range under the sea and ice of the Arctic, and a recent expedition found schools of cod grazing upside down on algae growing on the bottom of ice floes. This upside down reference really inspired this image, and like the last one I'm pretty happy with this first version. The map is a chart of Iceberg 'migration' routes, and it gives the image an informative feel.
I feel that the images I've managed to produce over these last couple of days have worked really well, and this style is something I would definitely like to work and improve on. Finally I feel like I've reached a good point in the project, and the work is beginning to come of it's own rather than being forced and I think this is reflected in the images. They work well on their own, but more importantly they work well as a set, and I can see them working well in a booklet or something similar. As it's quite late in the day I think I'm just going to follow my gut instincts on this one, I would like more time to explore other ways of presenting the images but I like making books and I'm confident that I will be able to produce something of a high standard with the time I have left. Hopefully, this will prove to be the case!
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