Inspiration for this design came from a visit to a local farm for research on this project. 

I sat and watched a large pig asleep for half an hour waiting for it to wake and give me a chance to capture some photographs.

The very large pig then proceeded wake from its sleep, stand up and make direct eye contact with me and vomit (I just have that effect apparently).

 

The photographs I captured became the main focal point for my illustration. 

 

I hadn't seen many traditional styled illustrations make it onto the covers of the fictional story, so I saw this as my opportunity to take a risk. Instead of a digital approach, I began to sketch out that moment a pig stared at me and vomited. 

I aimed to capture the pig's intimidating stare which reflected that of the intimidating pig characters in 'Animal Farm', yet make it look as gross as possible. 

 

The process involved drawing, painting, scanning and printing. I would scan my original illustration into Photoshop, print it out, add details such as the facial hairs little by little with a pen, then scan it back into photoshop again. Although this was a lengthy process, I'm happy with the result.

 

The title used on the cover was hand written in red ink and scanned into photoshop and used the 'multiply' layer effect. This made the text slightly transparent and darkened the colour.

 

This gave the effect that the pig was 'branded' as many farm animals are.