Macy's Vector Project

 

Original Book Cover

My Book Cover

For my vector project I decided to redesign the cover art for "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. I chose this because I was my favorite book when I was growing up and a few years back when the movie came out it was just as awesome. Of course when I was young I thought nothing of the theme of the book and just read it for fun, but now that I'm older I understand the actual meaning of the story. This book is about a young boy who is aggravated with his home life so he runs away to an imaginary island full of wild beasts that crown him their king. Although the moral of the story is to remember that the "home is where the heart is", because the protagonist ends up returning to his home, I better like the idea of escaping from somewhere you don't want to be and finding happiness elsewhere, for personal reasons. So I chose to remodel this book cover to reflect my opinion of the moral. I presented the main character, Max, being held in the arms of one the "wild things", Carol, with a large heart behind them. I added the quote from the book to better reflect the message I wanted to portray. I then decorated the cover with different natural aspects to tie in the feeling of being in a forest, or a place that isn't your home, and the "wild things" in the book.

The technical aspects of my book cover were very time consuming, but I feel the result was worth it. First I started with a photo of a forest that I took from the interweb and vectorized it and changing the opacity so it wouldn't take away from the main subjects. Then I found an image of Carol, one of the wild things, and created a silhouette from it. I used the wrinkle tool to make him furrier looking, adding my own touch. Then I found an image of Max, the protagonist, and created his silhouette. I then placed Max on top of Carol's object and used the brush tool to draw Carol to be hold Max in his arms. Then using the brush tool I drew a large heart to go behind them and used the "overlay" blending tool to make it transparent and saturated in comparison to the backdrop. Using the symbol sprayer tool, I added a border of autumn leaves and overlayed them over the backdrop as well. Then I added all of the text on the cover. I drew out the anchors in the word "wild" to make it look like it was growing up like a tree with its roots growing down. I added a subtle glow to the title and the quote to pull them forward and make them stand out a little. I made the author's name slightly opaque as to not draw attention to it.