Exercise - A Children's Book Cover

Animals from around the World
Browsing the web, there are plenty of examples of exotic animals placed 'around' images of the world in different styles.
It has to be said that it is difficult, on the face of it, not to be drawn to the words around and world.

I had an idea that a selection of animals with distinctive tails sitting around a globe might represent a twist to the standard form. kind of like ......

moving right along. I need something to grab the attention of children, fluffy, big eyes. One of my first advanced sketch ideas...sorry! animals around a circular shape.

I mistakenly thought that any way round would do. Perhaps i'm going round in circles. As luck would have it the sketch contained... a fluffy big eyed bird.
My second idea is a classic tall and thin to short and rotund group of animal silhouettes

More of my fluffy big eyed bird with buckets of attitude, what child could resist?

about this time I was toying with a new idea
When reconsidering what kind of design content might stimulate a child's interest

I thought about soft toys. There is a shop that I know that has range of exotic animal soft toys. a quick browse on the web and I found a similar shopping site... try out the bones of an idea..
A biro a scrap of paper and a few minutes later and I think that this idea really works the images chosen can also give me some key colour ideas.
I think I will include the world as a balloon either moving rapidly through the scene as it deflates or floating above on a piece of string.
I do believe I have my three designs to create the client visuals from.
however I have been looking at the emu in the circle; I thought that the circle could be a cut out of the world. I tried out the concept to see how much and what sort of pattern the remaining land mass would create.

In doing so my rough reminded me of the pattern of a snake, so my partly obscured globed morphed into a coiled snake.
My approach may seem scatter logical, but I like to walk away from projects at certain points and take a fresh look later, so in the case of this project I can kind of juggle back and forth between each design.


So, where am I now?
I have my three design ideas ready for the client visual treatment. The first two, emu and snake and animal silhouettes I am going to add colour as a layer in Procreate the iPad app and for my toy animal design, I am going to add colour with pencils. this not just to show colouration I am keen that the finished design has the coloured in look.

Book dimensions are to be 210W X 225T and hard back.

Title text in a font like 'papa- bear' see it here: http://www.fontspace.com/bythebutterfly/papa-bear , placed in an arc above the group. Gloss white background.

Text in a font like 'PlanetEarth' http://www.fontspace.com/khryskreations/kbplanetearth arcs beneath the snake ending at the snakes head.

Title text in a font called 'Wood Sticks' see here: http://www.fontspace.com/fontilizer/wood-sticks in an arc above the image.