Daydreams & Nightdreams is a self-published and award-winning children’s book written by Cory Doyle and illustrated by Jeff Karl. Written in lyrical verse, Daydreams & Nightdreams is set in a dreamland and tells the parallel stories of two children, Adam and Evelyn. Their journeys intertwine, meet and, in the end, become one and the same. First, the reader chooses which story to start with: Adam’s story or Evelyn’s story. Adam is having a daydream, so in that tale the reader follows Adam’s adventure through the Land of Daydreams. Evelyn is having a night dream. In that story the reader follows her on a journey through the Land of Nightdreams. On their travels, Adam and Evelyn both encounter four guardians. These guardians help Adam and Evelyn each find the end of their dream: the Great Dream Tree, where Adam and Evelyn meet for the very first time.
The initial approach was to create a bright and colorful book. However, it was ultimately decided this approach didn't match the tone of the manuscript. Moreover, it was a long while before a happy medium was reached between a "cartoonish" style and a gritty surreality.
Below are two slideshows detailing the progress of a single illustration. Each of these helped define the overall style of the book.
After settling on a sepia tone art style, it became clear I'd have to create all illustrations using equal parts traditional and digital media. In nearly every case, a finished illustration was drawn not as a single image, but instead drawn in seperate pieces to be later composited digitally.
The goal of the 'Dream Tree of Night' illustration (below) was to create a compositional mirror image of the 'Dream Tree of Day' (above), editing only a few details of the illustration. To achieve this, I stripped out the defining features of the 'Dream Tree of Day', flipped the composition horizontally, and drew directly on top of a print out of that "gutted" image.
There were other times I combined traditional and digital media to create effects that would otherwise be difficult to create entirely on their own. For example, there were a few cases when I had to draw glowing white objects. To keep the texture of the image consistent, I would draw the "negative" of the image in black pencil and then invert the colors digitally. See the wings of the angel in the two slideshows below.
A few more slideshows of composited images below:
To learn more about "Daydreams & Nightdreams," head over to our original Kickstarter page or have a look at our Kickstarter promo video below.
If you'd like to purchase a copy of "Daydreams & Nightdreams," navigate to the appropriate online store via the following links:
