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BA Design undergraduate project, Glasgow School of Art. All characters, environments, props and typography designed and produced by Tumi Mokopane.
Final Images
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The process began with the story itself, developing the narrative and characters on paper through initial sketches. These sketches were then redrawn as clean vector artwork in Illustrator, establishing the shapes, proportions and expressions for every character, creature, prop and environment element in the book.
The Illustrator vectors were brought into Blender where each element was modelled in 3D. Clay and fingerprint textures were applied to the surfaces, giving the illustrations a handmade, tactile quality that feels like real sculpted objects. This technique gives the book its distinctive look, as if every character and scene was physically crafted from modelling clay.
Once rendered from Blender, each illustration was composited in Photoshop. Characters, environments and props were layered together to build the final page spreads, with adjustments to lighting, colour and depth creating cohesive scenes across all 34 pages of the book.
The book's display typeface was designed from scratch in Illustrator to match the sculptural, playful character of the 3D illustrations. Final page layout and typesetting was handled in InDesign, with careful attention to text placement, spread pacing and print-ready bleed margins across the complete 34-page book.
Reflection
This project taught me to think across an entire production pipeline — from narrative development and character design through to 3D modelling, compositing and print layout. Building every element in Blender forced me to problem-solve materiality in a digital space, finding ways to make clay textures and fingerprint details feel tactile on screen. Designing a custom typeface pushed me outside my comfort zone and gave me a deeper appreciation for how lettering shapes the personality of a book. The biggest lesson was learning to hold a consistent visual language across 32 pages while keeping each spread fresh. Exhibited at GSA Degree Show 2023.