Hamlet: The Dream

Hello there, there's no doubt that Hamlet is one of the best plays Shakespeare ever wrote. The story of a young prince in vengeance for his dead father, so he goes into temporary madness, which results in killing off the main characters. Just another dark tale of treachery and moral corruption that has been incarnated into books, film and tv; many who has brought the prince of darkness back to life have either become well known in their time and I hope to be one of those people.

If you don't know what I mean by that last remark I'll tell you more. For years it has been my ambition to become an illustator with my first book to be Shakespeare related; so when I was younger I wanted my first book to be an illustrated version of "Hamlet". I'm not joking when I say that I have been working on this product since Year 7, which is how much this product means  to me.

The idea for this goes back to 2004, when I decided that I wanted to become an illustrator so I made this cover design (left) in MS Paint. I wanted the design to look nice so from the top of my nogon I just did the characters without drawing them on paper first and thus I created my own version of "Hamlet" as he was and how he shall always be.
I loved how it turned out as it felt like the perfect first step into this agenda.

Hamlet (First MS Paint Cover Design)-2004

A year later I went on to do more Hamlet related drawings using different materials, because I still drew in stick figure form I would practice and pratice drawing till I got better. Though I love my old drawing I didn't feel it would have worked in illustrated books, if my drawing style would stayed in that way from now on it would look cute but not that I've hoped for. Anyway I made many studies involving Hamlet whether it was at home or school and I felt each drawing would get more and more detailed as they went along.

In my book these drawings looked very clever and show how the whole design range started off. In that same year I even wrote the manual script for a year, though now it looks tamed but now I'm thinking of taking some elements from the original manual script and improving them.

Hamlet (Pastel and Drawing)-2005

                                                  Original Hamlet Pen Drawings-2005

When I got my first watercolour palette for my birthday I could finally use it to decide what style I wanted the illustrations to be. I used the water-colours in any which way till I found which style I liked.

                                                       Hamlet-Character Designs-2006
When I finally discovered my drawing style and improved on character designs I went to work on it in 2007. When I started working on the concept I took inspiration from the original pen studies I did 2 years earlier, because of school work I was off and on again while making the illustrations; also my tutors wanted to use the illustration I did so far for a school product and I didn't get them back till a year later. So like 7 illustrations were done in like 3 years. To be truthful I'm glad it took me this long to do them because my illustative style was improving and I wasn't that good at writing so if I finished it as a young child it would'nt be as good.

Nowadays I've stopped working on the illustrations just to focuss on college work; I'll start to work more on it on shorter notice. Which is why I want you guys to support this agenda of mine; I really want to get this product off the ground so please make sure Hamlet is to be, or not to be? I'll keep you updated on this product but for now I'll see you later.