I had to create a concept book for a chosen published story for one of my projects during school. This allowed me to explore designing characters from popular stories and i had decided to go with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The story of Dracula consists of being told to the reader through journal entries and I wanted my concept book to follow the overall theme of that by designing it as an old journal that had been found. Through creating stained pages and using ink brushes on the platform procreate for character outlines, I wanted the overall aesthetic of my book to demonstrate the age of the book itself and the era it takes place in.

I had a lot of fun exploring with everything and going out of my comfort zone to create my designs digitally in a way that took on a more traditional approach, using watercolour brushes and ink based brushes to create everything. I also enjoyed exploring with font for this project, where I had hand drawn the headings used throughout the concept book to create a gothic, old-english, type of font that matched up with everything perfectly.

I have included my character designs and explorations as well as the cover of my concept book bellow.

Dracula Graphic Novel

As an extension of the previous concept book project, I had to create a couple pages of how these characters would appear if the story was told through a graphic novel. For this project, I wanted to convey the overall eerie tone of Bram Stoker’s Dracula through using a combination of different shades of blue for colouring as well as to signify the time of day being night. I had a lot of fun trying to take an older story that takes place during the Victorian era and create is as a more modern form of media.

I have included a few pages from my graphic novel below.