Choice of Medium

In keeping with the rather dark and weighty nature of the story, I decided that moody, black & white drawings would be best. I made this back in Spring of 2012, before ever trying to draw in pen & ink, so pencil was my weapon of choice. While not always appropriate, I feel like it's emotive, traditional look was ideal for Kafka. I used mostly a mechanical pencil and a black colored pencil for the finished illustrations. I later took Kristi Hargrove's Drawing II class and she suggested I use proper pencils. Needless to say, my drawings are much better now.

Character Design

I did a lot of research in preparation for this project. Most of the illustrations feature the story's protagonist, Red, so a lot of this research revolved around him. My first step was to teach myself how to draw apes, which pretty much involves Googling "ape" and drawing a bunch of apes. Once I had the basics of ape-yness down, I designed Red. I studied ways to give him as much emotion, character, and humanity as possible while keeping his look consistent.