A Day in the Life of a Shoe - preperation

After getting inspiration from 'A Day in the Life of a Belisha Beacon' (I can't remember who it's by)  I decided I wanted to show a day in the life of a shoe. 


I also recently read 'The Red Shoes' by Hans Andersen, which came from 'Fairy tales and Legends'. (Illustrations by Rex Whistler)

This influenced 'A Day in the Life of a Shoe' in 2 separate ways. The first influenced me to just have it based on the shoe and in the book they controlled Karen and forced her to danced constantly, even against her will. "She was very much frightened, and tried to throw off her red shoes, but the shoes she could not get rid of - they had, it seemed, grown on to her feet. Dance she did, and dance she much, over field and medow, in rain and in sunshine, by night and by day."
The second was to influence me in keeping the majority of the image black and only have the shoes in red, reason being: "Everybody looked at her feet, and as she walked up the nave to the chancel, it seemed to her that even the antique sculptured figures on the monuments, with their stiff ruffs and long black robes, fixed their eyes on her red shoes," Also, "Next Sunday was the Communion-day; Karen looked first at the red shoes, then at the black ones, then at the red again, and put them on." This showed me that by keeping all of the image black could be quite bland and that choosing to have the shoes a bold red would draw more attention and show the beauty behind the shoes more.




My idea was to show it starting off on the shelf, then walking down the high street, shopping, meeting another shoe and eventually ending up back on the shelf.

Here are some sketches for the story board.

After these I went on to draw out the sketches in the style for my story board.

I'm in the process of turning this into a book called 'A Day in the Life of a Shoe' and then producing 5 to sell for the final of our 'Fanatic' project.