This book was a reimagining of Joanna Cole's 1983 picture book, Bony Legs. Using her original writing, I created new illustrations that gave the book a bit more modern-day playfulness. 

I love cut-paper illustration, but doing everything by hand was going to take way too long and would limit my ability to easily make edits. In order to avoid that, I found a way to mimic natural layered cut paper digitally and add textures that looked natural, like colored pencil and charcoal. Everything still follows I used Illustrator and Photoshop in tandem to create these effects, then set all the type in InDesign. 

An important part of my process was getting the character design right. I tried out several looks for both the protagonist, Sasha, and the villain, Bony Legs (a Baba Yaga character). I ended up going with the versions of them that pitted them the most against each other-I wanted them to look like opposites. Sasha is all round and stout where Bony Legs is as pointy and skinny as possible.

Designing Bony Legs' house was almost like designing a third character. The house with the chicken feet is iconic, so I wanted to pay homage to a tradition of storytellers while still stylistically linking the house with Bony Legs. For this reason, the house is tall and full of wonky angles like her.