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ILLUS5050: The Lottery Research and Development

3/11/2021

I decided to go for The Lottery as part of the brief, one of the reasons was because the story intrigued me especially part way through when it's revealed the lottery is whether someone gets stoned to death or not, the twist was very appealing to me. The other reason why I decided to go for it is because I have a friend in America that lives in Ohio now but is originally from Kentucky, part of the south that's based off the location of The Lottery, so I could personally ask her for insight on what it's like in farmland America. She even used to go to her Uncle's dairy and tobacco farm to work with him as a child so it was interesting insight that I personally do not have.

I took one of the screenshots of our conversation as proof of her telling me about her experiences on the farm and with that I went ahead with my work. I started with drawing out thumbnails immediately, I wasn't trying to go for any specific one more like just coming up with concepts alone

For the research side of things I mostly took a look at American countryside landscapes, it was where I drove most of my inspiration for, I decided to change things up a bit and focus more on the landscape than the character although I struggled because the way I usually work I focus so much on character interactions and expressions.

From looking at my research I started to become more fascinated with the churches in America, the wooden planked buildings with the spires has an interesting look and rather iconic to American smalltowns. I also felt it was appropriate for my design because of the link towards ritualism and tradition, which is ingrained towards the churches in America as well.

I then took a look at images of the people found in rural America in the 1940s to further push my research and get an understanding of fashion and characteristics of America from the time.