Penguin- Talking Turkey; initial ideas

 

The initial drawings I have done of turkeys was to understand their features and create an accurate representation so I can use this as a starting point for the cover. Although the title of the book is "Talking Turkeys" the poems inside the book are incredibly powerful and all explain hard hitting topics (such as; racism, war, environmental issues and many more) but targeting it to kids. So, for this reason I have decided that I won't be doing a realistic looking turkeys and I will make it more 'cartoony' so its appropriate for a child. 

Here are a couple of thumbnails I came up with. The definition of talking turkeys to discuss a topic frankly and directly, so I thought having a turkey staring directly at you (shown in 1.) and having illustrations surrounding it dissecting the the topics in the book could be a really effective way of not only matching the title but also explaining whats in the book. 

I also really like the perspective in 2. mainly because it is looking directly at you and also pays respect to the original cover of the book with Benjamin Zephaniah on the front doing the same pose. 

3. is not very effective and it looks too similar to the current cover of the book, although I did like the cover I don't want it be too similar.

 4. is quite a literal way of representing the turkey and showing that this book will be preaching an idealistic to younger people and teaching them what strains we have in society and environmentally. Although its very direct I don't think this could be very good for the book cover- however it might be an interesting effect for the the back cover if I made it smaller. 

I also have added a colour palette I would like to use in the future when coming up with different ideas. This is mainly because Zephaniah takes his heritage seriously and I think it could be respectful to use the colours of the Rastafarian and Jamaican culture. And these colours will be very eye catching for the audience who is looking for a new poetry book to read.