Tortilla Flat is about a group of drunks who steal but are generally good people. The story involves a lot of metaphors to do with money and the permanent presence of wine. I started looking at imagery that represents these themes. The first one is definitely naff, it sort of looks like a coctail glass and reflects a 1940's urban kind of feel, when this is very much a rootsy mexican tale. The next one, a wine bottle, mostly empty and uncorked is possibly worth exploring. It's definitely more reflective of the book content, but I don't know whether it's a bit too unimaginative. The following two are about the money aspect, the first being a bag of coins which is a symbol of the group's friendship in the book. The one after is simply awful, reflecting little. I don't think the former is very good either, it's a little too ambiguous. The final one (though rather sketchily drawn) is a smashed wine bottle, this is similar to the second one, however it's a bit more tension filled. I don't know how appropriate this is, it's a story more about companionship than angst and aggression, though it's intriguing none the less. My thoughts are that I need to thumbnail a lot more on this one to get an idea that seems worth actually creating, at the minute the wine bottle related ones seem a little underdeveloped as concepts.
East of Eden is almost a recreation of the story of Genesis right through to Cane and Abel. The first drawing is about the Cathy character, a wholly selfish and manipulative woman, though the women's eyes on a book cover thing has been done to death so I'm not likely to experiment with it. The focus is on the struggle between good and evil, the story of cane and abel and the duality between the two, so the following images are about that duality of good and evil, tear drops, a traditional road sign and finally silhouetted portraits. I think that exploring this idea of duality is very appropriate to the book, but perhaps their needs to be more reference to religious imagery, such as the Tree of Life and the snake, because man's original sin is referenced through metaphor in the early part of the book.
The Grapes of Wrath s about a family that migrate from Oklahoma to California to try and get work, it's a story of struggle for the working class. The thumbnails here are quite varied which is a good start. I first though of a literal translation of the title into an image of grapes, thinking this might make it easily identifiable to people purchasing, however it's not exactly subtle or clever is it? The next one is a turtle crossing the road, which is used as a lengthy metaphor in one chapter for the struggles of the working class. It's a nice metaphor for the entire plot. That thumbnail lead me onto the next thumbnail, the idea of using silhouettes of weary people walking. I quite like this and think it's worth exploring. more-so than the turtle, which might be a little confusing on a book called the Grapes of Wrath.
Of Mice and Men is easily one of my favourite books. I know it quite well. At first I was interested in showing the two characters through their obvious size difference, so the image of a big hand and a small hand and a similar situation with the men is about that kind of representation. It's not particularly clever, however it is a very strong image. I then looked at images of rabbits, they're a very strong image throughout the book in Lenny's dreams about their ideal future. So the presence of a rabbit on the cover kind of makes sense, even more so the idea of a rabbit in a hand, because he accidentally kills one by stroking it too hard, and this is mirrored later when he accidentally kills a woman who panics him.
These quick thumbnails have given me a lot of good ideas, I'm going to continue thumb-nailing for a brief period before looking at these images on a more polished level and working on their layout etc.
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