The Golden Goose

THE GOLDEN GOOSE 

Illustration Plates 

For the 200 year celebration of Brothers Grimm fairytales in 2011, I was commissioned to make several illustrations to depict the Golden Goose story. 

 

The brief was to illustrate particular points for a story teller (known as Red Phoenix) to refer to during a live performance, at the (now closed) Wordsouth Art Gallery in Havant. 

With only two weeks to get the images ready,  I had to scramble various montages together using photoshop. This was a case of combining various online backdrops, (houses, streets, trees etc) that could be adapted for the stories purposes. 

All the characters were made in the same way, using montages of arms, legs and faces, grabbed online. 

I then added the comic book effects after, to give it a more illustrative feel and blend things together better. 

For the more challenging roles, I had to fill in myself,  such as the main characters of Simpleton 

and The Hermit.

SIMPLETON 

Simpleton is one of three brothers who are total twats but seem to be popular with the villagers because they can blag and charm a good con. 

However, nobody in the village likes Simpleton. Because well, he is honest as the day is long and thus has no money. But he has a heart of gold...

So thats me as Simpleton. With clothing from a fancy dress image, composited on top. 

The other characters were stitched together from several online composites. For example,  I googled "man throwing stones" and composited various postures to get the desired effect. 

HERMIT 

In the forest, he stumbles upon a (magical) Hermit, who rewards the hapless Simpleton for giving him food. He tells him to go cut down a specific tree and there he will find his reward...

So I had to play a hermit, by sitting on the floor and putting a camera on a tri-pod on a thirty second time-delay. Then I composited myself into a forest and added the grey hair and beard. 

GOLDEN GOOSE 

So Simpleton chops down said tree and to his surprise, it has a Golden Goose inside.

To make the image,  I posed as Simpleton, with a fancy dress costume screen grab, composited over the top. 

The Golden Goose itself was put together in Microsoft's paint package. So that was more of a digital drawing than a composite. 

Lens flare FX was quite popular in those days. So everything had to have lens flare 😅

THREE LADIES 

In this scene, Simpleton takes the Golden Goose back to the village tavern for all to see. But when his back is turned, unscrupulous lasses try to pluck golden feathers from the Goose and are 'magnetised' to each other. 

Some illustrations worked better than others. Using the montage method can only do so much. 

I didn't have time to rally real life models and had to rely on using images off the internet. The women's heads are screen grabs and their bodies, arms and skirts were composited together from other online sources. 

As a result, the three woman looked a bit "clunky".  But oh well. 😜

PROCESSION

Pretty soon, anyone who try's to steal the Golden Goose becomes stuck to the others. Simpleton has no choice but to lead them around, in a long procession. 

For this image, I re-used the three ladies from the previous plate and adjusted their postures accordingly. The back three characters are just screen-grabs from fancy dress costume images, with slight modifications. 

The vicar in the middle, is actually a photo-grab of "The Prosecutor" from Star Treks 'All Our Yesterdays'. 😅

Star Treks: "The Prosecutor" played by Kermit Murdock

MOUNTAIN OF BREAD 

In the story: the Kings daughter, is a princess who has never smiled. 

So he declares to the Kingdom that anyone who can make her smile, will have her hand in marriage. 

The princess however, (after seeing Simpleton and his ridiculous procession), not only smiles but laughs her ass off.   

Annoyed by the halfwit, the King gives Simpleton three impossible tasks to win his daughter. 

One of these impossible tasks, is to find someone who can eat a Mountain of Bread. 

But with the help of the magical hermit, Simpleton succeeds. And thus marries the princess. 

Perhaps one of the better composites. This was a montage of a generic french courtyard with a checkered floor added and arches put in the foreground. 

The actual mountain of bread, is composited from over twenty odd images, consisting of: loaves, buns, baguettes, croissants, pita bread and various rolls. 

Perhaps the hardest bit was making the composite of the King, who is supposed to look annoyed. Again this was taken from images of kings, fancy dress and a pair of folded arms.  

The same process was done for the Queen and Princess. 

If you look closer, they have their fingers crossed, rooting for Simpletons success.