This image represents one of the darkest few pages of the book. It is the part where numerous animals are slaughtered by the nine dogs at Napoleon's bidding, sentenced to death for collaborating with the exiled Snowball or conspiring against the Berkshire Boar himself.
For this scene I wanted to create both a harrowing and chaotic image. I chose to illustrate the torn and mangled bodies of the animals who were killed, pilled up and discarded, while in the foreground, a sheep stands bleating its last as its life blood pours from a fatal wound to the neck. This will be a full two page spread with no text at all. The reader will be met with nothing but this scene. I have kept the line quality fairly broad and jagged in places, to emphasise the shabbiness of the creatures fur and feathers.
With the colour added, I have kept it restricted to the areas where blood had either pooled under the dead bodies, or is draining from them. I have also added shading and a pale red to the animals who are either pink or red in colour.
Out of all the images I have created so far, this is the one I am most disappointed with. I don't feel it has the impact I was hoping for and certainly needs something else to communicate the harrowing nature of the scene. I may return to this image with fresh eyes and make some adjustments.
This scene is meant as a companion piece to the Massacre scene above. When the reader turns the page on the Massacre, they are then met with a two page vignette of one of the dogs, having killed a chicken and appears to drag it across the pages. A number of feathers float still on the air, suggesting that the bird has been killed in that moment.
The line work is more fluid when compared to the previous page, and a central bold line joins both the chicken carcass and the delinquent dog. This helps to link the two together (despite being positioned on opposing pages) and helps the reader to determine what has happened in the moment before the page was turned. This is meant to shock the reader slightly, but also alleviate some of the previous tension. While the scene is macabre, it is delivered in a more humorous way. The position of the dead chicken is quite amusing and the dogs body language is almost friendly, as it looks off page to its mater for approval of a job well done.
The addition of the colour helps to tie in the events of the previous page to this one. The blood coming from the chicken's body flows to the left, back towards the previous scene leaving the reader wondering if this is all the chicken's blood, or whether the violence from the image before is actually bleeding into this one. Bloody paw prints lead the way across the page to one of the perpetrators of the violence and fading red elliptic shape, symbolises a setting sun and an end to a horrific day for the animals.
This is one of my favourite illustrations from this module. Out of them all, I am the most happy with this one, it symbolises everything I am trying to communicate here. If I was to change anything, it would be the addition of the blood around the dogs mouth, I feel that this was not needed. The reader has enough visual prompts to know who is responsible for the animal's deaths and this one is surplus to requirement.
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