Services Type 3

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters

Iowa state University

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters is an African children’s story originally written by author John Steptoe. I undertook illustrating his story for a class project and this is my final product. My design process included ethnographic research surrounding the original African tribes that the story was based on to be sure not to lose any of the rich culture and tradition that the story was filled with. This included everything from the dress of the people in the illustrations to the forms the characters themselves took. No stone was to be left unturned in my research for the fear of losing such a great story to laziness wasn’t an option.

Character design was left simple to accentuate the defining visual motifs of each scene and person. The point of this story illustration was to get the details right and pay attention to every little detail. Each piece of every spread means something, and if just one person is driven to research more about the culture from the story then I consider it a great success.