Making the illustrations

I started off by creating the characters, using the pen tool i constructed the outlines of Ratty and Mole.

I made an art stroke, to give the lines a pointy effect then applied these to the paths I drew up with the pen tool.

After drawing them I filled the paths with colour gradients, and added patterned textures from the swatch menu.

After finalising the characters I imported them into the template file for the book cover.

I drew up the front cover first, then spine, then back cover.

I used the pen tool throughout, constructing the trees and backgrounds.

After I done the trees, I done the snow on the ground by creating a gradient and adding importing a photoshop effect by creating a 'grain' effect to make it look more detailed and look like snow.

Then I simply added the other details such as holes in the tree which are blured into the tree, the evil yellow eyes which I copied and resized and re position them arouned the trees.

I added snow onto the branches and created falling snow by making a white circle and copying and re positioning it around the top, I created the snow flake by using the pen tool and copying and re positioning.

I done the footsteps using the pen tool again and decreasing the opacity on the ones closer to the back of the book by 4% each footprint.

Poster

I first of all drew up the trees, and all other illustrations in illustrator to use as template which I then imported into photoshop for further editing.

I drew it up using the pen tool, using the same techniques as for the book cover filling it with brown/black gradients. I used the same characters from the book cover onto here. I done the text in illustrator because it comes out better than text in photoshop. After I finished this in illustrator I then opened it up in photoshop...

I made the snow grained using one of the filters. I then downloaded a snow plug in, which creates a falling snow effect, I made one for the whole size of the page. I then made a another layer of snow for just the top half to make it look more realistic as more snow will be higher up. The snow flakes were a brush I downloaded which i simply applied using different shapes and sizes.