Art student needs help :D

[Emilia Varga]

Hello everyone! I need a little help. I am a student at the Academy of Arts and study Illustration. This is my fourth year and I am getting ready for the year end exhibition. This work should represent us and everything we have learned in 4 years.
My idea would be a series of illustrations. Story telling has never been my strength and I still suffer with it. I love to illustrate but prefer someone’s text rather than my own. I think it's a separate art.
So when the pandemic started, we only had online classes. And it's not the same feeling to create.. when we barely get feedback. So I have a very hard time with the work.

I will briefly describe in which picture what is happening, hoping that someone can help, move my work forward. Feel free to tell me your suggestions.

Picture 1. - A group of kids are lost in the jungle and can't find their way out.
2. -They are discussing what to do
3.-They found a big tree, with fruit on it that will help them survive the days ahead.
4. -Next to the trunk, a large hole was found that they don’t where it leads
5.- They climbed in and there was a huge cave in front of their eyes. The walls were full of ancient writing and drawings. In the foreground we see the back of some creature.
6. -It turns out that the cave is guarded by that creature and attacks them. It drives them out of the picture.
7. -Then we realize that the whole story is experienced through the book.
Or not? In the darkness emerges the dragon that has actually escaped from the book.

That's all I got ... I also thought about hiding some objects on the trees from the room where they're reading. It's like a glitch. They look aside and look at the clock or something. And that clock appears in the story somewhere in the background.
The illustrations are still in progress, image 4 and 5 are not developed yet

Sorry for the long texts. But I felt I could find some help here.

[Heather Boyd]

@Emilia-Varga First impression was wow! Your work is very rich in setting, I feel like I am in it with them and I love it. I also like how you've set up your board; the pages of the book mixing in with reality -we are sort of experiencing reality with fiction (you could add that element to the finish work-the boarder in number 1 and even in number 2 (the bottom 'draw throughs'). I really like the unfinished number 5 design with the creature in the back (but in the forward ground for us). Number 3 has a good perspective. Number 6 makes me laugh, number 5 is a bit of awe.

What final product are you interested in? Comic/graphic novel? If you kept the line work possibly. It reads like "the art of...." books. Reminds me of "the art of up".

Your story telling isn't bad at all lols. You have a really rich story and you've started out real well. I just need help with what you want to make this into? And then I can go from there. I hope you are not too disappointed with my answer, I think you have a lot going for you.

[Emilia Varga]

@Heather-Boyd First of all, thank you for your reply. A digital printing will be the final form, about 50x45 inches. The genre is not defined ... something between illustration and comic. Comic, but without words, presented in a way like fine art.
My goal was to combine these two worlds.

[Judy Elizabeth Wilson]

@Emilia-Varga In the last picture where the dragon has left the book one of your characters can have just discovered it is in the same room as them! I like the idea that leading up to discovering the cave, you can leave little symbols scattered in the jungle, hidden from the characters but in plain sight.

[Heather Boyd]

@Emilia-Varga I have seen comic designs without words. There are even some wordless picture books.