Critique: Feature

I'm a nature nerd at heart and was excited when I saw that I was designing the "Invasive Species" feature for the 4/5 issue.  Because there weren't many photos to choose from, I started thinking about illustrations.  After brainstorming with a friend, this concept of a "godzilla-carp" came up.   I looked up some old movie posters and knew I had to go for it.

This was what I came up with:

I treated the fish in Photoshop using a comic-style tutorial I found.  I really like the way it came out.  The carp was the only thing I kept from the original photos from the server.   The background was a pattern I imported from photoshop, and the fish are cutout silhouettes I made from photos on stock xchnge.

It got really good feedback and I'm excited to do the rest of the feature in a similar style.

I'm thinking I'll do another page like this for the FERAL HOG. Dun dun dun.

I didn't notice it looked so similar to the True/False cover until I printed it out at the library.  The treatment of the fish is totally different, as well as the way the words are incorporated.  I don't want it to in any way relatable to the genius of True/False, so I'm going to take out the starburst background and play with solid colors or continue with the comic-style.

Here's the more serious design for the feature:

If you click on them to make them larger you can see the detailing of the jumping fish, hog's head and plant silhouettes.  The black boxes are where I envisioned the photos going once I received them.

However, the photos aren't looking too good, so I think I'll end up doing more with illustrations.  I really like the fishing pole in place of the "I" in invasive species, but don't think it will translate well with the first design.   The small pullout silhouettes I'll probably keep, but may alter them to look more like the godzilla fish.   I'm still playing around with that idea.