"Open Letter to the Leaders of the World"
is a book written by Maria Inês Almeida and Flávia Lins.
I was invited by Telos Editora to illustrate their beautiful story.
Sofia, a 12-year-old girl who is worried about the challenges faced
by our planet decides to write a letter to the leaders of the world.
In a good-natured and poetic style, Sofia writes about a variety of questions,
attempting to diagnose what is wrong with the planet. She knows that there
are many problems that could have sent the world to the ICU.
But she is a dreamer, and she offers solutions.
Open Letter to the Leaders of the World seeks to give a voice to the children
who knows the Earth is screaming out for help.
I chose to represent the leaders in a generic way, so they could not be associated with a specific one, and also to remain timeless. They are dark shadows and they move as if they were one. The colors of the book are mainly from the children and nature.
Sofia's youth and strength are represented by her beautiful colors,
particularly her red hair.
The illustrations start out gloomy and, as the leaders get influenced by Sofia, there is an increase in visual information that can be noticed both in the environment and colors.
On the endpapers, I drew leaders from all kinds of backgrounds,
precisely to show that this is not only about political leaders, for example.
Everyone, everywhere, has the power to act and make changes.
The first ones were in black and white, and some of them, on the back endpapers,
were colored, as if they had changed their thoughts and behavior.
Here are some of the book's pages.
We also produced a book trailer to launch the book. You can watch the book trailer here: https://youtu.be/IuDTpW7CR8w
To know more about the book trailer project, check out here: https://studiosniffer.com/book-trailer
These were some of the first sketches created for this project.
