Alice
Category
Illustration & Print
Mentor
Naama Benziman
Year
2025
An illustrated book adaptation of Alice, a stage play by Roy Chen. This story explores the complex relationship between Alice Liddell, the real girl behind Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll. It is the slow disappearance of childhood, told through Alice’s fragmented memories and inner world.
The Brief
In this project, we created and illustrated a book from scratch, starting with the selection of a text and translating it into a complete reading experience. I chose to adapt Alice, a stage play by Roy Chen, instead of a traditional children’s story. The play explores the complex and emotionally charged relationship between Alice Liddell, the real girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll.
The visual direction was shaped by the story’s delicate tension between childhood, memory, and loss of innocence. Through illustration, pacing, composition, and typography, I aimed to create a reading experience that feels intimate, unstable, and slightly unsettling, reflecting Alice’s shifting perception of the world around her.
The Challenges
The main challenge was adapting a full-length, dialogue-heavy stage play into a short illustrated book. The original text had to be reduced significantly without losing its emotional arc or the relationship at the center of the story.
Another challenge was translating theatrical dialogue into a readable book format. Since most of the text is built from conversations and monologues, I needed to create a clear visual system that would help the reader follow each voice while preserving the feel of the original play.
The Process & Solution
I began by trimming the text down to its emotional core, keeping only the scenes and lines that were essential to understanding Alice’s journey. To reflect the importance of the White Knight’s letters in the play, I incorporated them as physical inserts inside the book. The letters were typed on a typewriter using purple ink, echoing the way they appear in the original text.
To make the dialogue easier to follow, each of the three remaining characters was given a distinct text color. Alice speaks in black, grounding the story in her point of view. The White Knight speaks in purple, referencing the ink of his letters, while Humpty Dumpty speaks in deep red, connecting his voice to his visual appearance in the illustrations.
The Final Product
The final result is a 24-page hardcover book, sized 20 × 20 cm. All pages were illustrated digitally using a Wacom tablet. The character design was influenced by existing interpretations of Alice in Wonderland, the real figures behind the story,
and their portrayal in Roy Chen’s play.
The book begins with Alice as a child and follows her emotional journey into adulthood, tracing the gradual loss of innocence through image, pacing, typography, and material details.
