Summative Evaluation

My practice, and the way I think about my work, has changed a lot over the course of this module. Working on competition briefs based around children’s publishing and talking to publishers and illustrators working in the industry have given me a much deeper understanding of my practice and the direction I am taking. However, I feel like I have taken on too many briefs in this module and have not had the time to fully explore ideas and experiment with processes as much as I would have liked. 

I have felt this way towards the end of each year of the course and have found that steps forward in my practice tend to happen in summer when I have more freedom to apply the knowledge and experience gained throughout the winter. I very much feel that the hand-in for this module is the start of something rather than the end. Through feedback on the competition briefs I have completed and through talking to professional illustrators I have been able to identify the goals I feel I need to achieve to improve my work. I have been told my animal characters are strong and that I need to work more on human characters. In particular, I want to get rid of the static feel in some of my compositions through working on characters’ posture, expressions and actions. This will also help me to communicate emotions and interactions within my work. The publishers I have spoken to said that character studies are something they look for in a portfolio because they demonstrate an illustrator’s ability to maintain a character throughout an entire book. 

During the talk we had from Scott Bakal recently he emphasised the importance of creating work that is true to yourself: being an artist first, then putting your work in a position to be seen and finding out where it fits in the industry. This really struck a chord with me as someone who has been struggling with confidence. If you are constantly creating work based on what you think people will like, how can you truly have confidence in it without getting approval from someone else? I think I may have fallen into that trap with a couple of the briefs I worked on in this module.  This applies also to the importance of not pigeon-holing yourself within the industry. For instance, although my work is tailored towards children’s publishing, it could also be used in advertising, stationary/gift cards and editorial.

Working on children’s book competition briefs has helped me develop a better understanding of page layout and composition.  I have learned how to rough out compositions incorporating text and avoiding the gutter and outer edge of the page, and how to organise both the illustrations and text across the pages of the book to maintain the pace of the narrative. I have developed a better understanding of composition, learning how to create focal points that draw attention towards key elements on the page, pacing the text to create suspense and using the direction of movement of the page to increase the impact of moving to the next page. I have also been researching lettering, looking at the best colours and fonts to help children to identify letter forms while they are learning to read, as well as the best use of language to aid the audience’s understanding of the narrative. I feel much more comfortable now working in these formats and feel my process has improved throughout the module.  

However, I feel I have not spent as much time as I could have working on the ideas behind my illustrations. The talk we had from Laura Carlin really brought this home to me and changed the way I think about my work. Rather than placing too much reliance on images of the characters, she showed how engaging and effective communication can be achieved through narrative and illustrative strategies such as creating backstories for the characters, depicting the consequences of a character’s actions, using posture to communicate a character’s emotions, and giving the reader opportunities to complete explanations which are only partially made explicit in the text.

I feel that the work I have done in this module has set me up well for the next stage in my development, and the ideas presented by the tutors and other practitioners have given me direction and inspiration to develop my practice further. At the beginning of the module I was looking at the hand-in as an end point where the development of my practice would be finished and ready to present to the industry, when there would have been more benefit in looking at it as a point at which to evaluate my progress so far and as a basis for moving forward. It was good to hear Scott Bakal talk about the stage his work was at when he left education and how far away it was from his current practice.

Presentation Boards

Statement if Intent

Portraits

Character GIFs

More characters

I would like to make a sticker book matching the sounds to the illustrations but where there are multiple answers for each. Even where wrong sound combinations work by allowing the reader to also use stickers to change the characters facial expression/reaction to the noise.

Character changes

After talking to Michael Driver on Tuesday and looking through my portfolio illustrations I decided to go back to my character design as I felt my animal characters were stronger and my human characters had not developed over the course of this year. Making changes at this time has been tough, I have a print slot booked for Tuesday to get the first round of prints for my portfolio. I keep feeling like the module deadline is a finishing point when it’s not really. I am going to spend the rest of the week continuing to develop and experiment with human characters and some full scenes. On Monday I will select which illustrations I want to get printed. This is only a starting point and I will continue to work on new illustrations and will evaluate his well my portfolio caters to my target audience. I have been stressed out this week wanting everything to be perfect for the portfolio and thinking about approaching hand ins. I need to keep reminding myself that the portfolio will constantly change and develop with my practice, it’s not set in stone. As for the hand ins I am going to continue working on what I think will benefit my practice and move it forward and the hand in should take care of itself.

Cat characters

Plan

between now and the hand in I plan to:

- create presentation boards to evaluate and showcase the projects I have completed. The boards will summarise what I have learned in the process.

- continue to create character sheets to populate my portfolio, demonstrating a range of skills.

- start printing straight away, think about how best to frame and organise work. How will portrait and landscape illustrations work together? One illustration per page? Separate into projects or character and full scenes.

- plan exhibition. Will I have a book finished in time? Prints from selected pages? What space will I need.

Characters and scenes

Flower development

Tutorial (2000 word blog 4 of 4)

I had a one-to-one tutorial on Wednesday to talk about how the module is going and what I should do with my time left. This really helped to clarify my aims for both this module and PP.  All my competition briefs are now finished and have been submitted, so now my concentration is on building my portfolio and contacting publishers. We talked at the last tutorial about creating character sheets to show a range of skills and ideas that could be adapted into books. I have been struggling with this as there is no clear brief. In the tutorial we discussed ways to make this process easier and what publishers would want to see from it. It was suggested to me that I should look for ideas for characters from existing stories like Aesop's fables, and to think of common scenarios from children's books that publishers would want to see. I plan to explore greater use of the following:

 - children characters

- urban scenes
- interior scenes
- diversity in character design
- different body types
- intergenerational characters
- family scenes
- cosy scenes
- movement

This was a good opportunity to take a step back and critically evaluate my current portfolio and what’s missing, eg the types of scene I avoid or struggle with. Publishers will want to see that I am capable of producing the necessary scenes for any children’s book so having a portfolio of very similar illustrations is no good. The speaker from the publisher Plum Pudding talked about wanting to see character studies which showed characters in a range of situations, demonstrating different emotions, postures and actions. They also mentioned including various stages of development, including roughs. Publishers seeing your process will give them more confidence in your ability to test out ideas and compositions to reach your final outcomes.

 My aim from now is to apply these ideas to my work while continuing to push process and media. I am at a point where a feel I should be making finished products to display but also want to continue to experiment so I need to find a way to balance that. These characters can be a way to achieve both, as they work individually and don’t need to be part of a sustained aesthetic for a book. I also plan to contact Bright Agency as they accept portfolios from illustrators and I think my work would fit within their current catalogue of books.

Rock

rock from Joe Boon on Vimeo.

Rock character development/narrative

Book final with synopsis and cover

Book with text round 2

I re-read the text for the book last night and straight away noticed a number of things i didn't like. I have spent today rewriting and also reordering the pages. These are the issues I have aimed to fix:

- There was too much repetition of certain terms within the book, specifically the dogs name, polar bears and the word thought. This was made worse by the repetitive text on each page. Each page was constructed in a very similar way making the narrative feel broken up. I think this is because I have a good idea of the narrative and tried to write the text with each individual page in mind. The text would not work if taken off the pages and made into a continuous piece of writing.
- I have spent time today making connections between pages, the transitions between them seemed clunky if the first draft, especially as they often started with the dogs name. It was almost like a reset at the beginning of each page making it difficult to create any feeling of a flow to the story. I tried to work out some ways to connect the pages then went back through again to make sure they weren't obviously added on to the original text, I have reshaped each page to suite to pacing of the narrative.
- As I went back through the story it occurred to me that some of the pages could be reordered. There were some unnecessary changes of location within the book where the characters went back and forth between locations. I was having trouble with one of the pages and realised that switching the order not only made the story easy to follow it allowed me to make the point of the story clearer.
- The end of the book seemed to lack any impact in the first draft, the beginning of the book builds up to the dog characters going on his adventure to discover who he is but then the ending didn't really say anything. it was not particularly happy or sad and didn't really address the main character questioning his identity or what has changed.
- I am going to get more feedback on this draft and see if I need another round of changes.

Polar book with text

This is the most recent and possibly final version of the book with text included. At this stage I have amended the text twice based on feedback but will aim to get more before the deadline. in the previous books I have written I tried to keep the text very simple to allow the illustrations to tell the story as much as possible but I felt that this book would benefit from a more detailed guide to make sure there's no confusion about the narrative.

I wanted the text to demonstrate the emotion and intentions of the dog and to clarify his thoughts throughout. Another important role of the text and something I needed to get right was to match and maintain the pace of the narrative alongside the illustrations.

I encountered a few problems writing the text for this book.
- Making sure the language used is suitable for children effectively limits the vocabulary of the book.
- I kept falling into the habit of over explaining or writing too specifically the details in the illustration. For example "the little girl says "look at the polar bear" pointing at the dog". The text and illustrations need to work together to tell the story, not to echo each other. The story will be more immersive if the reader needs to use both the text and illustration to understand the story.
- Making sure the text worked smoothly from page to page was challenging, creating a rhythm and making sure4 the scenes in the story didn't seem disjointed. this is the first book where I have been careful to explain how each scene leads on from the next and why the location has changed.
- I found it very useful to talk about the text while reading it with other people. This helped me to think about what someone seeing the book for the first time would want/need from the text. Taking a step back from the story and thinking about what I was trying to say in each scene, why is the character acting in the way they are and how does this relate to the previous/next page. The books text is still fairly simple but I have tried to make all the text included functional but without being too clunky or academic.

Text notes/drafts

Polar Dog Book Mock Up - No Text

- Mock up of the book to test the flow of the illustrations and layout
things that need to be addresses:
- Some of the single pager illustrations seem to work better on the left of the double page spread, I'm not sure if this is often done in publishing and ideally I would prefer them to consistently be aligned as text on the left and illustrated page on the right. I need to look at examples from existing children's books to see if this is often done. Most of the pages work perfectly well on the left hand side but on the page where the dog meets the polar bear the dog would be closer to the gutter in the centre of the page than I would like and reversing the image does not work as well.
- I feel like the tone of the illustrations changes for some of the pages, the section where the dog goes off by himself to find the polar bear, I think this works as he is out in the wide world by himself and dealing with the emotions of questioning his identity. I want to get some feedback about this, it may be that the change is too apparent or that the tone is wrong for a children's book
- The pacing of the book is always something I struggle with once I have been working on it for a long time. Flicking through the books I have made I always feel like the books jump from one scene to another or that the transitions are clunky but I think this may be because I'm not taking in the story the same way as someone new to it, or just someone whose not looking at it trying to spot mistakes. I think I will need to add the text before I can tell if the pacing is right. I want to spend more time than I have in the past working on the text. For this book I think the text needs to tell more of the story than I have before. I want the text to be playful and fun. It seems very easy to fall into the trap of making the text really concise and academic. I need to make sure the writing is appropriate for the age range, fun and engaging. The text needs to guide the reader through the story but not spell out every aspect explicitly, it needs to direct the reader to the message behind the illustrations. I need to research more childrens authors, specifically books where the strength is the language, NO RHYMING!

Character and Polar Dog Development

More polar dog pages

- I have been testing out adding to text to one of the pages to show sounds the dog makes, I also tried shapes and illustration to try and communicate the dogs trying to roar like a polar bear. I still struggle with adding text to my illustrations, always feel that the text breaks up or unbalances the composition. That is one of the reasons I chose to keep the text and illustrations separate I this book. I would like to have found a successful way to communicate the dogs bark without text but so far have not managed to. I will have to keep experimenting.
- I have been toying with the idea of spreading the illustration of one or two of the pages across the entire spread going against my decision to separate illustrations and text. The reason I have considered this is for pages where I feel separating elements of the illustration will benefit the composition and help to communicate the narrative more effectively. I will also only attempt this on pages that contain little to no text. I am going to add the text now to make sure I am happy with the results and if not I will still have time to make changes.
- I have been struggling with the pages of the book where the dog is comparing himself to polar bears and finding similarities. These pages involve the dog looking at images of polar bears or reflections of himself. The illustrations I have made so far either seem slightly confusing ( the image of the dog looking in the mirror in my previous post) or the compositions don’t communicate the way I would like. I don’t like the dog facing away from the reader watching tv, but the side view fails to show what he’s looking at. I do think the illustration of the polar dog arriving home and seeing the differences between him and the other dogs could work very well, this could make and interesting composition and create a contrast between how he feels alone/different even though the other dogs see him as one of them.

Polar bear pages

Animal characters

polar dog page ideas

12 spreads and a possible single final page

Title page could show dog in the park looking for his ball

A little girl walks through the park with her mum, mum says “look at that dog”
Little girl says “ that’s not a dog it’s a polar bear”

Dog looking back thinks “I’m not a polar bear”

On the walk back home the dog starts to question his identity “maybe I’m not a dog”

He walks back in his house and sees the other dogs he lives with “I don’t look like the other dogs”

Looking In a magazine “I do look like a polar bear”

Looking in the mirror “ I have teeth like a polar bear”

Growling, getting funny looks from birds in the garden “ I growl like a polar bear”

Reading the paper, sees and advert for the zoo, starts thinking “....”

Sets off out of the house, looks apprehensive leaving his life behind

Arrives the the zoo

Sees the massive polar bear, looks scared

Walks back home in the dark “ I’m definitely not a polar bear”

Sat back at home welcomed by the other dogs, lying by the fire, looking content.

Text for mole book

Page 1- Elsie enjoyed stories about heroes...and loved pretending to be one

Page 2- dad “can you get me some worms so I can go fishing, some really big ones.”

Page 3- imaginary friend “I’ll help”

Page 4- Elsie “what aren’t you digging”
             Imaginary friend “I’m imaginary”

Page 5- imaginary friend “have you found any”
             Elsie “no, let’s go home”

Page 6- imaginary friend “look they’re giant”

Page 7- Elsie “no they’re not”

Page 8- Elsie “they’re ... cute”

Page 9- Elsie liked her new worm friends

Page 10- Elsie “I couldn’t find any”

Page 11- Elsie made a new home for the worms where they really were giants

Page 12- but now Elsie’s dad had no worms to go fishing

Page 13- ...

Worm book pages- reworked from cop module

 this is the book I made for cop this year that I have decided to submit to a competition brief. I have had to make a number of changes although the vast majority of the illustration was already completed and not part of this module. The book was unfinished and already made up of 19 double page spreads. Way too many for the brief I am working on. I have 12 double page spreads to work with with a possible single page at the start and end providing I could successfully merge the first page and title page. The was not a problem as the first page of the book was a landscape shot to set the scene with no text, just a few details and hints at the narrative. I think it actually works better as a title page that it did it’s its original placement. I have had to remove certain aspects of the book such as the main character exploring ideas with her imaginary friend, this part of the story was included to demonstrate theories from my essay and is not essential to the narrative. I have kept the imaginary friend in the book as the overarching theme is imagination measured contrasted with reality. The imaginary friend helps to showcase the main characters imagination and provides a the opportunity for dialogue in the narrative. I have condensed some of the spreads together and made adjustments to there to fit the number of pages and also to improve links between narrative and illustration. I feel like taking some time away from this project allowed to to take a step back a evaluate it more effectively. I have rewritten sections of the text to fit the new page layout. I still need to add the text and will get some feedback on the book before submission

Tutorial and reflection (2000 word blog 3 of 4)

During my one-to-one tutorial we looked at my work up to this point, focussing mainly on the Carmelite Prize brief. It helped to highlight changes that would benefit current briefs as well as what I should be doing to improve my practice in general. It was pointed out to me that the main character in the Carmelite Prize text is supposed to be a sea otter but my illustrations don’t make this clear. The character looked more like a teddy bear than anything else. I have been concentrating so much on trying to illustrate a character I thought looked cute and cuddly, that I have lost focus on what I was trying to depict. As soon as it was pointed out to me it was glaringly obvious, but without being told I don’t think I would have noticed. This highlights the importance of taking a step back and evaluating work at regular intervals. More general suggestions to benefit my practice were to:

- experiment more with colour and create juxtapositions between warm and cold tones

- experiment more with characters’ positions and poses which can feel quite rigid in compositions

- create a range of animal characters to form part of portfolio

- look at how characters could be used in advertising as well as children’s books

I have just finished my final piece for the North Bar and St Gemma’s Hospice ‘Tintin’ brief. I have enjoyed this brief and it has been a useful side project alongside illustrating books.  It felt like an opportunity to try out ideas with more freedom and less commitment to a particular process or idea. I think it is a good idea going forward to have small personal briefs running alongside larger ones as a means of testing out both idea generation and process, with an end goal to act as motivation but broad enough to allow experimentation. Aside from developing my practice, briefs like this provide an opportunity for work to be seen by a wider audience. As part of a portfolio, pieces of this kind demonstrate my ability to produce work other than children’s publications. I think it is important not to pigeon-hole myself too much. I am really enjoying working on children’s books and I see it being the main focus of my practice going forward, but there are a number of other possible applications of my work such as advertising, animation, gift cards/stationary and editorial. I want to create work that appeals to both adults and children and develop a greater understanding of how to tailor my work to suit each target audience. 

I have just finished a very last-minute brief for the Templar Prize. I only found out about the prize with 10 days until the submission but I wanted to take part in the competition as a way to experiment with creating work to a very strict time scale. The main benefit I got from this brief was a better understanding of roughing out compositions. I didn’t have time to add much detail to the pages and found that having that constraint forced me to think differently about my illustrations.

Tintin in Tibet final

This is my submission for the Tintin Cover brief. After the tutorials I made some changes to make sure the characters stood out against the background, especially their hands. I have also added some more references to scenes from the book. There is a yeti/man disappearing in the mist at the back of the compositions to work alongside the footprints in the snow as well as a cave which plays an important part of the story. I have adjusted the levels to add darker toners to the mountains at the back of the composition which helps add depth and gives the mountains more of a feeling of scale, making the landscape more imposing than it was before. i have enjoyed this brief and it has been a useful side project alongside illustrating books, it felt like an opportunity to try out ideas with more freedom and less commitment to a particular process or idea. I think it is a good idea going forward to have small personal briefs running along side larger ones as a means of testing out both idea generation and process with a end goal to act as motivation but is broad enough to allow experimentation. 

Dragon finals

Dragon storyboard

Dragon roughs revised, with text

Dragon roughs- first round

Dragon story

1- child getting ready for a walk with grandad
2- they walk down the street talking
3- they see a grate on the pavement, the grandad walks over to it
4- “a dragon lives in this grate” says grandad pointing town under the pavement
5- the child looks sceptical
6- view from under the pavement of a small lonely young dragon
7- time has passed and they walk past the grate again, as they have many times before
8- they look for the dragon as they always do
9- the dragon has got bigger, the dragon is smiling back at them
10- the child is now a teenager, grandad is not there anymore, he walks past the grate but doesn’t stop
11- the dragon looks sad without visits from his friends
12- the child (now grown up) is walking down a busy city centre street and sees steam rising from a grate, could that be the dragon?
13- he remembers his grandad and the walks they used to go on
12- he walks out of work stressed after a hard days work
14- he goes back andsits down on a bench next to the grate and feels comforted reunited with his friend/memories.

Another competition brief

I have just found out about another children’s book competition brief. The brief is to write and illustrate a children’s book aimed at children under 12 that is centred around dragons. The deadline is the 20th of this month so I only have 10 days to work on this brief. Normally I wouldn’t enter but I think working to a quick deadline will benefit my practice. I have an idea that would suit this brief that I would like to write and illustrate. The brief asks for a completed cover for the book as well as one completed spread. The rest of the book is to be submitted as roughs. As long as I can put my idea into a story book format and rough out ideas quickly I think I can complete this brief to a high standard in time for the deadline. The book has to be 32 pages long and page dimensions must not exceed 400mm in height or width.

My story is based on something my grandad used to do. There was a grate on the page near my house that he used to tell me had a dragon living under it. I want to write and illustrate a story where there is a young dragon living under the grate that grows up and gets bigger as the child grows up. The book will not address whether the dragon is real or just part of the child’s imagination. As the child ages he sees steam rising from grates in different locations. The thought of the dragon is comforting to the child and reminds him of his grandad. The two unlikely friends never meet but the dragon seems to watch over the child/man throughout his life representing the childhood memory of his grandad.

Eyes as focal points/ problems with scale

With these redrawn characters I found that the eyes were not bold enough, especially when the characters are scaled down in the composition. I tried making the eyes bigger and bolder with more detail rather than just black dots. This at first made the characters look like they had and expression of shock. I added eyelids that have helped to tone down the impact of the eyes while keeping them as a focal point. This way of illustrating the eyes will allow me to communicate more emotion and instantly draw attention to the characters in the composition.
I have also added some detail to the mother otter. On the second page she says she’s going to catch more fish on on the first page of the book I have illustrated her finishing off the last fish she caught. I want to create more links between illustrations and the text that go beyond trying to communicate the text. I want my illustrations to add to the story as well as compliment it.

Otters not teddy bears

1-1 tutorials

I had my one to one tutorial today. It helped to highlight changes that would benefit current briefs as well as what I should be doing to improve my practice in general. I need to

- rework the main character for the Carmelite brief. The current character looks like a teddy bear rather than a sea otter
- experiment more with colour. Create juxtapositions between warm and cold tones
- experiment more with characters position and poses. Can feel quite rigid in compositions
- create a range of animal characters to form part of portfolio
- look at how characters could be used in advertising as well as children’s books

To start with I am going to rework the Carmelite character, I have some older sketches that could help with this redevelopment. I think I can take this time to concentrate on the 4 best illustrations I have for this brief and only submit the rest as roughs. I have a number of pages at varying stages of development that I will take back to the roughs stage. I think it will benefit the finished pieces to work in a more focussed way at this stage.

Annual text and yeti

Book cover submission

Text with Image

Throughout this project I have struggling with the best way to combine illustrations in text. I like to create illustrations that form an overall shape that guides the viewer towards import elements of the illustration, show depth and scale or simply form an appealing composition. Up to this point I have tried to plan for text being added to my illustrations but have in a way treated the text itself as an afterthought to the design process. This was a mistake, whenever I added text to an illustration that has been designed to function my itself the pages become muddled or cramped. I often work with a white background surrounding my illustrations so there is space left that lettering can be applied to but my illustrations use that white space to ground them. I try to add mass, space and depth the white background with my illustration and the addition of text breaks up this form. I decided to look at some very successful combinations of text and illustration to try and understand what makes them successful.

The first book I looked at was Dr Seus, There is a large amount of text in this book and it is clear that the text was at the heart of the design proves. The text is central to the pages and the illustrations revolve around it. It does not impact the effectiveness of the illustrations, they have been very well designed and thought out to work with the space available. This approach seems to be necessary for illustrated books with a large amount of text, especially a book like this where the pacing of the text in the main focal point of the narrative.
The next book I looked at was 'Shhh I have a plan' by Chris Haughton. This book has comparatively little text. There are very few long sentences, the text is linked to communication or actions of the characters. The text have been made part of the illustration and by doing this is it can be linked to the specific part of the illustration it applies to. The text and illustration combine and interact to tell the story making reading the book a more immersive experience. With simpler text it is possible to manipulate the text more without it becoming confusing, if this was attempted with a story like Dr Seus it could very easily look messy and hard to understand.
The next image is from a book by Oliver Jeffers, His illustrations sit in the middle of a white background which he uses to place the text. His illustrations and the hand drawn text are quite loose but the placement is more formatted, usually places centrally on the page centrally aligned. I have been trying to use this method but I usually scale my illustration to take up more of the page. I like his approach to these books but struggle when I work this way myself, It may be because I am judging my work in a different way or because I have spent time looking at the illustration without the text before it is added.
The final two pages are from Jon Klassen books. He separates the text and illustration entirely, placing them on separate pages. The illustrator is free to create a composition that is only confined by the dimensions of the page and the text is crisp and clear on a solid white background on the opposite page. This is a way of planning pages that I would like to try out, there is something very appealing about a small amount of text in a nice font in the middle of a white page. This technique doesn't allow for the same level of interaction of Chris Haughton's technique but that kind of merging of text and illustration is not practical for all books.

I think it would be possible to use a number of these techniques in the same book, changing from page to page as it suites the pacing of the story and the composition of the page. For my polar dog book I would like to try out combining these techniques to see if they can be effective together. This could help me achieve something that all the book illustration briefs I have looked at this year have asked for, "varied compositions"

Annual cover progress images

Book Illustration Guide

Meghan McCarthy guide to book illustration
This guide to book illustration contains some really good tips and an overall method of practice that will help me develop books in a more structured way. Meghan McCarthy suggests that a good idea to begin with is to go to the library and look at illustrated books to see what stands out and appeals to you. What do you like and what don't you like. Its just as important to understand what puts you off a book so you can understand how to avoid making the same mistakes yourself. The guide talks about page layouts, careful researching and roughing that I have read into before but one thing that I think really stood out to me as something I should pay more attention to is the pacing of the books I make. The text in the book maintains the rhythm of the story and could make or break the success of the narrative. She uses 'Where the Wild Things Are' as an example of well executed pacing in a childrens book. pacing is difficult to pin down to a set of rules, its suggested that you should not have a large amount of text on one page then little to non on the next unless there is a good reason. Because of this I think that regular and careful reflection is needed to judge the pacing on the book throughout the design process. Does the book seem to jump from one thing to another, do the transitions between pages seem abrupt, does the text become monotonous. All thing to consider.

Some thing that is talked about every time I talk to children's book illustrators is their hatred of the gutter in the middle of a double page spread. It is important to avoid this with and detail in your composition, in this article it is also suggested to make sure text is placed at least and inch away from is. The curve of the page when reading a book can alter the shape of parts of the illustrations and have a negative effect on the overall illustration. It is best to keep the area clear of any details of importance. For my polar bear book I am going to trial using only on side of each double page spread for the illustrations with possibly one or two exceptions throughout the book to create varied compositions but for the most part keep text and image separate.

the article mentions the most common book size of 8 x 11". I am going to make a dummy of my book at this scale to see how my work functions at that scale.

Where the wild things are

I read an article that talked about the pacing of where the wild things are. The article said the pacing was a perfect example of text and illustrations working together effectively. I have been reading the book and agree. It seems like an example of simplicity and careful consideration of page breaks. The text is not part of the illustration and does not seem overly broken up. On top of that the illustrations do not attempt to say the exact same thing as the text, they are linked but add more meaning and a setting for the story to be told. On one page Max calls for the party to start and there is a look of excitement and anticipation on the wild things faces. The pace is consistent throughout and does not feel jumpy moving from scene to scene. 

Annual Cover

Research for ‘Tintin in Tibet’ cover brief for North Bar and St Gemma’s Hospice.
- We were asked to pick which annual we would like from a list and fortunately I got my first choice.
- The brief will help me with my other projects and books I’m working on at the moment.
- Helping raise money for St Gemma’s has a strong personal meaning for me.
- this project also allows me to work more freely and experimentally as most of my other projects are books where I will be illustrating in similarly throughout.
- this looks like a fun project for a good cause that could help me gain some exposure and further my practice.

Polar Dog page roughs

- Some snowy trees I’ve been working on for the book inspired by the weather
- some page roughs testing out new compositions as I wasn’t happy with the originals
- trying to vary compositions including some ‘from above’ perspectives
- trying to find effective ways of silhouette gold the do against the background
- images of the real polar bear highlighting scale
- The first image of the bear he is camouflaged in his surroundings
- highlighting differences between the different dogs
- the dogs in front of one another on the page (side by side) contrasting size and colour (silhouettes)

Pages with Text Updated

- I have changed the text placement on the pages and altered some of the illustrations to better incorporate the text. I felt that some of the pages seemed messy and the text was forced into sections of the page where it did not seem natural. in the first draft I changed the size of the text from page to page which added to the pages looking quite rough. in the new version the text is uniform throughout and centered on the page. I have tried to line up the text with elements of the illustration and have separated text onto both sides of double page spreads where it better suited to narrative.

Covers

Here are a few variations of possible cover designs. I decided to make a couple of simpler variants with scales down illustrations to make it easier to clearly include the text that was specified in the brief. Although I think these work as book covers they look a bit plain. I don't think they would stand out in a book shop. I wanted to treat this brief as an opportunity to test out ideas and work differently to my usual practice. The first image in this presentation is my final cover, it combines elements of both of my previous front cover designs. I think the front and back work both independently but also as an overall image when the cover is opened up. The diagonal line has been reversed across the covers and adds some colour contrast and shape to the spine of the book to make it stand out more on a book shelf.

Book cover progress

The final 2 pages of this presentation I think are my strongest compositions. I like the composition of the second to last but I'm not use how well it will work once the text has been added to the design. I was just about set on that design for the front cover when I came up with another design that i thought worked well, a heart split in half with faces of the two main characters forming each side of the heart. I feel like this is a powerful visual that hints at the narrative of the book without giving anything away. It also moves away from the previous versions of the cover. I like both so will have to see if I can find a way to merge them into a single cover designs or whether i will need to make a choice. Next i need to start working on full wrap around cover instead of a single side, I also need to add the text to start the process of trialing out various compositions, colours and fonts, possibly hand drawn.

lettering for childrens books

blog post about fonts in childrens books

This is a blog post talking about the best fonts and font sizes to use in children's books. The post mentions that the letter forms are very important for beginner readers and to not use fonts with complex or non standard letter forms (stick to the letter forms children will be being taught in school). The size of the font is mentioned with a suggested range of 14-18pt but more importantly the writer says to not go smaller than 12pt and to make sure there is plenty of white space around the text to make the letter forms easy to identify. Other posts I have read pointed out that the books will often be being read by a parent rather than a child especially books aimed at younger children. This post says that clarity of text remains important as the book may often be being read in poor lighting (as a bed time story for example). Also important is that layout of the text, read out loud the text as you are adding it to your book, try to arrange the lines as you would when speaking and avoid hyphenating words as that may be beyond the child's reading level. The post also suggests using black text on a white background unless you have a good understanding of colour and composition. I agree with this and would further it to say that unless the text forms part of the composition it is best to separate the two as much as possible. adding a block of text can easily ruin a carefully considered composition so it is best in my opinion to split a double page spread to one page for text and the other for image. 

What publishers want

https://www.scbwi.org/online-resources/frequently-asked-questions/
- in-depth list of information about pitching children’s books to publishers.

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/2013/04/writing-for-children-tips-advice
- list of tips for writing children’s books.
- links to a large number of articles relating to children’s book writing and illustration.

https://thejohnfox.com/2016/03/children-book-publishers/
- list of children’s book publishers I can ask advice from and pitch books to.

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/do-you-have-what-publishers-really-want
- article talking about what publishers look for.
- talks about professionalism.
- goes beyond the books themselves.

Competition Brief Deadlines

Penguin Design Awards - Tuesday 6th March 12:00 noon
Carmelite Prize - 6th April
Macmillan Prize - thursday 19th April before 5:30
“Picture books should be 32 pages long; this includes, the front and back endpapers, a title page and a copyright page.”
 
My action plan

I will have the Carmelite prize brief finished by the 2nd March
- 4 double page spreads
- entire book roughed
- text included in black
- printed finished pages and presentation boards

I will have the penguin design award finished by the 6th March
- finished book cover using penguin template
- presentation board

I will have the polar dog book finished by the 27th March
- book roughed out, cover to cover
- minimum 4 finished double page spreads
- printed finished spreads and presentation boards

I will have the Hercules book finished by 10th April
- book roughed out, cover to cover
- minimum 4 finished double page spreads
- printed finished spreads and presentation boards

Think of ideas alongside these projects for a third book, I want to continue writing as well as illustrating books and although the other books are written by me they have been written prior to this module

Group Crit

Ideas to take forward and things to concentrate on from now until the deadline and beyond

- first of all make detailed plan of action with deadlines for each project

- concentrate on expanding my portfolio

- think about materials (paper stick, etc)

- create simple animations/gifs of book characters to include on website/social media

- don’t aim to create finished products, publishers will want to make changes and be involved in process

- start contacting agents and publishers for feedback and advice

- could work on more books than the ones picked so far, will need to take into account time constraints

Character development - dog book

I have been working on new characters for the polar bear book. The book mainly focuses around the dog but the premise of the story is that a little girl says he's a polar bear while he's playing fetch in the park. The characters I made for the first version of the book were made up of blocky shapes and didn't really demonstrate much emotion so this was something I wanted to improve. I also wanted to use them to highlight the landscape and season as the story is set in the middle of winter. both the characters are wrapped up warm. The dog is often silhouetted against flashes of colour as he is the same colour as most of the composition, I wanted to use the white background of the page as snow to communicate an immersive snowy landscape. The landscape helps add to the dogs feelings that he might actually be a polar bear and not a dog. The characters are dressed in grey matching the buildings in the book and the rocks that are dotted around the landscape. There are flashes of colour in the form of evergreen trees and small details on the characters them selves. I wanted to only use colour in certain parts of the compositions to make them stand out. I have tried to make the greys used quite soft so that they don't seem too harsh or bleak for a childrens publication.

I need to
- start working with page layouts in mind
- more precisely plan the page layout of the book
- look at Macmillan submission requirements
- start working on the text for the book
- research how other books use page layouts and the language they use

Polar Dog

- the first image in the slideshow is from last years final project
- the test are new developments designed to help me further develop the illustration of the book
- I like the compoition and silhouettes from the previous work but want to add more texture, depth and felling of crafting to the work. Moving away from flat shapes
- I want the illustrations to feel more atmospheric, some portions of the book are quite sad and I need to make sure the illustrations match the tone.
- I think I should make sure I story board and rough out the entire book before moving toward finishing pieces (as I have done in the past)

Incorporating Text

The text needs more work
Just a test to see where it would fit into the composition and how it would effect the illustrations

All pages without text

I have made all the pages from the book into a slide show, I am going to use this to get some feedback and find out whether to include pages at various degrees of completion or whether to submit four finished pages and rough line drawings of the rest.

Roughs and Night Scenes

- a few changes to previous designs to aid the flow of the narrative, some pages need to convey a chain of events. I have chosen to concentrate on key moments from that pages narrative rather than try and illustrate all the text. I have tried this but the illustrations become confusing and squashed onto the page.

- I have been working on the nighttime scenes, I was trying previously to keep the illustrations as vignettes but found that the night scenes weren’t atmospheric enough.

- my recent roughs aren’t really how I would usually call roughs but my illustrations rely on colour and texture so I wanted to be able to give an impression of the finished illustration that I couldn’t achieve with rough line drawings

- I have been completing illustrations to varying degrees of completion and need to figure out how to make it clear which are the finished illustrations and which are still in progress. I don’t want any confusion to negatively effect my submission.

Presenation and Group Crit (2000 word blog 2 of 4)

Today we had a group crit talking through our revised plans for the module. I felt that over the last couple of weeks I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to do and today helped me to solidify those plans and put them into context. The group thought my choices of brief were relevant to my practice and would help me develop my portfolio. I plan to submit 2 stories to the Macmillan Prize and given that the brief only asks for 4 completed spreads this should be achievable within the time frame. I plan to continue these books and have them finished and made for the exhibition in June. I also plan to create some personal work based around the stories to explore applying my illustration to a variety of products such as clothing or homeware.

I have nearly finished the Carmelite Prize brief and also plan to finish my book cover for the Penguin design brief. These two are my current focus which I aim to have finished in the next two weeks so I can concentrate on the Macmillan submissions.

I wanted to complete the Elmwood studios brief as a warm up for larger briefs but after finishing my work and evaluating the process I felt like it had not been the best use of my time. I feel like I need to make sure my brief selection is tailored to my practice. At the start of the module I could only find one brief (the Carmelite Prize) that focussed specifically on illustrating a children's book but fortunately now that the Macmillan Prize is open I can continue to develop my skills. Working on The Carmelite Prize has given me the opportunity to learn how to develop a text into an illustrated story book, and the Macmillan Prize will add writing skills, idea generation and story development to create stories that are appropriate and appealing for children. As the module progresses I want to keep a look out for more briefs that offer opportunities for development and possibly exposure to publishers. 

Carmelite Development and Possible Finals

- I have been completed some of the pages of the book, i have completed more than four finished pages so need to decide whether to submit all the completed work or to pick the best and only submit roughs for the others.

- I should have roughed out all the pages first to get a better understanding of how the narrative would flow throughout the book. I have two more projects that are beaded on children’s books that I need to keep this in mind for

- I have been trying to leave spaces for the text within the illustrations which has been easier for some than others. The brief asks for the text to be included on a separate layer and in black, and be typed or hand drawn. This will be easy for some of the illustrations but for others I would much prefer to use white text against dark backgrounds. I will have to test out how best to apply the text.

Smaller narratives- personal brief

One of the things highlighted to us during the Hanbury Symposium was the importance of showing our own personality through our work. We all have individual experiences and perspectives that help to make our work interesting. It is often easy to fall into the trap of following trends and trying to work like other people. I want to use this module to work on my own stories. I already have two larger books that I want to enter into the Macmillan prize but I think it would be good to break up these larger projects with some smaller, quick stories that explore my own experiences and perspectives.

I had an idea to create a zine about how we all view spaces differently and find comfort in a wide variety of surroundings. I grew up skateboarding from the age of 11 and spent a lot of time in skate parks or even just empty car parks and have fond memories of these places, to the point that open areas of tarmac seem quite appealing, it changed the way I view the world around me. I didn’t see walls and handrails I saw the opportunity for tricks. Being in England with the lovely weather I spent a lot of time hiding from the rain under skate ramps or in underground car parks. We had names for parts of the city that only skateboarders knew. I want to make a book that explores this perspective and how it influence the rest of your life. This could be the first of a series of books that could address other people’s experiences and the unlikely places they remember fondly.

Work brought over from COP

This work has not been produced as part of this module, it is work produced in the COP module. I have included it here to make clear what stage the work is completed at this point before I make additions and adjustments to prepare it to be submitted for the Macmillan Prize competition.

I need to
- look at the number of pages (will need more illustrations/roughs)
- look at the dimensions, change if needed
- evaluate how well the story works
- make changes to text (both wording of the story and fonts/placement)

What the judges want
- originality
- illustration over narrative
- variation in compositions
- not too many words
- demonstrate narrative, pacing and characterisation

Macmillan Prize

https://www.panmacmillan.com/macmillanprize

This brief looks perfect for my practice, I had been planning on completing a personal brief as part of this module. The plan was to develop a story I started in my final project last year. It is a story I really enjoyed creating and I think it has great potential. I also have a story I wrote and partially illustrated as part of my COP module this year that would fit this brief. I was unsure which to submit. I was thinking of submitting the story from COP for this brief and then maintains the other story as a personal project so that it didn’t have the same consraints but after reading the terms and conditions it looks like I can enter more than one story.
I am going to submit the COP story and will need to make changes to it to fit the brief such as the number of pages. I think it will also need more work on certain pages and on the text of the story. I will need to make sure it is very clear which work has been completed as part of the COP module and which is part of this one.
I am also going to complete the story I started last year and submit that to the competition. I think it will be very useful to work towards a set layout and specification. The competition will allow me to work in the way I aim to after I leave the course, it will help me build a portfolio and produce work entirely based on my own ideas and writing. My writing has become an increasingly important part of my practice and is something I want to showcase as well as my illustrations. In the short term this competition will allow me to introduce my work to a publisher and in the long term will help build up my portfolio and body of work.

Extended Practice Presentation

Presentation of work so far and change of selected briefs.

Noughts and Crosses- more sketches

The problem I'm having with this brief is that i want to keep it quite simple and use bold symbolism but their have already been a number of iterations of covers for this book that have use the same idea. most if not all the precious versions have depicted the noughts and crosses, usually in black and white. When the books title and narrative use symbolism the design ideas for the cover tend to be fairly route one, definitely in this case anyway.
I thought about the division depicted in the book could be depicted using the mathematical symbol. One of the noughts could be replaced by a cross and the bar through the middle can clearly represent the divide between them. This simple, bold basis could them be added to and experimented with textures and elements from the story. I did think of adding a noose but that would most likely be giving away too much information about the story.

things to do
- experiment with colour and composition
- could make the symbol into a face/character
- change the bar into a knife to symbolise backstabbing and deceit
- add text

Club 27 image research

Club 27 ideas

So far I have a couple of ideas I want to test out based on the career of Amy Winehouse.

The first is based on back to Black. The idea is simple, a black background with Amy winehouse with a mic stand highlighted by a spotlight. I want to use the negative space of the black background to create an intriguing composition. The text on the illustration could be black (dark grey) on black. She was heavily into jazz and I would like to create an atmosphere like an old Jaxon club in the composition.

My second idea is based on an interview with Questlove (the drummer from the roots). He talks about Amy Winehouse teaching him about jazz (something he thought he was already very knowledgable about). He says she had the idea to form a supergroup made up of herself, Questlove, Raphael Saadiq and Mos Def. I would like to make an album cover for that proposed supergroup. I don’t know whether to think of a name of the group myself or just use their individual names. I like the idea of making a cover for an album Amy Winehouse wanted to make, celebrating a group of amazing musicians and the possibilities of their combined work. I want to look at the covers they were featured on individually and famous jazz/collaboration covers. The hiring talked about selecting a specific part of their career. This idea does not fit that exactly but I think it celebrates something she wanted to achieve and her ability to cross genre boundaries in music, bringing musicians and fans together.

North bar/St Gemma's Hospice- Tintin Brief

North bar- Tintin Brief

This is a link to a brief set up by North bar to help raise money for St Gemma's hospice. It is not an open brief, instead it asks interested creatives to send in a link to their portfolio and they will select artists to take part. The brief is to recreate 24 Tintin book covers that will be displayed in the bars and made into a book. Hopefully i will be selected to take part in the brief. I will just have to wait and see what happens. 

The 27 Club

I want to complete an album cover for The 27 Club brief. I don't want this to be a huge time consuming project but it is something I would like to work on to challenge myself. Last year I worked on an album cover and got the tone of the illustration completely wrong for the subject matter. I think being able to adjust my work and understand the tone needed for a specific subject is very important and that this will be a good challenge for me. I have chose Amy Winehouse from the list provided in the brief and will start working on roughs.

The brief asks for in an illustration that is 27 x 27cm
The illustration can be based on the artists as a whole or could be about a specific part of their
life
I need to be careful with the subject matter and make sure the illustration is respectful to the artist
A short rationale of the piece is to be included with the illustration
The deadline is 3pm on 1st march

Submit to the27clubinfo@gmail.com

Carmelite development 3- colour tests

- experiments with colour using Procreate. I have been working in black and white a lot recently trying to get used to using a new way of working. This brief has forced me to break that pattern as It calls for colourful illustrations.

- At first I wasn’t comfortable and I think the colours are off in the earliest illustrations. They look a bit dull and lifeless. The later illustrations look much more appealing. I think flat colours can look too sharp when created digitally but adding texture seems to soften them and also add more depth and a feeling of hand made illustration to them.

- I think I have tried to do too much with some of these illustrations and it has detracted from the main focal point of the character. Adding lots of detail to relatively small items within the scene changes the eastheitc and doesn’t benefit the composition as the detail becomes lost. I need to simplify the composition and concentrate on elements that have a greater impact or importance to the narrative. I want to use texture and perspective to add depth, and use the reflections on the water to ground the landscape onto the white background.

Noughts and Crosses- sketches

first sketches playing with the symbols of noughts and crosses attempting to show the separation between black people (crosses) and white people (noughts). I wanted to show the noughts being viewed as less that the crosses. I also wanted to highlight the 2 main characters and how they we connected to each other and because of that, in a way separated from both groups. I thought of contrasting black and white lines to make up a composition of a face from both groups using the symbols of noughts and crosses for the eyes. One of the lines could continue around the entire cover to act as the line found on many penguin book designs. There are two other elements of the story I thought of including in some way but I am not sure if that will give away too much of the narrative. I think it will depend how I put the image together. One of the main characters is hung at the end of a book, just as they declare their love for each other. I thought of making a portrait combining both characters with a noose around their neck. showing how it effects both of them. The noose could also be symbolic of the effect of their relationship. At the end of the book they find out they are going to have a baby but the baby is not born until the sequel so I don't know if i can include a reference in this cover. I want to keep roughing and more further away from previous covers.

Noughts and Crosses- Penguin

The Noughts and Crosses covers as well as its sequels ten to be mostly if not entirely made up of bold contrasts between black and white symbolising the narrative of the book. Another obvious inclusion id the symbols of noughts and crosses on each cover. It is tempting to continue these trends through my design and maybe moving away from them entirely would be a bad idea, however I would like to create a cover that stands of from the rest while still representing the main features of the book. The cover i have looked at on the most part I would not call particularly appealing or intriguing. The look more like school text books. The use of black and white makes the cover bold and create bold contrasting shapes. The designs are similar to street signs with their contrasting colours and use of shapes and symbols. I would like to create a cover that has more depth and texture, something that feels more hand crafted and adds more personality. I want to make the book appealing and intriguing, these covers appear quite cold. The difficulty will be making communicating the serious nature of the book with the correct tone of voice. I am going to rough some sketches and experiment with compositions to begin with. I tend to get carried away with creating finished images too early so in this process I want to rough out a large number of ideas before going any further.

Reflection (2000 word blog 1 of 4)

The main focus of the module so far has been on the Carmelite Prize brief. I have been roughing out page layouts trying to find ways to make a seascape varied and dynamic. I have been using rocks to add some structure to the composition.  I want to keep the sea mainly as negative space and use the waves lapping up on the rocks to signify the expanse of water around them. The use of negative space allows me to illustrate the difference in scale between the sea otter and the landscape, without the otter getting lost within the composition.

The book’s narrative centres around the adventure of a young sea otter trying to get to the horizon. I want to use the horizon line and the rocks to communicate the massive scale of the landscape compared to the tiny sea otter. To illustrate in this way I will need to make the best use of the limited components of the landscape (the sun and the rocks protruding from the water). I will need to make sure that each individual page is carefully crafted to illustrate the perspective and highlight the distance between the otter and the horizon. The horizon needs to seem like an attainable target to the otter but one that keeps moving further away as she swims towards it, so I want to keep a consistent distance between the two.

I started out illustrating the book as black and white as I have found using tones rather that colour to be a productive way to familiarise myself with handling new processes and media, but the landscapes look very bleak. I need to break the habit of relying on tones alone and start using colour so that I can push my practice forward.  This project gives me a good opportunity to develop in this respect.

I have been struggling with the character design. I am still unsure about the characters I have created so far. I cannot decide whether to make them more realistic or more cartoon-like. I think moving away from realistic illustration will allow me to experiment more with the entire compositions, use of colour, etc. One thing I have discovered so far is that otters are hard to draw. If the proportions of the character are at all misjudged they look very strange. I have tried accentuating some of the characters’ features and they either look like other animals or just look wrong.

I also want to make sure I can successfully communicate the emotions and actions of the sea otter throughout the book. The little otter feels happiness, loneliness and fear as the story progresses, and I need to make sure I am able to illustrate her feelings clearly to the audience.

This project has become the main focus of the module.  Now I would like the opportunity to work on a variety of briefs centred around children’s publishing so that I can experiment with a wider range of characters, settings and narratives.

Carmelite development 2 - black and white

I have been working a lot in black and white recently as I am trying out new processes and digital programs. I find it easier to work in black and white (tones) at first before experimenting with colour.

successes
- texture and depth of rocks as well as their suggestion of the water around them
- compositions using the sky to highlight the horizon
- use of scale and distance (although main character can become lost

things to think about
- black and white landscapes seem bleak
- do the more cartoon like characters match the landscape
- is black and white appropriate for a childrens book?
- can I demonstrate emotion effectively with characters