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.