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.