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.