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.