Next steps...

Now I have finished my storyboard I will focus my time on media and creating a finished look for my pages. I will experiment further with colour combinations and how much collage to use in my images, and when this is finalised I can start to create my final pages. I am fairly sure that the style I want to create my book with is mixing collage with ink or paint, however I want to experiment to see how much of the image can be collage without overwhelming it. I also want to try out tubes of watercolour paint for the background rather than the pan watercolours I currently use to see if a bolder clearer colour is more effective.

I need to finalise the text for my book, and break it up into which bits will fit onto which pages.  At the moment I have a story planned out, but I haven't decided on the final wording of the text, whether to keep it short or complicated, or how exactly it will be split between the pages. These are all things I need to decide upon next. 
I also need to design the text for my book, both the font and the positioning on the page, which will also affect the layout of the pages. I don't want my text to simply go at the bottom or side of the page, so I want to experiment with ways of incorporating the text into the image.

I will start looking at different ways in which to make my book. I want to make a handmade version of my book, so I will need to research and experiment with different techniques of book binding. I also want to have a few copies made proffessionally, so I will need to look at print companies to order from.


I plan to spend the next few weeks experimenting with these things to make my final design clear and finished before looking into producing the final book.

Story Board and Mock Book

At this stage in my project I wanted to start to make the storyline and ideas for page layouts more certain so I could start to develop the style and composition of the book. I chose to use a 32 page, A4 portrait format, as most of my sketches had been done in an A3 landscape sketchbook so would fit nicely into this format.

To fit into the 32 page book I had to decide on which things I was going to make my little girl imagine herself as. I decided to keep the images in a pair of "before" and "after" images like my initial sketches had been, and I also had to take into account how many pages would be taken up by the cover, beginning and end. This left me with 10 pages, which I split into 5 pairs.
The pages I chose in the end were:

• a leaf
• a cat
• a flower
• the moon
• a giant

I now had to put these ideas into an order that a story would fit around. When thinking of these ideas I had also been thinking about the reasons that a child would want to become them. What is so great about being a cat that a child would want to become one? Why would a child want to become a leaf? What use would a child have from becoming a giant? Children don't want to become these things for no reason, so I began to think about what attributes these things have that a child would want.

I decided upon a reason for each of the objects that the child wanted to be.

The reasons were:

• a leaf - to fly in the wind/fall from the tree
• a cat - to go exploring/go on adventures/crawl around everywhere
• a flower - so butterflies would land on me/would smell nice
• the moon - stay up all night/live with the stars
• a giant - to reach everything/to be taller than my older brother

I sketched these ideas out in my book as small, rough thumbnails to make sure the order was right, then I started to take each idea and expand on it to get a rough composition for each page.

Once I had completed my storyboard in my sketchbook, I decided to create a basic mock book to get a better idea of how my drawings look together, and also to see the effect the fold down the middle of the page would have on the composition. I just used basic sketches to show the layout of each page.

Now the storyboard and layouts of each page are finalised I will spend time creating images that are more finished and final. I will use the images from my storyboard in my experiments and eventually create my final images using them.

Colour Combinations

To get a better idea of the colours that would work well in my book I painted lots of swatches of colour and cut them out so that I could compare various combinations.

Being able to select colours from these will help me try out new colour combinations, and also allow me to limit the amount of colours I use by being able to easily see which combinations would create the effect I want for each page.

Paint and Collage

I decided to experiment with the different levels of collage and paint in my work. Originally I had planned to just collage the characters and keep the background painted, however I wanted to find out how effective using collage in small areas of the background was. For another project I had been doing this year I collaged the main focus of the page and used a plain painted background, however although this works with a very simple background I didn't think this would be effective for a page with scenery behind the character.

I started with a sketch I had used in my storyboard of my character standing amongst some flowers. This was a fairly simple composition to experiment with, as the flowers were the only things in the background.

I collaged the figure, and added in small amounts of collage in the background such as a few of the flowers or some of the plant stems. I like this effect and think I will carry on working in this way, however I need to adjust the colours of this image so that the figure is the main focus and the viewer is not distracted by the bright colours of the flowers. I also need to neaten up the painted parts of the image, as the paint has run slightly in certain areas. 

Character Design

These are some ideas for character designs I had started during my authorship project last year. I really like the technique I used of collaging and then adding details digitally, so this is a technique I would definitely try out again.

I decided to make my character female, although I didn't want to make her overly "girly" as I wanted to aim my book at both boys and girls. I also didn't want to stereotype girls as all being princess-y and dressed all in pink, as I think that most young girls aren't really like that, and there is already a huge amount of books on the market that already cater to this. I also think that this gives out a more positive message to children, as I think there is already a huge pressure on young girls to be interested in things that are typically girly and pink - like barbie, ponies, princesses and fairies - while boys are encouraged to like football, robots and dinosaurs. I think that children should be allowed and encouraged to pursue their own interests regardless of the traditional gender roles, and I want my book to reflect this.

I decided to dress her in dungarees, as it is a quite neutral form of clothing, but made them slightly feminine from the pattern I used. I also made her coat for the outside scenes purple, as this helps show that she is a girl without being pink. 

Whilst starting to design my character I also wanted to think about if and how fancy dress might be incorporated into my book, so I decided to draw her in different outfits

Although I liked the idea of fancy dress, I wanted to keep consistency throughout my book to make it clear to young children that it was the same character throughout the story, and so I chose an outfit for indoors and an outfit for outdoors

What do children want to be?

The first thing I needed to do was to try and think of a list of things children want to be. Using a mix of internet research on forums, and asking people I know what they wanted to be when they were young, and/or what their children have said they want to be, I wrote down all the ideas I thought would be effective.

Although there were a lot of job aspirations - such as becoming an astronaut, a ballerina, a firefighter, a superhero... - there were also a large amount of impossible things such as animals and objects. 
I thought that the stranger and impossible things were far more interesting than the realistic ones, and I thought that the career choice ideas were more of an adult view on how children think than thinking at children's level, so I decided to use the stranger ideas.

I used the start of a sentence: "When I grow up, I want to be..." to come up with some sketches and ideas of how to portray children becoming the things they want to be.

I decided to focus on a few of the stronger ideas:

• a cat
• a flower
• a tree/a leaf
• a butterfly
• a balloon
• a giant
• a star
• the moon
• a mouse

My next job was trying to write a narrative around these ideas. My initial sketches had all been of different children with a before and an after image, but I couldn't think of a way of using lots of children and still having a strong narrative and keeping the book consistent.

I decided to focus on one child imagining all the things she wants to be in an average day. This way I could have a clear beginning and an end to my story - her waking up at the start, and going back to bed at the end - and make a story around the things she would do during the day.

Change of Idea

I love drawing animals so I started my project thinking that I would write a narrative around the anthropomorphic characters I had been drawing, however I found that my original idea of creating a book about things children want to be when they grow up was a much stronger and more imaginative plot. 

I started out looking at the strange things children say they want to become - such as a leaf or a cat - and then went on to look at career aspirations of children. I did find, however, that children wanting to be an astronaut or a train driver has not only been done plenty of times before, but was also a very grown up way of thinking about this that wouldn't really connect with the children. In order to get onto children's level with this subject I had to go back and look at the strange things I've heard children actually say they want to be - the leaf was based on my younger sister coming home from playgroup and deciding that was what she was going to be when she grew up, and my nephew quite often decides he wants to be a bear, a dinosaur, a tiger...

I also tried thinking back to some of the things I wanted to be when I was younger. I can remember watching butterflies landing on a floral patterned garden chair in my neighbour's garden and deciding to wear flowery clothes in the garden in the hope that one would land on me, so I decided this would be a useful idea for my book.

Collaging animals

Seeing as collage was such a big part of my previous projects, I decided to try it out on some of my sketches from this project

Using one of my sketches, I collaged bits of found paper. I wanted the layers to be obvious to give it some depth, which is why I cut each piece individually (eg, head, body, arms..) and overlapped them a little rather than cutting out the silhouette and just adding the details - although this did take longer and meant I needed a high contrast taking a photo of my work as the layers didn’t show up very well at first

After trying out collage with bits of paper I had found, I decided I wanted try using my own textures and colours. This is a collage using a red-brown acrylic paint on off white paper, put on with a wide paintbrush.
To carry this on, I am going to experiment with different materials (watercolour paint, ink, texture rubbings, relief prints..) applied with different tools (a paint roller, sticks, textured wallpaper, a sponge…) and see which ones work best.

Scenery and Details

Generally in my work, I spend the majority of my time and ideas on the characters and main focus, with the background and scenery being an afterthought. Because of this, i decided to start looking at scenery early on in my project, by breaking it down into individual sections.

A page from my sketchbook with notes on the various natural layers in woodland areas

 Since a great deal of the animals I have drawn so far have been woodland creatures, I decided this was a good place to start my research. First I looked at how woodland can be split into different layers - tall tree canopy, shrub layer, field layer and ground layer - and then I looked which plants fit into which layer.

I had been drawing a lot of hedgehogs, and so I decided to research their diet, habitat and lifestyle too. Hedgehogs eat mainly insects, and I decided to start painting some insects you would find in a woodland habitat

This research obviously still has a way to go, but it should be incredibly useful in helping me plan out an accurate and well thought out scene in which to put my characters.
I also need to look into other settings - eg. jungle, icy, underwater... - in which the other animals I have been drawing could live

Inky Experiments

A few experiments with watered down ink. With watercolour I’d been using the paint to “colour in” my drawings, but I wanted to try using ink/paint to actually draw and make marks, so i started out “drawing” with black ink watered down to various shades. Now I think I’ve got the hang of it i want to try using different colours (or even just watered down tones of one colour)

I tried to use lots of different brush marks to get various effects, such as fanning out the bristles (incredibly bad for my paintbrush, but was effective!).

Experiments with Watercolour

Using my observational sketches, I tried out painting a few of them by layering flat washes of watercolour paint on normal sketchbook paper.

The layers of paint were to experiment with tones, and attempting to get a really rich and intense colour. I then tried adding details with various things, such as fineliner and crayon to see how this looked. The colour was painted on roughly, then outlines and details afterwards to define the image. I wanted to keep my drawings soft and friendly looking to appeal to children, and I wanted to focus on getting a general feel for the animal rather than getting it completely realistic and accurate. 
I found that colour really helped to bring the sketches to life, 

I also tried out some experiments with mark making. I often use washes of watercolour in my sketchbook, this is something I am quite comfortable doing and worked really well to paint the soft and fluffy fur of the rabbits, but it didn't really portray other textures. For the hedgehog I needed to show the difference in texture for its spikes. I used a rough wash of paint for the base in the same way as the other paintings, but rather than working up layers of paint like normal I decided to get a smaller, flat paintbrush and "dot" on the page where the hedgehog's spikes were.

I really like the randomness of the marks, and contrast between the hedgehog's face and body. I think this technique effectively shows the textures.

 

Observational Drawing

As a starting point of this project I have been drawing various animals that children are generally familiar with, and will therefore recognise. Rough pencil drawings have helped me to concentrate on proportions and defining features of the animals. 

Once I have drawn a variety of the more common animals, I plan to experiment with more exotic creatures that children perhaps know very little about, which may help my work stand out from the huge selection of children’s illustration available, however it may also mean that children do not particularly respond to my work. After experimenting I can better decide which types of animals to use in my work.

Project Proposal

For my FMP, I’m going to look into Illustrating a book for children.
In my Authorship 2 project last year I started an idea for a children’s book about the bizarre things children dream of being when they grow up. I want to continue this work this year, but I also want to look into illustrating narratives, including ones involving anthropomorphism.
My project from last year had looked at the strange things children imagine themselves being, but I hadn't looked at ways of turning this into a book format or a narrative, so this would be something I would be interested in looking at. 

I want to make a picture book aimed at children between the ages of about 3 and 6. At this stage the focus of the book is very much on the images. I need to make my book interesting enough to entertain both children and parents, as it is the parents who will be buying the book and reading it to their children.

I want to look into anthropomorphism to start with. Children have always been fascinated by animals, hence the great number of books and films where animals are personified and made into the main characters. I have made basic wordless narratives using animals as characters, but I have never written a whole story including them so I think that I would like to experiment with this.

I want to experiment with new techniques in this project, however I do want to particularly focus on paint and collage as I have worked with these before and like the textures and bright colours you can achieve with them. 

I would like to try combining painting and collage, as although I have successfully used both techniques individually I am interested to see how the two materials would work together. 

To start with I will look at drawing a range of animals, and then look at which are most effective. Once I have done this I will look into turning some of these into characters, and from these drawings I can then start to write a short narrative.

I will also start to look at books already on the market, and the techniques other children's illustrators have used in the past and are currently using.

This blog will track my progress throughout this project.