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I have be cajoled, wrangled, and dragged (kicking and screaming) into trying to illustrate a childrens' book(and the dozen or so sequels planned) that my Aunt has penned based loosely on my childrens' adventures. I have a parylzing fear that my atrophied talents will be woefully inadequete for the task. My request is for some assistance from the more artistically inclined of these board to help me figure out HOW to tackle this task (steps involved in layout, design, etc), WHERE to find resources to give me inspiration for an art style (besides childrens' books, and what mediums would work well), and maybe some reference books/sites to help guide me a bit.
I wish I still had my books from art school but unfortunately the only things I have left are anatomy guides and books for calligraphy.
I have no idea where to start and no idea how to proceed once started. Not worried about the publishing aspect, just layout and artwork.
Please help! I really want to do good!
FH
Well, the important thing to do is read and re-read the manuscript. Highlight passages that really spark an image in your mind. From there, start making small sketches to figure out composition and layout; do tons of these, try out every idea. Force yourself to do as many little rough sketches as possible. From there, settle on a few important images to draw and draw those to death. Tracing paper is tremendously helpful.
Gather lots of reference once you've settled on the images you really want to create. PHOTOGRAPH YOUR OWN REFERENCE. It really makes a tremendous difference. No one can rely on the images straight from their head. Figure out lighting, get models to pose for you and get them to pose as close to the sketch as possible.
Figure out a comfortable size for your image and leave a good amount of room for the text. Working larger and reducing is better than the other way around. Once you have all of your drawings settled on, lay them out next to each other and look at how well they flow. Are there major narrative jumps? On facing pages in the book, is one much darker or lighter than the other? This is where you make adjustments. Are you in charge of laying out the text as well? It could help to make dummy text to stick over your drawings.
Do as much preparation as you possibly can before going to the final pieces. Have them all nailed and completely figured out before you get down to it and do the finishes. It can be really helpful to make a dummy book with copies of your finished sketches with color before you get here; leave no room for surprises when you're ready to finish.
Medium is entirely up to you; pen and ink, watercolor, gouache, acrylic, linoleum cut, collage, they all work. The major thing to look at really is other children's books. Look at them and ask yourself what makes them interesting? What do kids like about them? It's better, from a stylistic stand-point, to have a really reductive and simple style with nice bright colors rather than something really tight and exact. Kids identify more with that simple look. I would suggest working all of your finishes up at the same time when you get there; that way you can keep the color palette similar and the drawing and painting will be consistent. As an adult, you may want beautifully rendered figures running around doing things, but young kids will have a different viewpoint. Keeping it simple for yourself is also really helpful; you're doing a bunch of pictures, after all.
One of my teachers from a few years ago, Steven Savage, won The New York Times' Best Children's Book award with his book "Polar Bear Night". You may want to look up his website. Since the guy would talk about and show his freaking children's book every damn week of class, I can tell you that he worked on all of the finishes at the same time, did several variations, tacked them up next to each other and looked at them across the room, etc. That last part's essential: whenever you work on something, look at it from a good distance away. You'll catch things that you wouldn't see normally while hunched over the picture.
Just remember to keep it simple. You're doing this for young readers, so the more straightforward your compositions and designs are, the better.
I know James is in art school, so for the actual creation of the art, i'd suggest following his advice. I am an editor and i work with graphic artists all the time who draw for my textbooks. Just FYI, if you know who is going to be publishing this book, the publishing company will have standard art and design specifications for any illustrations that will go in their texts.
FH, you mention that you aren't interested in the publishing process, just in the creation of the art...my advice to you is that they are intertwined. There are ways to reduce a wall-sized mural so that it can be reprinted in a book, but it is much easier and less costly for everyone involved if the artist creating the art for the book already knows the specifications that will need to be addressed by the publisher one way or the other.
If you have any questions about what publishers need (in general) from their artists, let me know.
As ever,
ACE
I do freelance illustration in the RPG field. My best advice is to just keep working at it. It took me a year of professional work to really get comfortable with what I wanted my finals to look like.
Find out what your strengths and weaknesses are artistically. You said you went to art school so I imagine you might already have an idea of that. Work around them. Don't try to force something that isn't working. One of the hardest things to do is trying to make something work that you don't enjoy. Often enough there is a way around the problem that can play to your strengths if you just look for it hard enough.
I don't know if I agree with simplifying artwork for a children's book. I took some classes relating to children's books as well, and what I found was that children's books are often very detailed and elaborate. Kids are highly imaginative and books directed at them can and should be just as creative.
The bottom line is: if you feel comfortable/confident enough with your own work, it will show through.
Sorry Fake Healer, I'm afraid I made it sound rather bleak. That wasn't my intent. I really enjoy what I do and would want anyone else to enjoy it too, if they were doing it.
If there is anything more I could do to help, let me know.
Even if you would rather I keep my mouth shut...
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You know what I'd do? Just draw. Don't worry about "bla bla I godda draw this for whoever for whatever, right NOW I gotta draw it; It's gotta be done and it's gotta be great bla bla bla;"
Don't throw it all out the window, just put it in a drawer somewhere and pick it up later. Just draw what you want to draw. Think about it like you haven't bench pressed in God knows how many years; you don't need to go throwing those 55 lb. weights on that bar just yet. Just do some low weight reps and pain the hell out of your muscles for a week or two.
Draw a dog chasing a car driven by a racoon headed guy or whatever. Shoot, I don't know. Just draw something, and don't let the rest of it upset you.
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Thanks Heathy. I have found it so simple to just be a dad and nothing else for the last 4 years that I seem to have forgotten how to handle the other pressures of life.
Dire Satyr and Ace, please spill anything that you think will help in anyway, even if it is discouraging. I need to face it all at some point and get over it. My wife likes to compare me to a pitbull or bulldog in that I refuse to quit until I have done what I wanted to do. I have decided to give it my all. I will do this but I would rather not waste the effort if some pointers could help me focus more accurately on the task at hand.
Tell me what a publisher may look for. How to minimize redundant work. Anything you can think of that could help, I want. I know this is alot to ask from everyone but I am really at a lose.
You all have my thanks.
FH
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FH, sounds like you've been given some really good advice here already, and being far from an expert in the field I don't know that I would have much to add.
However; what age group will these books be aimed at? I've recently read a couple of the Spiderwick Chronicle books by Holly Black and Tony Diterlizzi (sp?), mainly because I like Tony D's work. These books seem to be aimed at pre-teens or maybe young teenagers. The illustrations don't occur on every page, but they tend to take up a full page where they do occur. There is a mix of black and white (I presume pen and ink) illustrations and full colour. IMO its very well done for that sort of target audience, might be worth checking out?
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FH, sounds like you've been given some really good advice here already, and being far from an expert in the field I don't know that I would have much to add.
However; what age group will these books be aimed at? I've recently read a couple of the Spiderwick Chronicle books by Holly Black and Tony Diterlizzi (sp?), mainly because I like Tony D's work. These books seem to be aimed at pre-teens or maybe young teenagers. The illustrations don't occur on every page, but they tend to take up a full page where they do occur. There is a mix of black and white (I presume pen and ink) illustrations and full colour. IMO its very well done for that sort of target audience, might be worth checking out?
It is aimed at the 3-6ish range I would think. I like working in pen and ink, but have been considering trying out some muted watercolor or colored chalk. I will have to check out that book though for reference. I have a feeling the library will be my friend.
FH
Dire Satyr and Ace, please spill anything that you think will help in anyway, even if it is discouraging.
Tell me what a publisher may look for. How to minimize redundant work.
Ok, a couple of things:
Below find a list of what I will need to lay up artwork in a print product...doesn't matter how it gets this way (by the artist or a graphics company), but it needs to be in these formats or delivered in the appropriate media for me to work with electronic files for print:Acceptable formats:
Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop EPS files (preferable)
Adobe Photoshop TIFF files
JPEG files but only if created with the least amount of compression possible.
*For any kind of file, a minimum of 300 dpi for halftones (photographs) or 1200 dpi for line drawings is required to be able to reprint in a textbook.
Unacceptable formats:
PowerPoint slides
MacDraw or paint programs
Any business graphic program such as PowerPoint, Persuasion, Harvard Graphics, AutoCad
FTP files
RGB files
Art merged into Microsoft Word or Word Perfect
E-mailed files
Most files posted to the WWW (due to the dpi requirements)
Now for a brief explenation on files...
Now for a short explenation of why files are either acceptable or unacceptable and a few other items of interest:
Funny how in this day and age, with the technologies available for mass media print that the limitations for electronic files for print are based on the physical characteristics of paper. As a general rule of thumb, the higher quality of paper/medium that an image is printed on, the lower the quality of the image needs to be to retain the integrety of the printed pixels. In the printing industry, it is the least costly for images to be printed to be of the highest quality and use the cheapest paper possible (all other things considered). Thus, the dpi requirements for images...If you are printing ads in a magazine or on glossy paper or on a different medium, these requirements may vary.
Everything under the "unacceptable" list will produce less than quality results for the *printed* product.
When creating digital art, it is most desirable for the art to be created in Mac Photoshop, EPS format for this reason: The art will be layered, with the base layer being the image, then any color, then any labels. In this way, each image AND each layer is easily modifyable by either the artist, the compositor who is putting together the elements for the textbook, or a future artist working with somebody else's files.
Finally, for paintings or hand drawings (sounds like this is what FH is doing), you are going to have to have them scanned and converted to one of these kinds of files. Make sure that it is in one of the formats listed under "acceptable files" otherwise it will have to be further modified or not be usable at all.
Hope this helps and if you have any other questions...shoot.
As ever,
ACE
It is aimed at the 3-6ish range I would think. I like working in pen and ink, but have been considering trying out some muted watercolor or colored chalk. I will have to check out that book though for reference. I have a feeling the library will be my friend.FH
Pen and ink are great, I would prefer to do all my work that way if I could but some art directors have told me that it needs more, while others think it is more than enough. Sorry, my own personal demons of a sort...
Something to try, since you are interested in watercolor. Light enough watercolor paper will run through a xerox machine or home printer. Instead of having to transfer an ink drawing or worry over destroying an original with experimentation, you can try out the watercolors on the print until you are comfortable with the look and process.
This could also help to unify the look of the entire book or series. You could use the watercolors for covers and the inks for interiors.
(Now that I think of it, I might recommend the xerox over the home printer, although you can adjust the home printer more yourself, I don't know if all home printer ink would resist the watercolor application... sorry.)
Incidentally, how long are the books and how many drawings are you planning on? Inks are definitely faster, or at least for me. It might be better to go with what will allow you to produce more work faster. I like to keep a fast pace, my mentality suffers when my productivity does.
My girlfriend just recommended watercolor pencils. They allow more control. You can blend them a bit with water after laying them down. Well, at least that is how they are supposed to work. She has been able to get them to work, but I had a little less success when I tried it a few years ago. That was a class project though, with a teacher that I, and most people could not stand. Thant might have been it. I have a set of 12 "Derwent" Water Colour Pencils.
Incredibly informative, Theacemu. Thank you!
Fakey, if you're going to try watercolor pencils, what I would recommend is laying down your colors first, blending tones and whatnot, then lightly brush over with a clean round brush. The color will be quite strong and pure where the most pigment is, but you can push it around a bit to get the blending where you want it. Have fun with it!
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Wow! Great stuff everyone! I will have to give the watercolor pens a shot.
I really don't know how many pages the first book will be but I am shooting for something like 20ish. I will know better once I print each sentence out separately to judge what seems to look like a page and how many should be together at a time.
Thanks guys, I will be trying to get something truly started this weekend I think.
FH