Lessons learned and the end of the unit...

Today I went to get my images printed at copyplus in town. Now, I've been working to the scale of 25cm squared images, meaning that my double pages are 25 X 50. So I found out that due to the size, they would need to be printed on a2 sheets, which are priced at £7 each! So obviously that wasn't happening. The woman was nice though, she said that we could scale them to fit on a3 and then it would cost under a fiver for all three images! So obviously we did that. With that in mind, I'm adjusting my book pages to 22cm X 44cm. Who would have thought that 3cm difference would amount to so much! Also, they ALWAYS come out darker than I'd planned. I even compensated for this by lightening them a little but I guess my laptop screen has the brightness set pretty high. I'll have to remember that for the finals. Other than that it was really nice to see them to scale. It allows me to look at the images and decide whether I can apply more detail in the way of additional creatures and stuff like that, just to make the images more engaging for kids. The below post is pretty much my entire hand in. This blog is really where the action happened, you see a lot more of the working process here. My hand in box will contain my first draft script with notes, my final draft script with notes, 31 a3 pages of sketches and my 3 print outs from today. I hope that's enough.

50th post!

Here's another *final*. Of course, calling these images finals may be a little presumptuous. Things are bound to change. I'm not sure there's enough contrast in this image but with the crease in the page and the text it might look a little more complete. We'll only known when we've got some prints sorted out.

Update...

I redid pages 3 and 4 with the new design of my creature. I did a screen shot of the design with the smaller spines too but I preferred the bigger ones. Also, here's a wip of my new double page spread...

The F*****G Gruffalo...

A friend yesterday brought up that the style of my book so far was looking similar to that of the gruffalo. So I asked another friend whether it was too similar. We discussed similarities in other mediums too such as comic book characters having similar costumes, illustrators styles resembling others etc but eventually decided that if I was too worried about it, then I should tweak my character designs and perhaps even consider making the world more fantastical. Now realistically, it's the textured colouring that is making this a similar style to the gruffalo, but the creatures do share other traits in common with that design too such as two horns, exposed teeth, yellow eyes and sharp claws. None of this would be a problem if it wasn't going into the design of a character that shares the same genre as the bloody gruffalo.With that in mind, I did some character tweaking to try and make it more reptilian and leave behind the *monster* angle.

I've posted this to my facebook page for feedback so I'll be waiting for a little while before deciding anything. Although I've pretty much already decided on the elements that I like from these designs. I'm thinking that the tongue hanging out is a good indicator of the takers being reptiles. The soft spines replacing horns are good for the child too, whereas the adults can have sharper spines. I like the lighter coloured belly, it goes back to my original thoughts on the takers resembling bipedal crocodiles. I think I can get away with keeping the huge ears. Oh also, since we are going fully reptilian now, the other takers can have a variety of features like these too. For example, the chin spines of number 10 will look great on the adult male takers because it resembles a beard. So based on my own preferences, it looks as though the protagonist is going to be a mix of 2 and 7 at this point.

On a side note, if I DO make the world more fantastical, then I'm instantly leaning towards volcanoes and shit. Mainly because now it looks like I've gone prehistoric and this is a book about dinosaurs. That might be taking it too far though. Just a thought.

Finished 3 and 4...

Well that's another couple of pages down. Below I've got some of the wips from this morning too.

By this point I had added a tree with a little creature. I thought maybe the little creature could follow the girl as she meets various other takers. I also made the girls eyes bigger. In the top left I've started drawing one of the images of the takers taking.

By now I'd shrunk the image down a little more, added some loose feathers and changed it to a red hue. I think the hue gives it a dream-like or imagined quality that helps to keep it separate from the real colours of the linear story world.

And here's where we ended up. I've left gaps for the text and as with the first one I may revisit any of these images again before finalising the book.

Pages 3 and 4 wips...

In my last post I mentioned that I needed to change the original page idea to a different angle for fear that it was too similar to pages 1 and 2. I tried that (as you can see below) and instantly didn't like how it was going. I left it behind pretty early into the process and instead moved forward with my original plan. I'm liking how it's coming along! I did hit a few snags though, such as the idea of the smoke portraying her thoughts - that doesn't work. Neither do thought bubbles. Granted I wasn't actually putting much effort into testing these because I'm pretty burned out on drawing right now and needed a break. So the next step would be to figure out how to portray all that suffering on the left hand side. I guess I could have them as stand alone drawings resting on the backdrop. Who knows. I'll think about this while making me some bad ass dinner.

This is the first shitty attempt of the day

This is the smoke as the backdrop for the images that will be on the other page.

This is the thought bubble.

This is the image as it stands right now.

This is a little close up of the protagonist and the fire - which I think look quite nice.

Justifying decisions...

So even though I seemed set on the large thumbnail for pages 3 and 4 that I posted earlier, I've decided on something ever so slightly different. Basically I was looking at it and decided that it was going to be too similar to pages 1 and 2. I don't want variety for the sake of variety but there's also no point in reproducing the same image over and over with slight changes each time. So in this image, my smokey images will still happen, the little girl will be laying next to a fireplace and we will see all of this from above. Also, later in the story I reference where the girl lives, so either this is a cave, a hut or she's outdoors. If she is in a cave or hut then I may have to change the first image again. You can probably see why this takes so long to get a book made. Plenty of faffing.

One note on this image. I'm not sure if I even need to show the animals being taken in the *thoughts* of the girl. It might be enough to just show various animals since the written aspect already conveys the action.

Oh and also, the image at the start of the sheep creature about to be taken is going to be made a little more poignant. As you will see, the different takers have different skin colours. The first one she encounters will be taker who is eating animals. He has green skin. So this might go unnoticed by the reader, but in actual fact we will be seeing the taker eating the dead body of the sheep creature that we saw on the very first page. I fucking love continuity! I might add a further reference to it somehow too, but I won't know how that will look until I get thumbnailing that page anyway.

That's better...

I left my first couple of pages and started working on pages 3 and 4 again. I settled on this idea of the little girl taker sitting on the hill next to a fireplace and the thoughts of the creatures suffering can be portrayed in the smoke from the fire. This also helped me set up pages 1 and 2. On page 1 you can see the smoke and the fire in the distance on the hill which sort of drags you into the story from the word go, rather than it being a stand alone scene. It makes it feel as though the little girl is always present in every image. Or something.

Also I'm still not sure how the smokey images/thoughts are going to manifest. AND I'm thinking it might be nice if there's a transition from night to day in the book, but as always, we'll see.

Failed attempts...

My first page attempt came out pretty weak as it happens. Back to thumbnailing!

I do quite like this last one. The expression on the first one sucked, then he was looking at the taker and not running which was like... stupid. I like the appearance of the last one though cause it's like he's anticipating something bad about to happen. It's like he's gauging the reaction of the viewer and is like "What? Oh god is there something behind me?" I dunno if there's enough going on in this image for it to be successful though. Although I suppose there will be text on both pages (this is a double page spread) so maybe there is. Who knows. I'm gonna leave it for awhile now though cause I've been messing with it for ages and I need to crack on with others that might actually work.

Tuh tuh tuh test.

This started as a sketch to test a method of colouring. I didn't plan it or anything, hence the shitty bug and the lopsided head of my character. Still, sort of cool.Still finding my feet with how I'm drawing for this book.

"I think you're ready"

As in, ready to start working on final images. Salvatore said that. He thinks that I should just get drawing and see what happens. I've sort of been doing that today. These sketches are ideas for my second page spread which will have the words:

They take babies from mums, they take brothers and sons,
They take daughters and sisters and put them in buns.
A young taker was saddened by such selfish deeds,
So she asked other takers just what was the need.

I imagine this spread as thought bubbles surrounding the little girl taker. Some of the imagery might be considered too dark for a kids book but we'll see.

Still not decided on whether the takers live in a swamp or in the mountains yet either. I think the swamp is a much better fit to the designs that I've already got. If they were in the mountains then you might expect them to be furry but then again this is a kids book and it doesn't have to be so heavily burdened by logic.

A few images...

This stuff is mainly to show at the crit but realistically the next step in my project is to finalise character design, do some environment concepts and thumbnail for final images. Also, I've been thinking about the location of my takers and I don't think I'm going to have them in the woods. The woods is something that has carried over from my original story which needed to be grounded in the real world. I think mountains might be good for my new story, or failing that, a swamp. Since the takers are sort of reptilian looking I think it could give a good opportunity to portray them climbing and looking slightly less human. I also think that woodland is an area that is soooo overdone in kids books now, which is fine, but even I've done it before so I may as well try something new this time.

The redesigned protagonist...

Ok here she is - Looking just like a dragon! I don't care, I'm liking this direction.

Test...icles...

Now there probably won't be speech bubbles in the actual final but it was nice to draw my latest character design with some emotion in his face. Also I was testing out the whole white line around certain objects in order to make the images pop from the background. I quite like it! But we'll see how it goes.

Redesigning...

I wonder just how many versions of these bloody creatures I'll go through before I'm happy. I worked on my essay all yesterday so it was nice to get back to the creative side again. When I did, I realised that I'm not particularly happy with my taker designs. They feel flat and lifeless. Here are some sketches I did this morning to see what was possible. I'm still not sure. I'm also worried that anything with horns, teeth and a tail will resemble the bloody gruffalo too much!

Pushing concepts...

I'm just wondering what level of detail I can get away with in this book. I think I can afford to go more detailed than I have been going. Also, I think the texture looks better when it follows the curves and contours of the physical shape. I must remember to that next time.

Planning the pages...

I'm doing my notescribbling thang again. After some careful thought and some number work I've managed to plan my book as a series of double page spreads. It was quite tricky to fit some of the events into 32 pages but I think I've nailed it.

The main cast...

I've been a bit heavy handed with some of these but I wanted to get a rough idea of what my characters will look like done before lunch so I did them fairly quickly. I think the little girl and zoo keeper (the purple guy) and the fat guy are probably my favourite. I'm pretty sure that I hate the thin lady. I think I've gone too dark and fine with the line work on most of these too. The little girl embodies everything I want them to look like, even the eyes aren't black and that's what I should be looking at when designing these things.

I think I may have finally written my story!

So here's what I've got...

The Takers

In the dark twisted woods, mostly hidden from view,

Live the creatures that we call the takers, it’s true.

The takers all take, as their name would imply,

If they had half a chance they would take you and I.

They take babies from mums; they take brothers and sons,

They take daughters and sisters and put them in buns.

A young taker was saddened by such selfish deeds,

So she asked adult takers just what was the need.

She walked up to a man who was chomping away,

And she said just what she’d always wanted to say.

“Excuse me?” The girl said, with a smile on her face,

“Do we need to kill creatures to put on our plates?”

“We’ve got plenty of food and we wouldn’t cause harm,”

“We don’t need to hurt fellow creatures like this one.”

“No no no!” He replied “You just don’t understand,”

“We’re the takers who take, and we take what we can.”

But the girl wasn’t fooled by the taker’s reply,

She would ask other people, she needed to try.

The next taker took creatures from far, faraway,

And he kept them in cages, alone and afraid.

“Excuse me…” Said the girl, “But these creatures aren’t ours.”

“Why do we choose to keep some of them behind bars?”

“We don’t need to do that. Can’t we leave them alone?”

“Why would we lock them up far away from their home?”

“No no no” He replied, “You just don’t understand”

“We’re the takers who take, and we take what we can.”

But the girl wasn’t fooled by the taker’s reply,

She would ask other people, she needed to try.

So she spoke to a woman, who used creatures’ skins,

As shoes, belts, coats, hats, scarves and various things.

“Excuse me?” Said the girl, standing on tippy-toes,

“Why on Earth would we make living beings into clothes?”

“We’ve got hundreds of things we could use just as well,

“I don’t think that it’s right to put creatures through hell.”

“No no no!” She replied “You just don’t understand”

“We’re the takers who take and we take what we can”

But the girl wasn’t fooled by the taker’s reply.

She would ask yet more people, she needed to try.

Next she spoke to a man with a science-y mind,

He did tests on small creatures to help his own kind.

“Excuse me?” Said the girl, “This makes no sense to me…”

“It’s not right to hurt others to help you and me.”

“If we’re really so smart, we would find better ways.”

“To help takers and creatures without causing pain.”

“No no no!” He replied “You just don’t understand”
“We’re the takers who take and we take what we can”

The girl still wasn’t fooled by these taker’s replies.

She would ask her own mother, she needed to try.

So she made her way home, feeling angry and glum,

She stormed into the cave and she said to her mum.

“Do you think that it’s right, when we don’t have the need…”

“… To use creatures at all just to satisfy greed!?”

 “I can’t see an excuse, I can’t see how it’s fair.”

“It’s not right to use creatures at all.” She declared.

“No no no.” Her mum said “You just don’t understand.”

“We’re the takers who…” “STOP!” Came the young girl’s demand.

“I have spoken to others who say just the same,”

So she sat with her mum and she tried to explain.

Several minutes had passed while the girl made her case,

Then her mother had tears rolling right down her face.

“I am so proud of you and your heart is so pure.”

“We won’t take from the creatures at all anymore.”

Meanwhile other takers were thinking things through,

Was their taking of creatures the right thing to do?

The first man who was chomping on flesh and on bones,

And the woman who used creature’s skins as her own.

The man who kept creatures in cages for zoos,

And the science-y man began wondering too.

“We’re the takers who take, but we’ve taken too much”

“With our self-centred ways we’ve begun to lose touch.”

So they set loose the creatures and marched out to find,

The young taker who’d helped them to open their minds.

Knock, knock, knock came the sound on the young takers door,

It surprised her to see the takers from before.

“Little girl you were right, now we all understand.”

“It’s not right to use creatures just ‘cause we all can.”

“They have rights of their own and deserve to be free.”

“Not one creature exists just to serve you and me.”

So the girl and the takers decided that day,

To stand up for the creatures in every way.

They’d adopt homeless creatures and live cruelty-free,

And they’d educate others, just like you and me.

When they’d talk to new takers they’d start with the phrase,

“We were takers who took but now things need to change.”

I'm gonna let the dust settle on this for a few days because that's always a good thing to do (though time is running short and I need to have something to show). I'm going to assume this is how it's going to play out though so that I can start dividing parts of the story into the 32 pages that I need to fill up. Once that's done I can start some productive storyboarding and then some actual final images! Hooray! In the meantime I suppose I'll finish my character designs up.

The Takers...

As of last night I had pretty much decided on what my little girl taker would look like. With that in mind, the other takers would have to (or would they? It's my world after all) resemble her since they're all of the same species. They don't have to be the same colours though I suppose. Anyway, I did this one a minute ago. In my mind this is the one that is eating creatures. He's not as fat as I had originally planned but we'll see. Maybe he doesn't need to be. I still have the issue of clothing but again, it's my story. I suppose it won't matter as long as I don't give the takers breasts or genitals, they can choose to wear clothes or not. That actually further strengthens the lack of necessity for the woman who wears creatures skins if the takers literally don't have to wear anything. We'll see.

Saturday blog post...

I don't have any work to show today yet, but I do have some books that I've been looking at. Check them out.

This is quite a good example of a book that focuses on a colour scheme. The entire thing is done in this blue wash. I think there's a bit of a misconception that a kids book has to be filled with bright colours.

Again, look at how dark this picture book is. It's good to know that I don't necessarily have to make my own book a bright pretty thing.

I also picked up this. I'm just anticipating the end of my book in the final unit and wondering what smaller project I can do to wrap things up and illustrating some fairy tales sounds ok.

Also, I was walking through the woods by my house and there was SO much rubbish. I went back and picked a lot of it up. I genuinely can't believe that people are still throwing their shit in the woods. The point of sharing this is that it might be worth creating a smaller story about littering and recycling for my final unit. It's a simple concept that I think can work quite nicely as a book for a younger target audience than my current book. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of books about recycling and litter out there too, so I'll have to look into that.