Illustrations are telling the background story

work
It is time for the roughs. I got good feedback for my story board and could proceed with working out basics of every page. That means, I will be drawing the characters making them look the same on each page (recognizable), design their clothes, and working out what is happening in the background. I am not putting all the work force in this stage as it still a draft and can undergo major changes. So far, I have been really lucky in the other books, so fingers crossed.

I get to tell a whole background story to a picture. The text gives me the lead on what is happening right now, and I fill in the history. For example, if the text says something like: It's a new day and the kid jumps out of bed all excited, my picture will also tell you if the kid has had a calm or rough sleep (maybe the hair is ruffled), whether it played or read something before the sleep, does it need a glass of water before bed, are there any siblings, favourite toys, preferred colour, boyish or girlsh, and so on.


private project
Inktober2018 - it is going well! 15 days done and 16 to go. Here is the result so far of drawing every day. Each picture took me 1h in total and brought me a handfull of new followers on instagram

Passive income - my aim is to sell prints of my current private projects and invest the money in getting me more time to work. We are talking about being able to pay another morning session in the nursery.

What is staging in the process of creating a children's book?

Work

Book "Africa" is getting into the next step: staging! I create a bunch of test thumbnails drawing different perspective and/or different motion.

Staging is the process where you create the stage for a scene: where is the camera, what  perspective, who is going to be in the scene, where are they going to stand, what is the dynamic going to be?

For each spread (double page) I do about 7-8 and sometimes more. I try to be as creative as possible but also try to pay attention to my initial vision I had when I read the script for the first time. This first picture is an echo of all my experience with other books and movies, which means that probably a lot of people will have similar pictures in their head when reading the text, assuming we are exposed to the same culture. I feel it is good to present people with something familiar, so they can read the message quickly. But it is really important to go further than that first echo, in order to create something new. What I wouldn't want is to draw just copies of copies of memories (ref. Fight Club)

Private
I got some cheap brush pen markers to treat myself and play around with scripting and pattern design. I do feel it might have been one of those impulsive purchases ... ah well, why not. It is for fun and I will enjoy it.

It is meditative and helps me focus on the task ahead. (So it is kind of work related :-P) The tips are a bit fussy, but I also didn't want to spend a lot of money, so it will do just fine. I am enjoying to exercise my wrist and fingers and getting just the right pressure on the tip to paint smooth transitions between thick and thin lines. These are the type of patterns I do:

References
To learn what I learned about staging watch this great video by Marco Bucci!