Hi folks! I'd like to thank Jo for letting
me guest post about my children's book, Frank the Gentle Viking. This
post is especially for all you sadomasochists out there who think you'd like to
write and illustrate your own children's book. I'm here to warn you it
is SO MUCH MORE THAN TWICE THE WORK! Not to mention twice the pressure! If
you're submitting to a publisher with both the story and the pictures, that's
giving them two potential reasons to reject your work instead of just one. I
recommend being totally, brutally honest with yourself. Ask "Am I writing
and illustrating because I have the skills, passion and dedication to create a
unique, professional quality book?" or "Am I just doing it because I
want creative control?" You'll save yourself some heartache if you can
decide "Maybe I'll just be awesome at one thing."
But hey, sometimes experience is itself the
best teacher. If you want to try your hand at both writing and illustrating,
even just to learn about the process, go for it. For those of you who want to
join me in the attempt to climb to mountains at once, here's how I went about
it when attempting my first book. I have since taken classes and read a lot and
learned some more, so I'll also try to make notes on what I'll probably do next
time to try and make it even better.
1) Get the idea. - I recommend starting at
a library. Read All the Things! Including the people. The story of Frank was
inspired by a small child I saw in the library asleep in a stroller and wearing
a surgical helmet. I thought "Aw, if that were my child, I'd give his
helmet some cool horns so he wouldn't have to feel bad about wearing it."
And thus the idea for a story about a baby Viking was born.
2) Write. Revise. Repeat. - Work your draft
till you think it's awesome. Let someone else read it. Make changes. Then hide
it from yourself for a week, a month, or six months, and then read it again to
see if you like it as much as you did.
3) Character Design - Some characters walk
into your head fully formed and it's just a trick to get them down on paper.
Some characters have to have lots of variations of them drawn. Everything about
the way you draw a character will say something about their personality. It
will also help you get an idea of the feel and style of the rest of the book.
I'll probably spend more time in this phase next time. Even though I had a good
idea of what each character should look like, I still should probably do more
practice sketches of them to better understand how they would behave, how they
compare to each other in size and shape. But also to give my hands the muscle
memory to be able to draw each character consistently.
4)Thumb nails - Thumb nails are the small
scaled-down sketches of each page. Next time, I will do WAY MORE than I think I
need. Like at least three pages of layout thumbnails per final piece. I think
artists and writers get so caught up in what the final product will be that
they try to jump to a final on the first leap. But would a pianist get up and
play Rachmaninoff without having practiced? Of course not! In the future, I'm
going to give myself way more time to practice my piece before leaping into
color.
5) Grey scale comps - These are the black
and white studies of what the final will look like. In terms of polish and detail,
these are between the thumbnails and the final color piece. They're probably
the same size as the final will be, but give you a chance to catch visual
problems that you didn't see when it was small. Plus, for anyone wanting to
submit a picture book dummy to a publisher, this is the stage that a publisher
is interested in seeing. It shows that you basically know what you are doing,
but are open to changes. It's much easier to change something at this stage,
especially if you are doing the finals in traditional media like oils or
watercolors. Again, I'll be spending WAY more time on this phase in the future.
For Frank the Gentle Viking, I did full size drawings, but neglected to
really shade them accurately, which made my life a lot harder later on. I was using
a blend of watercolor and digital methods for the final, so changes weren't
impossible, but they still took more time than it would have if I had taken the
time to solve my problems beforehand. It's helpful to have your art buddies
critique your work at this point, too. (It's funny how I was actually told all
this in a general sense in college, but didn't understand the importance of
actually DOING IT until I was attempting a real project.)
6) Final color work - Just what it sounds
like.
7) Hide it for a while - Just like with
your manuscript, it's good to get some distance and then look with fresh eyes.
You may be pleased, or you may look at it and say "What the heck was I
thinking!" I made one very rookie attempt at completing my book with hardly
any preparation or development work, and then after working my butt off for six weeks, stood back
and realized it looked like total garbage. I put it away for a whole year
before trying to bring it to life again. In the meantime, I took classes and
looked and looked and looked at all different kinds of art to try and figure
out what made good work great and what I could do to find my own artistic
voice. When I dug it back out, I was ready for it.
8) THE BOOK - For those of you wanting to
see your creative baby in real book form in your hands, the next step is
publication. You can submit it to publishers or agents, or try and self publish
it on your own. There are many different avenues within the realm of
self-publishing. Some are free, some are expensive. Some will do the formatting
for you. Some you have to do yourself. I had to do mine myself. Again, here's
another step of the process where you have to think like a designer. Everything
you just did for your manuscript and your illustrations you should do if you do
your own formatting. Set the type in a digital program, like Illustrator or
InDesign, and then have someone else look at it. You don't want to put so much
work into writing and drawing only to have your baby delivered into the world
sporting typos in comic sans. Never use Comic Sans. Never use Curlz. EVER. everrrrrrrrrr.
So that's pretty much it. Not something you
can do in a weekend. And probably not something you'll make a gazillion dollars
doing. But if your definition of success is busting your butt to make the most
unique, beautiful story you possibly can, a story that nobody else in the world
can tell exactly the way you could. Well, then it's a pretty darn rewarding
endeavor.
By Lucy Elliot. http://alittlelightart.blogspot.com
