In context...

Here we've got another image exploring our protagonist along side a scanned and coloured sketch with a limited colour palette. I know Joel said to keep things simple for the backgrounds and stuff but I think it's worth exploring this route too. Also I've been taking photos and making first hand observations of the stuff on the floor. I know that sounds stupid but I've been looking at say, small leaves, stones and twigs in order to get ideas for the environment of my story. Weird, right? I thought so. Also I'm still deciding on whether I want to hint at a mouth as I have done here or just leave it blank. I think blank is more stylised and potentially better. Maybe. I don't know.

Where I need to be...

That's the verdict from my tutorial so I'm continuing down the route of scanned pencil and my latest character designs. Joel suggested that the backgrounds should be light and minimal, maybe even just lines, so I'm going to explore that while continuing with character design. Here's a little standalone sketch that I did this morning just to explore this character a little more. I don't like the bright colour designs but I had to test them regardless just to be sure. Whatever colour is used should be somewhat desaturated in order to fit in better with the graphite. I may make this character brown like some of my earlier attempts.

Illustration Friday and Silent Auction...

I posted this to my regular blog but I think since this is going to be put into the silent auction it can class as FMP work too... right? I don't know. Either way, I'm not that happy with it but I wanted to have something that wasn't digital to put into the silent auction for a change.

That's right, more character sketching *sigh*...

I'm starting to lean towards this little wolf thingy for the design of the little girl but let's not get too settled just yet. Also above is half of a page of cartoony sketches I did in the garden the other day. I scanned and coloured a bit of it.

Competitions...

Here are my current entries for the CROWD competition. If my computer didn't take forever to do anything then I'd have shown all the variations of the finals but it's just so sluggish.

Character doodling...

Need I say more?

Story editing...

I realise I don't get marked for the actual writing of the story but I will need to consider where text goes on pages and everything so today I edited down my story even further. I would like to rewrite the part where the girl explains things to her mum and I need to take into account that "ours" doesn't always rhyme with "bars" depending on what part of the world you're from (dammit Sam) so that will probably need to be rewritten too. But I'm quite happy with the rest of it for now.

The Takers

In a strange, distant world, mostly hidden from view,

Live the creatures that we call the takers, who knew?

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 approached a great beast that was chomping away,

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

“Excuse me?” Said the girl, “We’ve got plenty to eat.”

“It’s not right to take creatures to chomp on their meat.”

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

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

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.”

“It’s not right to put creatures alone behind bars.”

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

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

Next she spoke to a taker, who used creatures’ skins,

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

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

“It’s not right to use creatures to make things like clothes.”

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

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

The next taker she saw had 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.”

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

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

She stormed into her house and she said to her mum.

“I can’t see how it’s right; I can’t see how it’s fair.”

“There’s no need 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 great beast that 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-centered 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 all 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.”

Broken age...

Broken Age is a point and click adventure game (like Monkey Island) and it is beautiful. I watched some of the early footage this morning and was blown away by the art style. Also, for some reason, seeing this art style in the context of a game helped make things click with me. I think I understand what will make for a good children's book now and I can't wait to get back on it. Here are some shots from Broken Age.

More weirdness...

I've been keeping up the creature drawing stuff as you can see. I also focused in on the pine cone girl for a little bit to see where that could go.

Tutorial feedback and stuffs...

I'm trying really hard to remember what was said to me. I think Marcus said something about trying different line weights or working in a lighter colour first to establish loose lines and then go in with something darker. I did that on my latest load of... things. The other thing was that I should try some of them interacting with each other and do some little scenes but other than that it was all like GOOD WORK DAN. POW! Or that's how I remember it anyway. I've just gotta keep drawing. So here are some more sketches.

Warming up...

Below are a series of sketches that I did to loosen up in preparation of redesigning the characters and style of my book. It's mostly a mish mash of hybrid animals, weird shapes and cute, patterned creatures.
The Takers themselves though, are monsters, and should be reflected as such. They need to be fantastical and insane and wonderful to look at, since they're the ones getting all of the coverage in the book. I've got quite a lot of time to play around with character design anyway so there will probably be a few pages like this in the coming weeks.
I also think that I'll be working with scanned pencil images and using very light, but bright, colours. Or perhaps barely any colours at all. I want more white in my book. I loved it in Wolf Won't Bite by Emily Gravett.
Also, some of the looser, sketchier images on this page work better, but I'm finding it really hard to work that way. I instinctively want to refine sketches and make characters three dimensional so that they can exist in a logical, though fantastical world. This really isn't necessary. I've got a tutorial tomorrow too, so if I can throw out a lot of designs in the meantime then maybe tomorrow we'll have a better idea of where we're going right or wrong. These characters were drawn on an a2 piece of paper with an HB pencil.

Feedback and moving forward...

So for my PMP I got a 58, which the tutors said was really good because moving from level 5 to level 6 is a real game changer, or something. That's fine, I'm cool with that. My main criticism is that my book might be looking too traditional, or flat or the characters aren't contemporary enough etc etc. This means I've been asked to spend two weeks pushing character designs, examining contemporary books for modern character design, thinking about changing up the scene rather than blending into it. I'm sort of relieved. It means I can start over. The story is the same, but there's no need to ground this in logic - my biggest burden. I can have it absolutely mental, and fuck, I SHOULD have it absolutely mental. Like, why the hell aren't the takers all designed to reflect their specific method of taking? This excites me. It can open up to a world of fantasy things that are just insane. The takers don't need to be identifiable by their species, the fact that they take is enough. So, pictoplasma. That stuff is great. I love it. Also the spirits from the Avatar world (not the blue avatar world, the AWESOME avatar world, as in the last airbender and the legend of Korra). There have been two episodes from the latest series of The Legend of Korra that blew my mind. Everything was perfect and gorgeous. Strange spirits and animal hybrids and all sorts. Oh yeah, on that subject, Lisa was quite into the idea of animal hybrids like some of the ones I did early on (a bear crossed with a deer and a cow). But I'm walking into dangerous territory here. I've gotta be careful not to emulate things that I love. So all that aside, I guess we're on to a new beginning here. I don't even need to finish my book (that's what Lisa said, and now it's written down, as evidence and shit). Also, Joel said that it should either be super stylised or grounded, not so much both. I think he said that anyway. It's hard to remember everything. I'm excited, but also exhausted. Too much socialising today. So for now I'm going to share with you some pictures of the spirits from The Legend of Korra and take a nap. Oh also, I suppose some of the later Pokemon were pretty incredible in their character design too. I think when I start I'll begin by looking at animals and seeing what weird variations I can create. Maybe.

NO NO NO silly girl...

Okay I'm pretty happy with this for now. I can at least start the next page in the story now, which will be following on from this example.

I've decided to cut the following lines "But the girl wasn't fooled" etc etc, because they aren't really essential and were screwing with the composition of this page, which now is all spoken text.
Think I'll remove that bird actually. Maybe. Yeah probably.

LOOKOUTAGAZZILLIONVERSIONSWITHTINYLITTLEDIFFERENCESINEACHONE!!!...

Ok so, things to note. I changed "he replied" or "she replied" to "silly girl" so that the entire thing is basically speech. That works better right? Good, I thought so. Now I still don't think this works gorgeously as a double spread, but when it's split up by the page border I think it will look like two very nice individual pages. Ummm what else? I mentioned before how these pages will get more interesting as time goes on because there will be more takers on each left hand page. I also want the girl to react to the text in some instances, you know, as if it's literally there, falling down upon her. Maybe. We'll see. I think we're getting close to sorting this page out though. Oh and I like the 2nd image from the top best. I like the font. I think the text works better without it following the sketchy roots of the cartoons. Not sure if I'm allowed to even use that font though.

Design plans...

So right at the start I sort of decided on having full double page spread illustrations for this book. This can make things a little complicated if there is a lot of information to convey but so far it's been working fine. However, I may go back to some of my earlier ones and make some pages spot illustrations rather than full bleed ones. Also, I've been working on this image below. I've already done that page but as discussed (at great and annoying length) with a friend, the NO NO NO page is like the hook for the kiddies and therefore it needs to stand out. So, in order to do that, it's gonna be just the characters in the conversation and hand written text. Also, as the story progress, the other takers will be in each new encounter. So by the final NO NO NO it will have all of the takers on the left hand page and the girl on the right. When I do that I want to have some of the takers start to look concerned at each new thing being questioned too. So for example, the first taker is confronted about using animals for food, but by the time he gets to, say, the taker who uses animals for their skins, I want him to show concern, like he's debating the ethics of such a practice. After all, just because the individuals agree with one thing doesn't mean they will agree with them all. This will make the pages a little more interesting and also create a good transition to the takers finally agreeing with the girl. BOOM.

Now, in regards to this picture, it's really REALLY difficult to position the images and the text, I've been doing it for hours now. Also, the way I do the hand-drawn text won't necessarily be anything like that, this is just a layout rough to see what's possible. Bloody tricky stuff though. I think I can make the image work better if I position the text in an aesthetically pleasing way first and then work my characters around that. It's gonna get crowded when there are more takers on the page too so I might want to shrink the characters down too. Here's a little progress since the above image. Didn't think it needed it's own post.