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.