Research: Illustrating Children's Books.
Salisbury, Martin. 2004, Barrons Educational Series Inc. 'Illustrating Children's Books: creating pictures for publication."
NB: All animals I'm going for are either domestic or urban, as such fairly common sights. Movements for the cats is something I'm used to (having had pet cats all my life), foxes as well I'm fairly confident on getting right (as from having observed them before they move a bit like a cross between a cat and a dog), raccoons I'll need to research though (youtube for videos of movement? Otherwise photo references).
I really like this style of bold images (circled above), might be neat to look into ways of replicating digitally?
I'm really liking the idea of digitally mimicing a print based style, I think using blocks of colour to create the illustrations for this book could be quite striking. Will have to have a play around in SAI and see what can be done.
So good idea to sketch as many thumbnails and roughs of the characters as I can to get drawing them as consistent as possible BEFORE I start the final images for the book. Still need to be carefull and not repeat previous mistakes and spend too long waffling over the character designs. It's important, but I still need time to MAKE the images and get it printed!
NB: Keep in mind this is directed at kids, character design should be non-threatening considering the topic. Cuddly toys?
Actually might be just what we need.
I think anthropomorphic characters might be almost too human considering the topic. Using animals gives a bit of distance from the loss that more humanoid figures might not. Facial expressions and style would be a good way to counter them being too distant however.
Need to consider the typography for this one very carefully, I'd like to mix it into the actual illustrations (like the ones circled below) rather then having it set off to the side. Hand rendered?
the page layout would be effected by the style and envolvment of the text. Need to work this stuff out pretty quickly really.
Salisbury, Martin. 2004, Barrons Educational Series Inc. 'Illustrating Children's Books: creating pictures for publication."
NB: All animals I'm going for are either domestic or urban, as such fairly common sights. Movements for the cats is something I'm used to (having had pet cats all my life), foxes as well I'm fairly confident on getting right (as from having observed them before they move a bit like a cross between a cat and a dog), raccoons I'll need to research though (youtube for videos of movement? Otherwise photo references).
I really like this style of bold images (circled above), might be neat to look into ways of replicating digitally?
I'm really liking the idea of digitally mimicing a print based style, I think using blocks of colour to create the illustrations for this book could be quite striking. Will have to have a play around in SAI and see what can be done.
So good idea to sketch as many thumbnails and roughs of the characters as I can to get drawing them as consistent as possible BEFORE I start the final images for the book. Still need to be carefull and not repeat previous mistakes and spend too long waffling over the character designs. It's important, but I still need time to MAKE the images and get it printed!
NB: Keep in mind this is directed at kids, character design should be non-threatening considering the topic. Cuddly toys?
Actually might be just what we need.
I think anthropomorphic characters might be almost too human considering the topic. Using animals gives a bit of distance from the loss that more humanoid figures might not. Facial expressions and style would be a good way to counter them being too distant however.
Need to consider the typography for this one very carefully, I'd like to mix it into the actual illustrations (like the ones circled below) rather then having it set off to the side. Hand rendered?
the page layout would be effected by the style and envolvment of the text. Need to work this stuff out pretty quickly really.
