My First Picture Book Dummy Part 5 - Roughs

Part 1 - Concept And Inspiration
Part 2 - Writing
Part 3 - Thumbnails
Part 4 - Character Design 
Part 5 - Roughs 
Part 6 - Finals

After all the prep work was done for my picture book dummy came the best part, the drawing!

In my post on creating thumbnails for my picture book dummy I wrote about how I moved on from tiny thumbnail drawings to large ones which were really more like preliminary roughs as you can see below.

Preliminary Roughs

I used to do all my rough sketches by hand in a sketchbook and it involved sooooo much erasing and overdrawing. It seems some people just know where to put every line, but that's definitely not me. I'm the trial and error type.

My First Picture Book Dummy Part 4 - Character Design

Part 1 - Concept And Inspiration
Part 2 - Writing
Part 3 - Thumbnails
Part 4 - Character Design 
Part 5 - Roughs 
Part 6 - Finals

In preparation for this post I came to the realization that I did a terrible job at designing the characters for my picture book dummy, in the sense that I didn't.
I went back into my folders looking for my rough designs that I assumed that I had done while writing and thumbnailing and came up empty except for this:

My only character design sketches

That's it.

One pass of just the main character.

Impressive isn't it?

The #140characters140days Initiative

My character design is weak. There, I've admitted it. Now... how's yours? Not bad? Could be better? Well let's do something about it.

Starting October 1, 2013 I'll be creating one character design per day for 140 days and tweeting them each day using the hashtag #140characters140days. I'll also post a weekly roundup of my designs right here on my blog.

I'll also be scouring the intertubes for great character design resources and tweeting/posting those as well so we can all grow in our craft.

Please feel free to join in any time and make sure to use the hastag #140characters140days.

My First Picture Book Dummy Part 3 - Thumbnails

Part 1 - Concept And Inspiration
Part 2 - Writing
Part 3 - Thumbnails
Part 4 - Character Design 
Part 5 - Roughs 
Part 6 - Finals

In parts 1 and 2 of this series I wrote about my inspiration, concept, and writing process for my first picture book dummy that I'm putting together about a little girl with a pet tiger.

Using a spreadsheet for my writing was quite useful when I reached the thumbnailing stage. I already had it all laid out and separated according to each spread. Of course thumbnailing is it's own process and tweaks were made along the way.

Very rough thumbnails

The above thumbs are incredibly rough and likely readable only to me. They were done really quick to get down the compositions that I had in mind for each spread. Things were moved around several times at this point to get the visual pacing right. I did all these digitally within photoshop, which is how I typically sketch. I never nail things on the first pass and so I love the flexibility of working digitally.

My First Picture Book Dummy, Part 2 -Writing

Part 1 - Concept And Inspiration
Part 2 - Writing
Part 3 - Thumbnails
Part 4 - Character Design 
Part 5 - Roughs 
Part 6 - Finals

Last week in part one I wrote about how and why I decided to create my first picture book dummy. So then came the toughest part, the writing.

I knew that since I'm much less confident in my writing than I am in my drawing that it would be best to err on the side of simplicity. One day I might take a shot at wonderful rhyming prose like Julia Donaldson (The Gruffalo) but it will take a lot of work before I have the chops for that. At this point though, I still only had the idea of a girl having a pet tiger. Where to go from there?