My First Picture Book Dummy Part 6 - Finals

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

I've lapsed in my writing of this series for a few weeks because I was on holiday and was trying to work as little as possible, but I suppose that's it's own blog post.

I mentioned in a previous post in this series that I still have a few roughs to finish before my book dummy will be complete. This hasn't stopped me from moving ahead to finish some of the final spreads. I was getting stuck on the last roughs and it was frustrating so I followed a piece of advice I got long ago that I often turn to. The advice is this, "Do what you know first, the rest will work itself out after". This is usually applied within one drawing, but can also be used in a bigger project.

In the case of my book dummy it's my hope that seeing a few finished pieces will help inspire me to push through those last problematic roughs, and help to inform them as well.

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?

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?

My First Picture Book Dummy, Part 1 - Concept & Inspiration

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

Although it feels like I'm just getting started in my illustration career (will it ever stop feeling that way?) I've actually been doing it for quite a while now, over 7 years in fact. I've had many fun projects along the way but it has begun to feel like I was over due in focusing in on my big goal of becoming a published picture book illustrator.

Inspirations for my picture book dummy

Alas, the only offers I've received for children's book illustration have been from self publishers. While I'm quite flattered by the offers, I also want to be paid for my work since that's the professional part in professional illustrator. So I felt it was a good time to start creating my own picture book. A couple things helped me come to this conclusion.