Colour Palettes

Colour is a huge part of children’s stories! However, I don’t feel the need to drown the book out with colour. After several different trips to the library and looking at online books and videos, I know now that I like a particular illustration style, which isn’t necessarily flooded with colour.

I aim to incorporate a certain amount of colour in my characters that makes them visually appealing to a child, but I like the idea of the background being more minimal. For my protagonist Gonzo, I want him to be a shade of brown. The colour palette below gives the feel of how I want him to be perceived.

For the character of Ruby I want to also incorporate browns and oranges. Ruby is a Robin and this will have to be acknowledged in her colouring in order to avoid confusion for the child. I have attached a palette below that represents this.

 

For the other parts of the story, I need to add more colour in order to be visually appealing for the children reading it. I have two human characters that make an appearance in one of the pages that I will colour prominently. The minimal background will also have colour, similar to the palette that I have attached below.

Additional prototype characters

As these are not considered characters in my book, I put less time into their designs as I did with Gonzo and Ruby. However, they did take me a couple of days to perfect on Adobe Illustrator. I used the style of illustration that I did with Gonzo and Ruby. I initially drew the little boy and felt that the prototype needed more than just Gonzo and a little boy, so I added in his mother also.

My favourite version of Gonzo

I found that one day, when I took a different sketching approach, I hit upon a Gonzo drawing that I LOVED! I shut down everything I had been previously looking at for character inspiration and just sat with a pen and paper and let it flow naturally.

I ended up with a very messy character that had a very odd shape and then began to experiment on illustrator with different lines, colours and facial features to find one that I felt best suited him. I spent 2 full days getting this character to the exact way I wanted him to be on Illustrator. I realised after this that time management is something I needed to work on in Phase 2 as allocating 2 days to one design under the time bracket I was under, could of been a little silly. However, Gonzo is my main character and creating him exactly how I wanted is very important to me.

I actually only realised afterwards that I may of sought subconscious inspiration for Gonzo from the ‘Chow Chow’. The size of this dog was always  on my mind.

Stanza Selection for Prototype

I wanted to select a stanza in the story that is ideally at the beginning of the book. I obviously will need Gonzo to be included in the prototype, and didn’t want it to be a part of the book in which people who are not familiar with my story wouldn’t understand. I selected the line

‘When people see Gonzo they get a big fright,

His owners think he can protect them at night.’

This is the second paragraph in my story. A big factor that influenced in picking this part was due to the fact that there is going to be a mother and son in the illustration. Up to now, I have always illustrated humans comfortably through the years, and I was worried that I would not enjoy drawing animals as much. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I found that drawing animals gives you a certain amount of freedom to draw shapes and designs that don’t fit the ideals.

 

What makes a good Children’s book?

I came across a couple of lovely websites that I thought I should blog about! One of the articles was called ‘What makes a good children’s book? It was a short and sweet write up that helped me to really think of the important factors in this process! I have included part of the article below.

What exactly makes a good children’s book?

So what’s the difference between a mediocre children’s book and a great one? As a bestselling children’s book author, here are the three criteria for a good children’s book.

1. Strong characters who evoke strong emotion

Good children’s books, no matter how simple or complex, offer a sense of joy.  They can make us laugh or cry by giving us a character we want to care about.

Think Curious George, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Berenstein Bears, Winnie the Pooh or even Fancy Nancy.

Even if a kid’s book doesn’t have that central character, the language itself needs to connect on an emotional level like Dr. Seuss’s fanciful texts.

2. A Story that Teaches

Good stories can teach simple concepts about numbers, letters or colors — OR they can teach about diversity, love, manners, and acceptance.

3. Mind-expanding illustrations, vocabulary or concepts

Great children’s book can tell just as much story through the artwork and offer an author the opportunity to expand young minds through interesting poetic language, fun alliteration, advanced vocabulary, etc.

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I also came across another EXCELLENT article that I enjoyed reading so much! I have attached the link to the site below for my own personal record also.

http://www.meghan-mccarthy.com/illustratorsguide.html

Facial Expressions

Every good character has a distinctive face. If we look at any well known cartoon throughout the years, we can tell their faces straight off.

I enjoy drawing different googly eyes and funny mouths. I obviously had to take into account that I am drawing for animals, so I took faces like Mickey Mouse and Scooby Doo as inspiration! I have attached some rough facial ideation below.

I then circled some of the expressions that I favoured the most and drew some rough designs on Adobe Illustrator!

 

My Illustration Style

After drawing Gonzo as typical different guard dogs, I realised that these dogs I have been drawing aren’t the type of illustrations I wanted in my book.

I spent the research phase of FYP doing very extensive research into books and other storytelling mediums which had the same type of theme, as well as those with visual styles that highly appealed to me. I also took home library books with illustration styles that I loved. I have attached some images below of pages in books that contains the illustration styles I intend to go with in the making of my book.

As I am a slight perfectionist, I feel that this style will really benefit me. It means I can be more open and draw in a way that is more free and open to creativity. I love illustrating and researching different styles. The way these characters and pages below are drawn really appeal to me. I think this style is just perfect for the eyes of children and will also suit my story particularly well also.

Names of these books include:

• Sheldon, The Anti-Oxidant Hero of Jaloonsville
• Thomas and the Fire
• Sweet Somethings

 

Storyline Feedback 3 (different Literacy Standards)

As my sister is a resource teacher in a Primary school, she had the opportunity to read the next draft of my story to two of her small classes, one of which is below the standard english reading level and the other who are above average. I felt this to be of huge advantage for me.

The higher level were able to completely read the story themselves, which I was very happy about. The children that were below average at reading were also able to read some lines and just needed help on some of the more difficult ones. My sister explained that this was very helpful as it provided an educational aspect where there was opportunity for them to learn new words and sounds. I was very content with this feedback as I was worried that the storyline might be of a standard too high. Both classes also loved the character of Gonzo even though it was just on paper. The found the name to be humerous and appealing.

 

Story Developments Explained

I am feeling fairly confident with my latest story draft, as I feel it really ties up loose ends.

There are several changes made in this draft, including entire sentences being altered. I made these changes for various different reasons.

• I wanted to create a better flow with the wording so it rolls off the tongue more.
• I wanted to make the story as grammatically correct as possible.
• I also had to alter certain lines that maybe mightn’t of fully made sense to a young child.
• There was parts of the story such as , ‘Little Ruby stood up and clapped aloud”, in which I altered to “Little Ruby flew down and chirped aloud”. The purpose of this particular change was to make the story more realistic. Dan made the observation during a meeting that a Robin would not sleep under a tree and it would chirp rather than clap.
• This is why I looked into parts of the story like this one in more detail. Overall, I am happy with where my story is right now, I feel I have made solid changes throughout the different drafts which resulted in it being vey much improved.

Story Draft 3

Gonzo’s the biggest dog you ever will see,

he’s tall and he’s large and very scary.

 

When people see Gonzo they get a big fright.

His owners think he can protect them at night.

 

But what people don’t know is that Gonzo is fearful,

when he hears loud noises, he starts to get tearful.

 

Spiders, mice and creatures with wings,

Gonzo is scared of all kinds of things…

 

Yet, Gonzo’s not scared of ruby the robin,

she’s always been there when he’s had a problem.

 

Ruby can tell when gonzo is stressed,

she is the one, who knows him the best.

 

One cold and rainy night in December,

Gonzo done something he’d always remember.

 

It was Late at night in the garden at home,

Gonzo felt frightened, scared and alone.

 

All of a sudden, he heard a loud noise,

he jumped and then stumbled over his toys.

 

What was it he wondered? He had no clue at all,

that Clancy Cat was climbing over the garden wall.

 

Gonzo crept out, to get a close look,

one glance at this beast and gonzo was shook.

 

With his devilish claws, and sharp jagged teeth,

he lurked towards the tree, where ruby was asleep.

 

Gonzo grew panicked as Ruby Robin was in danger,

he terribly feared this unwelcome stranger.

 

He decided to act, and held his head high,

ran at the intruder, who let out a cry.

 

Clancy cat grew alarmed and jumped back from its prey,

Gonzo stood tall, as he scurried away.

 

Little Ruby flew down and chirped aloud,

Gonzo had never felt so proud.

 

When she went back to sleep, Gonzo lay down and thought,

“look what good facing my fears has brought!”