as i mentioned in the last post- when was that? 2 months ago? oops...i've been working on a picture book. i'm having a pretty good time with it and i did get permission to post pictures, so i'll roll out what i can as i go.
thought it would be interesting to see the process of a particular layout. it's genesis to completion.
here's my initial "thumbnail" rough draft first impression for the spread. aneel, the main character, is meditating in a headstand with incense smoke wafting in the air. he is recalling stories told to him by his grandparents of their early life in india which is hinted at in elements in the smoke. i went with a close up here knowing that in the next spread i would show the grandfather in a headstand later. by going close up here, i could see his sweet expression and also focus in on the swaying palm trees and rice fields represented in the incense smoke. the black boxes were my first impression of where the text would be placed.
here i did a more refined rough that eventually went to the art director and editor to view as part of my initial package of layouts for their perusal. i wanted to refine some proportions as well as include some details only hinted at in my personal thumbnails.
the art director and editor came back to me wanting to actually see aneel in his headstand which i understood. so to do so, i needed to open up the composition to show his full height which meant showing more of the room. i submitted this layout to them, but i knew in my head that i was not quite satisfied with this spread...
...so i came back to them with this. different perspective. dutch angle. (an angle that is slightly tilted from a straight horizon) this composition, to me, had more life to it. it also showed aneel larger in frame and we see more of the village scene in the incense smoke. at this point, i was starting to clarify my character design and putting him in different positions. i was feeling things were coming together now.
but there were still a few more tweaks. knowing that the grandparents play a part in the initial storytelling, they suggested having the grandparents in the scene. my thought was that the image might get crowded and the grandparents show up on the next page, so we went with family portraits up on the wall. we have one of the family unit and another of the grandparents. the subtle suggestion is that the grandparents weren't there initially, but came to live with them later on.
final image. (almost) the last suggestion was to try and highlight the grandparents so i made the frame around them in a darker shade. with more contrast so that it would pop more than the other family portrait. there was some last minute debate on whether the grandparents would be living among rice fields or sugar cane fields. this was dependent on which part of the country they were to be set. as of this post, it was undecided, so the village scene in the incense smoke has not been drawn in.
as of this writing, i'm getting close to finishing. which is why the lack of posts. i'll try better if i can lift my head up and away from my drawing board long enough and hope to have more images scanned soon. (a wink and a nod to my friend who offered to help me with that :)
"Hot, Hot Roti" from Lee & Low Books