I'm kinda late to this post but I just wanted to say you have an excellent style and portfolio! Great work!

@AthenaBeana I think there is certainly value in drawing the figure on a large piece of paper. Drawing something at a larger scale has improved my overall technique and allowed me to work on larger strokes instead of small ones, mainly using my wrist. While you can draw a human head at a relatively large size on a normal piece of paper, the human figure is much larger, which makes the larger paper helpful. Charcoal is not a requirement, but I've found that the medium helps me make large, quick strokes while figuring out the figure's gesture and encourages me not to focus too much on nodding at little details. I can understand not wanting to spend a lot of money on supplies. I would recommend getting some cheap large sheets of paper (like newsprint or even just 11x17 sheets if that is easier to come across) to experience drawing the whole figure at a larger scale. You can still do many of the drawings in your preferred size and medium, but doing a few large would be very helpful.

@mag hi mag, yes also like the hand drawn papery kind, maybe i will add some textures. thanks for the suggestion 🙂

@Yogita-Chawdhary Thank you! It's nice to know the point goal!

@Yogita-Chawdhary, yes, I like to be nekohues.😬 My site is mainly for shop, and it's in a different style than the work I do for portfolio. So i dont want to overwhelm people by looking at my work TvT ..

@jvartandillustration thanks for the tip! I like the idea of splitting the payment. And good to be reminded to not let yourself be taken advantage of. She hasn’t responded to my question about timeline or budget, so I’m assuming it won’t go further. But it was an interesting learning experience as I’ve never been in this position before 🙂

Hi Guys 🙂

I already think that your portfolio is good and you're on a really good way (and so fun that you're doing your illustrations together? I love it!) but there are a few things that I noticed. Take it with a grain of salt though because I work in the german market and it's a bit different from the american/british one!

So first thing that I noticed and it's the main one I think: You could work on the readability of your images. And what I mean with that: Values!

Take this picture for example:
Unbenannt.JPG

There are a few value problems in this one. One of the most important things that editors will look for in a picture is if the characters are readable - and I think especially with the girl there is a problem there. Because her hair isn't super dark and also her eyes have a medium value she doesn't stand out very much. The darkest part of the image is the hair of the boy and that gives the image kind of an unbalanced feel. A big problem ist that their feet almost disappear into the background. Maybe you could fix that with a a little bit of an outline? I think the girl would be an easy fix - just make her hairband really dark and also the eyes. (Eyes are always the most important thing for a character I feel) You could also use different values for the clothes of the boy, I think they are more or less the same value.
To give the image more depth I would also darken the roof of the pavillon - the outside and also the ceiling. This way the clock would stand out more and would make it super easy to see what the image is about at first glance.
Just for the sake of it you could also darken the upper part of the sky. (Always try and use the full range of values, that makes composition much more easy)

An easy hack for handling values (maybe you also know this one?) is using ctrl + y in photoshop. To make it go to black and white (sorry I have the german version so the english words might actually be different) you have to go to View -> Proof Set Up -> and then choose Dot Gain 20%. Then you can toggle between b&w and the colored image super easily 🙂

d3db4ea5-d665-4d14-9ddd-62444725d80e-image.png
In this one you have a similar issue. I don't want to make this post even longer but a few things that stood out to me: the snow on the pinetrees is very light and distracts from the character in the image because there is so much contrast. The characters on the other hand aren't really standing out and lack contrast. Maybe you could make the characters darker overall and then brighten their rim light? (so that the rim light is almost white would be the best I think) (And make the snow on the pinetrees darker) There are a few other areas that I marked that have little problems.
But i LOVE the colors in this one 🙂
There are also similar issues in the other images but I think that's enough value talk!

Another thing that stood out to me aside from the values was that a few of your character designs look a little bit two-dimensional in my eyes (but again - german market, so it might be different for you!)
Though I love the pigy chef and find him very adoring the big pigy-chef on the left lacks three-dimensional qualities. Funny enough the smaller ones are way more three-dimensional - so maybe you could leave out the big one? Ore draw the big one from a 3/4 view.
Willy Wonka also feels a little bit stiff to me.
But on the opposite I think that the grandpa and his granddaughter aren't lacking three-dimensionality at all. Maybe you could update the other ones?

Mini mini thing: In the german market your eyes would be too cartoonlike for the editors. I like them but maybe make sure there are similar eyes in the market that you want to enter! Eyes are really the most important thing in a character design and they matter a lot.

Last mini thing: For me your black&white images have a different feel to the other pieces in your portfolio. My portfolio started to have success in the industry when all my images had the same quality and feel - maybe you could get rid of the outlines in this one? (Or add outlines to all the other ones but that's probably way more work) But I love your outline style and you shouldn't put it aside forever!! Just put it in the drawer for now and wait until you're in the industry. When you had a few book deals then consistency won't matter as much 🙂 I think for editors (and agents) it's easier to understand you (and your personal brand) if you have one consistent style at the beginning.

I'm sorry that this was so long but I hope I can help you this way! Getting into the industry can be super frustrating and sometimes there are just a few tweaks you have to make. Your portfolio is wonderful and especially your colors and characters have such a warm feel to them. I think if you tweak a few of your images and step up the game just a little bit you will have no problems getting an agent! I wish you two all the best and hope you have the success that you deserve ♥

@Mariana-B thanks Marian a, I'm definitely going to go with my gut on this. An agent definitely seems to not be a quick fix, and in my case it wasn't a good fit.

@LisaF said in SVS office?:

we want to have a spot to showcase student work

You could have a page on the SVS website for a virtual bookwall with links to where the book is sold, or the artist's webpage (or social media).

@LisaF @Reb-Erlik Thank you so much for the information! Appreciate your help. 🙂

@ruth Hi Ruth and thank you so much for your kind comments! I love Birgitta Sif's illustrations, so I’m flattered by the comparison to her! That sequential art tip is great, and I’ve also listened to that podcast episode several times—maybe I’ll listen to it again now. 🙂

@kayleenartlover Love the witch idea. Thanks!

I discovered that Keynote works even better for storyboarding than I thought, if you have an iPad and Apple Pencil.

I should clarify that I am not only illustrating but writing a children's book so I needed something in which I could see both text and a sketched thumbnail in order to get a sense of the narrative flow and rhythm of the story. As I mentioned above, I ended up using Keynote (Mac's equivalent of powerpoint.) I customized the slide dimensions to be similar to my page dimensions and then put the draft text on each slide. I used the slide table to get a feel for how the text was working and added/deleted/or rearranged the "pages" (slides) to make the text work.

I also discovered today, however, that Keynote on the iPad allows you to draw directly on the slides so I am able to do the rough thumbnails right on each slide which is a very nice feature. (The drawing tools are very basic but my initial thumbnails are really rough so the tools are fine.)

Although I can't see specifically formatted double-spreads, I can see the thumbnails side by side to get a general idea of how it will look. (If I had a lot of double spreads, I would probably custom size the slides to the width of a double spread and draw the thumbnails for each side of the double spread instead of each page.)

Once I am happy with the text and initial sketch ideas, I will do more elaborate thumbnails for each page in Procreate and then can erase my really rough sketches and paste the final thumbnails into the slides.

All of this is probably an unnecessary method if you already have set text but it is really helpful to me as I am working on the narrative as well as the illustrations.

@TY-Graphics-LLC Wow. You are definitely more organized than I am! I have made swatch charts before but then I can't remember where I put them, especially if too much time goes by after making them. I obviously need a binder.

@Zachary-Schrage upon exploring your website I discovered your process video for a wolf illustration. Very well done and an excellent result.

@Pamela-Fraley Hi! Thank you for your reply! Yes, not sure still what “hybrid” means… and what is a “vanity press situation”?

Yeah, about the author/artist, it makes sense to have a dummy. In my case here I am sure it will be tossed away because the publisher will end up finding another artist to work with, for sure!

Thank you!

@menalkhan Yayyy so happy that you got some good info!

Great advice from @Mimi-Simon , and I think she figured out the best placement based on those panels. However, those panels aren't optimally planned with text in mind from the start. With the placement of the art, you kind of have no choice but to push the speech bubbles to the corner to make space. The first 4 panels have the text at the top above the art - which isn't ideal because the reader's eye tend to jump from text to text and if you create a straight line above the art between the bubbles, the reader will end up completely jumping over the art and not looking at it. Basically, I recommend spending more time at the thumbnail stage to plan sufficient space for both your art and speech bubbles! The bubbles are an integral part of the visual and need to be taken into account when planning your layout and composition.

Lastly, while I think your speech bubbles aren't too big, I think the text within could be just a smidge smaller so you have a bit more of a margin between the text and the edge of the bubble. Right now, the text isn't breathing so well inside the bubble because it's so close to the edges.

I hope this helps!

@Laurel-Aylesworth-0 Those types of publishing services or vanity presses want to offer authors an all-in-one service with a one-time fee, and make it as simple as possible, which is why they do a work for hire thing. While it's not standard in the traditional publishing industry and not advantageous for the illustrator, I'm pretty sure this company will consider it a deal breaker if you don't want to sign away your rights. So you have to decide if this is something you're comfortable with or not.