Making a New Book - Documenting my own process
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Finding Reference
It may not be the most interesting stage (so feel free to skip this part) but after I read the manuscript and find out what characters are required, I will head over to google images and grab some random photos for reference. As this book requires a ladybug, a frog and a duck I save a collection of images of real life creatures and of designs that others have explored. Some people are concerned that looking at other designs may influence their work too much, but I believe that seeing what works and what doesn't is a great starter for when you start your own thumbnails. By the time you have gathered referenced and sketched out a bunch of ideas your character should be something that reflects your own style regardless of your research.
After I have enough material, I will do some quick sketches of the images I find to be most interesting or useful. Quick and messy is key as they are just an exercise to help with muscle memory! I try to use whatever paper is on hand as it keep me from wanting to refine it too much and will often throw it away when I have got from it what I need. This was the case for the ladybug and the duck (most of the ducks got covered in starbucks coffee anyhow) but I did the frog digitally as I wanted to understand their movement and anatomy a bit better.
As well as researching character designs, I will also do some research on architecture/nature/landscape etc based on what is required. The first spread in the book includes a quaint house for the ladybug, so I focused on cottage designs and cozy little houses and well as what items could be used as a makeshift house, such as acorns, soda cans and cardboard.
*this is a small selection of some of the images I looked at
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Wow. This is great Gary! Thanks for taking the time to do this. I've always been a fan of the "behind the scenes" and will be following along.
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Character and Design Concept Sketching
The 2nd step is to sketch up some initial character designs. As ladybug and the frog are both the main characters I want to focus on them first. Initially I just play around with random shapes and see what evolves from them, the images below are actually the first pass from those initial doodles which get drawn over, erased or pushed around and then refined more in the 2nd stage (2nd image). I will also consider how the design of the character evokes their personality. Sometimes there may not be anything special or specific written about their personality in the manuscript, so consider what actions they take or how they react to situations in the book. I try to give some of the characters accessories, such as scarfs, glasses or backpacks as well as clothing, but all of these can be mixed and matched or explored further later on.
The Ladybug
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Smart
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Confident
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Kind
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Considerate
These are the main features that I felt the character required. However, in the initial sketches I don't want to be tied to these concepts, but I still want to have them in the back of my mind
The Frog
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Happy
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Supportive
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Kind
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Smart
The frog is quite similar in personality to the ladybug, but I want to keep his design different, yet feel like they can be good friends.
The Duck
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Panicky
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Crazy
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Quick to jump to conclusions
The duck is my favorite character in the book as he is the most different. I want to make him the funny looking one, who is always a bit ruffled.
The House
It's only seen in the first page, but that doesn't mean it's not worth spending the time to research and create a good design of. The manuscript says that it is a quaint little house, so I played with 6 concepts that might fit this theme.
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Thank you for sharing your process and lovely sketches, very interesting to see. I always begin with research as well and use pinterest to store images for reference use. How do you cope with time pressure and deadlines? When I am illustrating I feel like I am trying to balance time pressure and quality of work, for example how much time to spend exploring different design ideas etc. and when to just push on with the work?
Illustrator & Visual Artist
https://hakepe.myportfolio.com/ -
@Gary-Wilkinson Such fun houses! I love the snail shell and broccoli!
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Thank you for sharing your process. Your process is what I try to instill in my art students, especially those that want to just dive in to the "final art". They just don't want to do the research despite showing my artistic process. I plan to share your process with them as well to show them I'm not the only crazy one! LOL
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@hakepe I'm quite fortunate that my recent books haven't had any tight deadlines so I can mostly work on it at my own pace, however for work that needs to be done quickly I would write out a time plan first. Once you can gauge how fast or long it might take you to complete something you will feel more comfortable dealing with those deadlines.
@miranda-hoover The snail house was my favorite, but it made the scale of things too unbalanced and didn't work with the composition I wanted to do so we ultimately went with the cardboard house.
@mrsdion In the past was of the same mind to rush to the final painting, but I had so many occasions where I would have to backtrack or restart things as the foundation wasn't properly built first.
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Idea Thumbnails
Once I have the character designs complete I will start focusing on the sketches for each page. My initial doodles are either on scraps of paper or tiny digital sketches and I try to avoid as much detail as possible. In this way I can see quickly whether a composition works and whether the painting reflects the story. The point is to keep things simple, quick and throw around a bunch of ideas to see where things go.
When I feel that a sketch is working I will go over it again with a little more detail (image 2) but i'm still just focusing on basic shape. As I add more an more to a concept it becomes clearer as to whether it fits in and if I choose to redo it then I don't lose much time.
In image 3 I go over the sketch again adding in the characters and finally adding a some light and shadow. This stage gives a lot more life to the project and the path to getting a final concept is a step closer. However, I still need to do 1 more pass over before I consider the idea complete, but by this point the foundation is becoming much stronger.
As a bonus here is a concept sketch for the tick design that is needed in one of the spreads, the process is most the same, sketch small with a big brush and refine down.
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@Gary-Wilkinson Nice! All the best!
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@Gary-Wilkinson Really nice work Garry.
its great seeing your process, you characters ideas are great. -
This is really good @Gary-Wilkinson! Thank you for taking the time to share your insights!
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Light and Shadow Studies
When I'm happy with the concepts i'll send them over to the publisher to get them approved and I'll begin to refine them and add in more detail. Most of the designs stayed mostly the same, however I wanted to redo spread 7 as the composition felt too similar to spread 6. I also needed to adjust spread 11 as the stories in the newspaper needed to have an uneven coverage.
To get a better sense of the scene I add some light and shadow, which adds some life to the sketches. These studies will be used as reference as I move into the next stage of adding color and when I wish to check my values later on.
My next step will be to do some quick color studies and then finalize the sketches so that they are ready for the final painting.
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I love this! Your marks remind me a bit if Will Terry’s pencil works. So good!
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@Gary-Wilkinson This is so amazing! Thank you for sharing your process! Really appreciate it!
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.-
Were you given any illustrator notes before starting this project? If not, did you ask for any?
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Is the first thing that the publisher sees from you? All previous decisions of character design, style etc. were made by you personally?
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Did you do the value studies in thumbnail size? That's a lot of clean detailing and texture!
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Is there a reason you use a tint in your studies as opposed to B&W?
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Thus whole post is so good!! Love your characters. Getting to see your process is amazing too.
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Thanks for sharing this Gary! This is very helpful and enjoy seeing your approach!! Keep up the great work!
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Very cool man! Quick question on size on the thumbs - there's still what looks to me like a fair amount of detailed marks on the last step you posted (Light and Shadow Studies). Are you completely redrawing each of these at a larger size for the final detail and painting? Or are you doing the thumbs really zoomed out and you're working on the "final" sizes at this point?
Thanks for posting all these!
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- No notes exactly, I have worked with this publisher/author before and gives me quite a bit of freedom in how I work.
- I initial send character concept sketches and then idea thumbnail sketches of the concepts, these value studies are the last step before focusing on the final paintings.
- The value studies were of a larger size so not really thumbnails at this point, but I still try to keep things simple. You could do these as thumbnails too, but I wanted to refine the sketches anyhow so I blended both processes. @jdubz
- No reason, just a personal choice. I have done them b+w, bluish tints etc in the past. As long as I get the information I need it doesn't matter so much.
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@Gary-Wilkinson said in Making a New Book - Documenting my own process:
I initial send character concept sketches and then idea thumbnail sketches of the concepts
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How many character concept sketches do you send? Do you give them an option or do you send the ones you've chosen and just tweak them based on feedback?
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Is the thumbnails with the yellow highlights in the previous thread what you shared with them?
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Do you share these with the whole team or just the AD privately?
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Have you maintained the same process since your first book with them?
I'm just starting work on a big project and have been given full freedom to work as well. They've given me a deadline for the sketches but I'm wondering if I should share my character sketches and rough thumbnails with the AD first?
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@Gary-Wilkinson Ah gotcha. I had just started thinking about this in a project I'm working on right now. I had made small thumbnails and then redrew them at the larger size and I felt like it lost something in translation between. I had thought to maybe do them at the same size but just zoom out so that I'm refining all that energy from the sketches once I was happy with a basic comp.
