Nana character design for new book dummy project
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These are very well done!
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These are lovely! I instantly care about Nana and am a little sad about how it appears the story will end! Nicely done.
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The first finished (?) illustration. I need a couple of days distance, and any feedback or improvement suggestions in this time would be highly welcome! I always think the drawings look better than the finished illustrations...but I do not think I see things objectively after 20 hours painting....
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Oh that is gorgeous. It truly is... I really love the pink/green colour scheme, it's really striking and I think just the right choice for this fantastical (heavenly?) story...it gives just the right level of grandma's closet/vintage green/fantastical journey sort of feelings (if that makes any sense!) Beautifully drawn, beautifully painted - don't change a thing! It is just perfect as it is. I really want to read the whole story - and buy the book!
EDIT - okay wait there is one thing
Nana and the two butlers, their faces are perfect...but the fourth face, the little girl more shaded in green - her eyes are like button eyes, stylised, whereas the other three have 'real', accurately drawn eyes. It might be better if the girl's eyes were more consistent with the others. But that is the only thing in a sea of wonderful painting.... -
Wow, such beautiful drawing and rendering. Really inspiring work!!!
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I think the painting looks amazing!
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@Dulcie Thank you very much Dulcie! Your opinion means a lot to me! Ah, the girl in the hat. I re-did her face three times already. At first it was a real lady with realistic feature. Then I wanted to have her as a doll (the tea-party alludes to the doll's tea parties Nana and Emma had, and the next spread is Emma having a tea party alone). But I agree with you it looks creepy and out-of-place: the proportions are not right. One idea that I had is to re-draw all characters apart from Nana as dolls or stuffed toys (including the butlers). I did a sketch like that, but the image of Nana with giant dolls and teddy bears looked like it belonged to a different story.
I think I will re-paint the lady in the hat as a doll-like real woman again, as you suggest and leave it at that (apart from correcting the other million mistakes that I see the day after, of course).
There are two manuscripts in discussion for this story, and this illustration may not fit at the end anyhow.One question I have is about Emma (the little girl at the front). The idea is that Emma would be present in all illustrations where Nana talks about her dream-like journey, but be almost a monochromatic sketch - not a real part of the scene. That would be inverted in the end, with Nana becoming monochromatic and "not really there" in scenes where Emma starts playing again. I was not sure I could pull it off in spreads (more confident in vignettes). What do you think?
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Ah, that makes sense (that at one point she was a doll)....when looking at it I did wonder, at one point, whether the girl was a doll - so that definitely came across! - but from the context, her size, etc, I thought that she could not be. I agree that it would be an easier read if she were 'real' like the other people in the scene.
Hmm, your idea to have both Emma and Gran present in all scenes and invert them at the end, with the colouring, will be a tricky thing to pull off. It is a very clever idea, and I like that, but I think it weakens the emotional part of the story in a way - because if Emma is present in every scene with Gran, why would Gran need to write a letter? And I think you need a distance between them, to cement the idea that even though Gran is far away, she is still out there, somewhere, and loves Emma very much.
I think you could present Emma in the story, as a main character, but I think you would need to have them in separate scenes, perhaps with them taking turns to write letters to each other...eg Emma could write something like 'I miss you. I've made the teddy bears picnic for you/got you some tea with your favourite rose-printed teacup'' and Gran replies that she'd love to but she's off on her latest adventure, etc. Then you would have a back and forth going throughout the book. This is obviously just one way out of many ways you could structure it. But that way it would give Emma a voice and a way to express her feelings about Gran not being there any more.
Full disclosure - I have about 6 ideas for picture book stories, and one of them was very similar in concept - I have a lot of colourful, slightly rebellious and interesting relatives and I always imagined that they would not let death stop them having adventures. So I had an idea for a granny-saying-goodbye type of book, talking about all the places she was going to visit on her way to the stars. It will probably never happen, and if it did it would certainly be different (as so many stories turn out to be defined by how they tell the story, not the story itself). I still have a few stories left which I haven't seen anywhere else yet, so those are top of my list, well ahead of the ones I'd have to re-work to be more 'different' to those I've seen already
So maybe I'm biased, but out of all the story ideas you've presented here so far - this one is my favourite and I think it looks very, very publishable!
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@Dulcie Oh wow, I am sorry we had a similar idea - I also felt like my grandmother would have celebrated life even in death and she was (is) the inspiration behind this project. My agent felt was one of the most "pitch-able" of the ideas I shared with her...which is not stopping her from destroying every draft I send her. I am still waiting for her response on the last one I shared....which may bring me back to square one on the illustrations, but that's life.
She also said that there are a million books about the loss of a relative/pet/favorite toy/mom/dad and that originality really depends on approaching it from a new enough angle. On this tone, the book "Grandad's Island" from Benji Davies is also tacking the same topic in a different way.
Thank you for your feedback on this one, I will definitely change that lady - and also reconsider how to handle the Emma/Nana relationship. It is an exchange of letters (Emma writes back to express her feelings) and they have alternate spreads. Again, it all depends how this draft fares compared to the alternatives (which are told only from Emma`s point of view). -
Oh, no worries - firstly, there are more ideas where that came from…Also, like you said there are many books out there already tackling this topic. And most importantly - you really deserve a book being published, because your art is so accomplished and you devote so much time and energy trying to get there. So I really hope that this one gets past all the hurdles to publication - I will be in the queue to buy it!
Oh, it sounds great that it is an exchange of letters with Emma on alternate spreads…I looked back at the previous sketches to try and work out what the structure was, but I wasn’t sure.
Yes, I have Grandad’s Island as part of my own picture book collection, it’s again a very well-conceived book, both readable and poignant. My five year old son loves it - but I know that he only sees the ‘literal’ story, and the fun idea about going on a voyage to a tropical island - he has no idea that it is about death. I wonder if one day when he’s older, he’ll berate me for allowing him to cheerfully love a story about death and loss, and saying goodbye - will it feel like innocence destroyed when he works out the double meaning? Or maybe that will just be a part of growing up.
Anyway, will look forward to seeing/hearing more with your progress on this
