Production Work Report 7

Well the workspace on my floor is becoming crowded! In the last week I've been experimenting with the best way to draft the compositions for my book and what colors to use.

I started traditionally by sketching in my notebook. I came up with some new ideas for the first few pages of the book and jotted down some ideas for the art style and texture effects I might want to use.

Throughout the book, I want there to be fun and unique transitions between pages along with a consistent color scheme that reflects the tone of the story beats. I kept having to jump between my computer to my iPad to my hand drawn notes to keep track of my ideas and finally decided it was time to finalize the compositions in one place. I made and printed those two columned outlines and started on the storyboard. I also printed out the original draft of the book to keep track of the pages and take notes.

I've continued to work on the color scheme and how to express the characters feelings throughout the book. I'm planning to have a decrease in saturation and color for the sadder moments and more energetic/chaotic colors and compositions for the exciting ones.

I've continued to screenshot or take pictures of art that I find interesting and can incorporate in the book. Here are some of the pictures I've been collecting in my "Children's Book" folder on my phone.

Strangely enough, I picked up a quilting book a while back and have been taking a lot of inspiration from it. It has some really interesting color combinations and I love how the images are primarily large blocks of colors, but has the intense details of the fabric patterns and the patterned stitching.

I've had a book of Mattie Lou O'Kelley's artwork that I've been looking forward to referencing as well. Similar to the quilts, the cartoon style with interesting patterns and details is really appealing to me. These are the pages I have bookmarked.

I've been creating my color pallets that I'll be using and experimenting with patterns as well. Next week I'll be continuing to work on the actual book pages. I've begun blocking out a couple pages and messing around with different brushes on Procreate. Here is a page I color blocked out and what it looks like after trying different brush techniques.

It's far from being the quality of illustration I want for the book, but it's been fun experimenting! Excited to continue working on this!