WEEK FIFTEEN - A

It was a slow start at the beginning of the break, but I am very grateful for Professor Mata's advice as her input helped me find a direction. After sending her my three styles I struggled with she gave me links to some other styles and approaches to drawing digitally.

Here is the response and email she sent me:

I think some of the problems you are having is that you are not building colors. Think of how you would use pastels you don’t just use one color to make brown you build up color. This will help create texture within your illustrations. Conte is a great way to work, it works well with textured paper or colored paper. I believe there is a way to make your paper more course in procreate. Otherwise, your concepts and compositions are working well. 

Here are some illustrators to look at.

https://www.printmesomecolor.com/2020/05/28/painting-in-procreate-how-to-paint-a-landscape/

 

https://www.instagram.com/kokooma_/

She uses textures in a wonderful way.

 

This link shows different styles

https://uxdesign.cc/10-inspiring-illustration-styles-from-the-best-illustrators-of-2020-89b42f08ba81

The first link on the tutorial of how to paint in Procreate is what helped me the most. I began to understand more how to build the colors and add texture. 

I started again with the ice cream igloo, but this time I focused on the layering of colors (I also decided to do spreads so I had more room). 

While I think things were getting better, I still was not happy with the end result. I still wasn't seeing the texture and the contrast was not there either. So I worked back into the piece again really focusing on the layering of color to create depth (I also used a pastel tool too).

I now felt confident in my direction and so throughout the break, I continued to work on completing more spreads while keeping my style the same. 

Here are the ones I have completed so far:

My goal is by Thursday to have all of the spreads complete and then work on the covers, end pages, and title page (I'm thinking of a night sky cloud pattern to reinforce the dream, night-time feeling).

THANKSGIVING BREAK

For Week Fourteen we are off for Thanksgiving. I am going to continue to work on my short story and I will update my blog on December 1st with what I have completed. 

THREE REFINED PAGES

I completed my three refined pages, but I'm struggling with building a scene and working out a texture.

While I think I did a better job of creating a foreground and background, I felt I was missing the texture with the igloo. So, I moved to Adobe Fresco and tried a Conte crayon which worked well. I also wanted to try using a watercolor brush and using a pen for detail, but I really struggled with adding the detail.

I reached out to Professor Mata for help because I’m not sure which the direction to go in. 

WEEK THIRTEEN - B

I started by finishing up what I was working on through Procreate. 

I made the entire scene brown And then used a lighter shade in the soft yellow for some highlights. I kept a majority are the same brown to relate to the color but this way it wasn’t just white for everything else. While I think the colors and Setting are effective, I feel like I’m missing texture. Any other examples I showed in the previous week, the books had layers in color, patterns, material texture. Well the brush I chose on Procreate has some dryness to it, it’s not as much as I was hoping. 

I researched, trying to find other brushes that have some texture on Procreate but none of them that I could find for free.

 I remember learning about Adobe fresco on the Adobe Max event so I download the app and tried with that. There was able to find and download a bunch of brushes and I played around for a while trying to find different textures. While this isn’t a finished piece I took a screenshot just to compare the texture from pastel to the dry ink from Procreate.

I reached out to Professor Mata And she said it’s OK that for my three developed pages/spreadsand she said it’s OK that for my three developed pages/spreads I can do three different scenes in three different styles so I can figure out what I want to do for the entire story.

WEEK THIRTEEN - A

 Think I have a direction I haven’t found exactly what I want to do yet. Frames from my storyboard and started drawing.

 I tried to not focus on the color first and more of the subject but I didn’t like how everything just was white besides the one color. I have a picture in my head of what I’m thinking but I wasn’t sure exactly what it was so I went back to Pinterest to collect my ideas and try to find something similar to what I’m thinking. Here is more of the concept I’m going for with having an overall color for the ceiling and then a secondary or tertiary colors for focus and support.

I’m going to work back into the igloo drawing revisiting the color and trying my best to create more of a scene and go forward from there on the other two and that way when I start the final versions I have a clear idea (hopefully) the style.

WEEK TWELVE - B

 I finished up a rough sketch for my storyboard. I think I have a more clear idea of how I want my short story to look. I’m going to stick to each page being a color. The drawings will most likely be adjusted and changed as I work on developing them further for this week. 

I started to work out some ideas for the cover as well as the start and end of the book. I want to talk to my mom some more about how she thinks she would begin the book since this is more of being written in her perspective.

WEEK TWELVE - A

After working out a script I began to work out the visual storyline. I started by making a grid of boxes. I know we need some extra elements such as covers and title pages, but I just wanted to start out with the content. I still need to work out a clear start and ending to the story. I want something along the lines of sharing some dream ideas (and after their all read) now close your eyes and dream of some of your own. 

From the research done last week, I found a lot of inspiration (from one of my favorite childhood books) Brown Bear, Brown Bear. I don't want this story to just be a list of some silly things to dream, but also have another value to it. I decided to connect each scene to a specific color.  

The style will be something similar to this where the see use of color becomes a focal point:

Here's a link to my Pinterest: https://pin.it/PutcOuv

I got a handful of the scenes roughly sketched out. I don't have a specific color for the Balancing Boats so I may make them orange and not include the Kissing Kangaroos... not sure yet. I also need to work on building a sense of foreground and background so my subject doesn't look like they're just floating on the page. I've struggled with this before in other Illustrations I've tried to do. While the two photos above aren't great examples, the book Goodnight Already does a great job of building a place for the bear and duck.

WEEK ELEVEN - B

The next step was to build the script. My first thought was to have everything rhyme as I myself enjoyed reading rhyming books as a kid. I wasn't sure where to begin, so I started Googling some ideas. Through my search, I actually found a blog that is against rhyming books. The article stated that rhyming can be challenging to do especially with not making it a cliche and if the book is translated into different languages, the rhyming is lost.

 https://papajfunk.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/tips-for-writing-picture-books-dont-write-in-rhyme/

I reached out to my Mom for some help on coming up with the scenes especially because this story is inspired by her. Here is the script I submitted on D2L:

WEEK ELEVEN - A

Today we were introduced to our final assignment. We have two options to choose from: a development of mythical characters or a short story. I was leaning toward the characters at first but after reading through the short story assignment some more I started to formulate some ideas. 

Short Story

I began my brainstorming and research. I know I want to write my own story and I want it to be more of a children's book. Professor Mata gave an example of No, David by David Shannon which I actually loved to read as a kid. I wanted to find more style and storyline examples, however, I couldn't find the full copies of the books without buying them. I had the idea then to look at Youtube and see if I could find some read-along videos of people reading the full books to kids. I found these two channels below. 

I clicked through some of their videos and Googled some books I remember reading as a kid to collect some more ideas. Here are some of the books that have a style or a storyline that I'm leaning towards. 

I want to focus on textures and the characters. Besides Creepy Pair Of Underwear, the backgrounds are more of a secondary element compared to the characters which is a similar style I want to use (I added Creepy Pair Of Underwear because of its use of the green color as the only color besides greys). I'm Not Just A Scribble is one of the more unique stylistic approaches I found with its mix of analog drawings, photographs, and digital additions. 

I continued to think of a storyline. I tried to find inspiration as I went but I wanted to also reflect on my childhood and what I enjoyed. I thought about maybe using finger paint in a similar way as I'm Not Just A Scribble, a story with animals and numbers, and then I thought about goodnight books. 

I remember my mom used to sing me the chorus (I'm not sure if she knew all of the words) of Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight by The Spaniels. So my idea was then to do a goodnight book of a little girl (maybe an animal) trying to fall asleep but she kept finding an excuse (such as I need a glass of water, or there are monsters under the bed, etc) and her mom would keep saying, goodnight sweetheart. I thought it was a pretty sound idea but then I got a little worried if the goodnight sweetheart would come off too similarly as the annoyed goodnight already. 

I continued thinking and then I remembered that when I couldn't fall asleep my mom would sit by my side and give me things to dream about until I fell asleep. Sometimes they were more practical like hot air balloons or kittens, but other times they were more silly like cotton candy clouds and bubble gum rivers. Merging my two ideas together I am going to make a goodnight book filled with ideas of dreams to dream.