Tag-Archive for » Birth of a Book «

April 23rd, 2009 | Author: admin

Time for setting. As stated earlier, I want something simple for This Tree is for Me. The main focus should be on the characters and their interaction with one another, not the setting. However two elements play an important part in the store and have to be given proper consideration: The Tree and the Sea. Also, I decided to implement some textures into the image and since they fell through working for characters, the background is where I tried them. Here is my favorite sketch for setting:

Setting for This Tree is for Me

Next up: Layout sketches.

Category: Birth of a Book, Illustration | Tags: Add new tag, Birth of a Book, Children's Book, children's book illustration, children's illustration, Children's Writing, Illustration, Orange Monkey, Purple Fish, writing for children, writing for kids | 2 Comments

Birth of a Book Part 7: Curveballs

April 02nd, 2009 | Author: admin

This week I worked on coloring my characters for This Tree is for Me. The original idea was to use patterns from nature to bring the characters to life. I stuck to the plan. Taking the line drawings I produced, I added in color and texture as a test. The following is the result:

Purple Fish Textures Test

Orange Monkey Textures Test

While the textures turned out OK, something was missing. I tried natural textures, manmade textures, geometric textures, etc. but nothing seemed to fit just right. After struggling, I realized why. The lines didn’t want a texture. They were too playful and loose to support them. In the end, Orange Monkey just didn’t look Orange Monkeyish enough and Purple Fish? Well, he was a bit Fishy. I was about to give up when on a whim I applied the same color style as I used in Moo-Pig and in many illustrations on this site. Both Monkey and Fish loved them. I enjoy this technique it shows in my work when I use it. Here is the sketch I came up with:

Orange Monkey and Purple Fish in Colorfulticity.

This works much better. I still plan to implement the textures into the illustrations, but they will be used in the setting. This is a curveball in my plan of attack on the book, but I always follow the illustrations where they may go. It’s always important to me to listen to the story, to the characters, and give them what they need to be successful.

Category: Birth of a Book | Tags: Art, Birth of a Book, Children's Book, children's book illustration, Children's Books, children's illustration, Children's Writing, How to write a book for children, Illustration, Orange Monkey, Purple Fish, This Tree is for Me, writing, writing for children, writing for kids | Leave a Comment

Birth of a Book Part 6: Purple Fish gets the Orange Monkey Treatment

March 26th, 2009 | Author: admin

This week Purple Fish gets the same treatment as Orange Monkey. I produced a sketch of possible poses for him while using a build done in illustrator. I tried to replicate some of the same poses in the Orange Monkey sketch. My immediate response is that Purple Fish will be a harder creature to build character and maintain variation. He is less intricate than Orange Monkey. My response to this will be to be creative in how he is used. I will place him in situations and put objects around him to give him maximum expression of character with his simple look. This means a majority of his character will be defined later in the processes. I have also explored the possibility of adding eyebrows. Following is the initial character study of Purple Fish:

Purple Fish

Category: Birth of a Book | Tags: Art, Birth of a Book, Children's Book, children's book illustration, Children's Books, children's illustration, Children's Writing, Illustration, Orange Monkey, Puppet, Purple Fish, This Tree is for Me, writing for children, writing for kids | One Comment

Birth of a Book Part 5: Establishing an Illustration Engine

March 19th, 2009 | Author: admin

Down to the nitty gritty of illustration. I like to establish a platform or “engine.” The engine is what will drive the illustrations. It will allow me to create effective, print ready graphics that are easy to build and edit, lend themselves to consistency and push the project to its limits in terms of what it can be. To illustrate this project, I am using Adobe Illustrator. I chose illustrator because it fits nicely with the types of images I want to create. I will be able to scale images up and down without having to redraw them or lose any resolution and drop in colors and textures easily.

My first step in establishing the engine with Illustrator is to create a method to simulate the lines I have envisioned for this project. For this example, I will use Orange Monkey. I had originally planned to use a straight, consistent line. However, while doing the sketches I realized that a jittery quick stroke would work best. I decided to simulate the sketch lines in illustrator. I was able to build a brush that did this effectively. My second step was to begin to build the Illustration in parts. By breaking Orange Monkey up in parts, he could be moved and repositioned easily while retaining consistency, much like a paper cutout put together with brads. I broke him up as a body, 2 legs, 2 arms, a tail, and a head. This allows me to swing his arms and legs to position them however I want and reconfigure his face to get the right expression.

I put all this parts together and played around with poses and positions to see how it works. It was incredibly effective. This method allowed me to work fast and efficient while maintaining the life and playfulness of the original illustrations. Following are the results:

Orange Monkey Sketch

Category: Birth of a Book, Illustration | Tags: Art, Birth of a Book, Children's Book, children's book illustration, Children's Books, children's illustration, Children's Writing, Illustration, Orange Monkey, This Tree is for Me, writing, writing for children, writing for kids | 2 Comments

Birth of a Book Part 4: Things are Getting Sketchy

March 12th, 2009 | Author: admin

Paper, meet your new friend the pen. Lets get to know each other! This is the scariest part of my book design process for me to share. The sketches are very honest, very open. They are flawed, ugly, primitive and silly. I never show these; they are meant for myself. However, to fully understand my process, I will share them freely.

I always sketch the main characters first. They are the most important part and the rest of the art should follow them. Who/what drives your story? For This Tree is for Me, the answer is Orange Monkey and Purple fish. I will start with them and allow them to inspire the rest of the illustrations. I have a few rules for my initial sketches.

No color.
No limits.
Draw from your imagination.
No corrections. The eraser doesn’t exist.
No throwing away.
Don’t spend more than 15 seconds per sketch

Yes, you read right. No more than 15 seconds. 15 seconds? This is the most important rule! Why waste time? Throw your sketches out as fast as they come and don’t look back. Make a mistake? Leave it, move on. Keep moving. Moving creates movement, movement creates life. Let your imagination fly. It’s the only way you will know what it is capable of.

Following are two pages of sketches (out of a total of 30 or so) I produced.

Fast Monkey Sketches.

Fast Fish Sketches.

Out of these countless fish and countless monkeys, I pulled my two favorites out. I sketched them on the same page to see how they looked together.

My two favorite sketches combined.

Orange Monkey, meet Purple Fish. Now my challenge as an illustrator becomes retaining the fun, fresh, and lively spirit of these sketches on a much larger scale. If I lose that life, I lose the illustrations.

Category: Birth of a Book, Illustration | Tags: Art, Birth of a Book, Children's Book, children's book illustration, Children's Books, children's illustration, Children's Writing, creativity, Illustration, Orange Monkey, Purple Fish, This Tree is for Me, writing, writing for children, writing for kids | 5 Comments

Business as Unusual: Week of 3/9/2009

March 09th, 2009 | Author: admin

Todd Spitting Peas at Jeff

What a weekend! Sadly I must report that I’m still being held captive by Todd Pigworth and his piggy minions. He has me tied to a chair. Currently he is busy spitting peas at me. “Can you stop that?” I asked him. He wouldn’t. So I asked nicer “Can you stop spitting at me? Pretty peas?” *insert drum sound* Apparently he didn’t think this to be a funny joke. If I ever get loose, I’m going to mow his pants down with a lawnmower. Luckily he is allowing me to make an update on my blog…I’m sorry, my BOG. Geeze, who knew pigs could be so particular? How am I typing with my hands tied together you ask? Simple. I’m really good at typing with my feet.

Last week was a success for Duck of All Trades. First, I was honored to display my puppets at the McDowell County Chamber of Commerce Annual meeting. I had 16 puppets on display. I am very grateful for the opportunity. I made new contacts, had a great meal, watched an entertaining ventriloquist act and won a “bag full of stuff.” Yes, I won a door prize that was touted as a “Bag Full of Stuff.” I could care less what was in it. This is the first time I have ever won anything like this. Maybe I’m starting to get my mom’s luck?

The highlight of the evening for me was meeting Peggy Miller, a wonderful ventriloquist. You can visit her site here. I was impressed by her puppet skills. She was able to use two vent dummies at once, switching between multiple controls, multiple voices and multiple personalities. If you ever have a chance to see her, please do.

Business wise, I have a few new clients this week. Adwords seems to finally be paying off. I am still getting a small click through ratio (.06% or one pet gerbil) but apparently it is enough to generate interest. www.duckofalltrades.com stats are also improving. Since starting with adwords, I have gone from about 4 unique visitors a day to an average of 21. While this isn’t great, it’s an improvement. I have also spent time optimizing my site for Google. As a result, my placement has been better and I’ve been getting more traffic from searches. In the coming weeks I plan to work harder to improve the site by adding new content. Some of the ideas I have for content are:

Original articles taken from this blog, such as the Birth of a Book series. This will show potential clients my process and sell me to them as an illustrator.
Create a publishing resource directory filled with valuable information from sites and sources I recommend. Not random sites, but sites that are genuinely useful.
More samples of work.
Tweak how my work is displayed. Make it more user friendly.
Create faq page.

These changes will be done over time and the end result should be an increase in traffic. For now, the goal with my site is to begin to tailor it to what people are looking for. Despite more traffic, some visitors leave after viewing one page. This has lead to the question “If I were to show one potential client one page for a minute or less, which page would that be?” To answer this, I’m going to set up new “portfolio pages.”

These will be pages unique to my different services, crafted with relevant information all on one page and linked to my adwords advertisements. The first page I will create will be a “Children’s Illustration” page. Instead of having thumbnails to other pages, this page will contain a self contained gallery. It will also show an estimate of time and cost, information about myself, links to “Birth of a Book” to show my process, and any information I feel like will sell my services best. I am limiting the gallery to ten images. For these ten images I am creating a new portfolio. Below is the first image I will include in the portfolio. I hope to create 1o new pieces for the page. Just what I need. ANOTHER project. The next update, I hope to have the beginnings of this page as well as an update on Stromple the Puppet (which I have fleece for). There are many more adventure to come.

I also hope to be freed from peas.

Under the Sea Birthday Surprise

Category: Business as Unusual, Illustration, Puppets, Stay at home father | Tags: adwords, Art, Birth of a Book, Business as Unusual, Children's Book, children's book illustration, children's illustration, Duck of All Trades, Life, new business, Stay at home father, Stromple, writing | Leave a Comment

The Birth of a New Book Part 1

February 19th, 2009 | Author: admin

I love to write and illustrate children’s picture books. To me, they present a challenge like no other. It isn’t just about words. It isn’t just about pictures (there are exceptions to this one). It is about the perfect marriage between them both. It is a dance between what is written and what is shown visually. As one gives, the other takes. For myself, it is the most rewarding work process. I can learn more from doing a picture book than from any other type of project. I love the process…the building of the foundation, the first awkward steps, the refinement, the finding of the voice. However, my favorite moment is when the story takes a life of its own. When done properly, when given proper consideration and time, it leaves you. It is out of your hands and becomes what it wants to. It writes itself and tells itself.

Me describing this process isn’t enough to properly share the joy it brings me. That is why I have decided to share this experience with the world. From the start to finish, I plan to develop a new picture book and bring you along every step via this blog. As many of you may know, I am deep in the trenches with my latest effort “Moo-Pig.” However, it has began to reach the point I mentioned earlier. The one where it is out of my hands. “Moo-Pig” has life and I’m very proud of this and ready to start anew.

A few notes about this story. It was written originally in 2001. I also did a few quick mock-ups of what the illustrations might look like. I will include those at the bottom of the poem. Remember, this a very rough draft. So here it is, laid out bare and real. The first step. The idea and original story. My first few steps will include refining this. A little polish will do it wonders. The story is called “This Tree is for Me.” It is a simple poem. In the end, it will be 32 pages:

This Tree is for me
By Jeff Duckworth
Why Orange Monkey do you live in a tree?
Asked the purple fish who lived in the sea.
Trees are quite scary, they reach to the sky,
And it would hurt very much to fall from that high.

Trees are hard but my sea is soft.
A sea is a thing you can never fall off.
So why Orange Monkey do you live in that tree?
Come in the water and live in the sea.

Because, said the monkey swinging on a vine.
The sea is yours but this tree is all mine.
My tree is hard but your see is too big.
Compared to your sea my tree is a twig.

Your tree is so high. High as can be.
My water is low. Come live in the sea.
I love to swing. I love to live in the sky.
I love being a monkey and here is why.

Up high there is one monkey. That is my wish.
Because in the water there are many bigger fish.
And so said the Orange Monkey that lived in the tree.
I live up high. Living up here is for me.

The purple fish smiled and then swam away.
He loved the water. It is where he would stay.
And the monkey was so happy to live up high,
That he hung from his tail and waved good-bye.
The purple fish may swim in his sea,
But I’m happy up here. This tree is for me.