Wrapping up the Storyboard

Today I finished the storyboard. It’s a first draft, but I think it captures the storyline well enough to move on to the next step, which is starting to draw each cell. I scanned the storyboard pages and imported them into Photoshop. From there, I’ll extract each page and import the rough sketch into an 8x8 page for detailed work.

I’m more organized this time around. I created a _book2 directory, into which i’m collecting all of the files for this book. I created folders for the rgb and cmyk files, and one folder for all of the pages. There will be a lot of pages and, no doubt, some chaos with all of those files floating around. I’m searching for software that can organize the pages. Clip Studio Paint Ex looks like a good candidate. It’s an awesome drawing program with time-saving features that can speed production. It can also manage multiple pages as a project and export the project as a Kindle ebook or as an ePub. Sounds too good to be true! With all of those features, there’s got to be a steep learning curve. :)

This image shows pages two and three of my storyboard.

Creating "Turn Arounds" for Cuter Characters

I’m in production mode now. I’ve got the story written. The next step is to create a storyboard with images that represent and dramatize the text. Before I do these images, I need to finalize the new, cute look for each character. I’m having the hardest time with Buddy the Monarch butterfly. In his case I’ll have to settle for ugly cute, or my with just plain ugly, with a twinkle in his eye.

Here’s my first rough step on the march to doing 40 pages. I’ve giving myself 90 days to produce all of these images. Since I’m now working full-time as an illustrator/writer I’m beginning to feel pressure to produce more, better, faster. I can feel the clock ticking and the days peeling off the calendar. I want this book completed by May 1. It’s going to be a rough road — in mid-March I’m taking on a part-time job that will take time away from the book.

A High Level View of My Children's Book

When I stitch together thumbnails of all of the pages in my children’s book, I get a global view of the entire project. I can see the overall flow of the story without considering the text, which is simply displayed as black bars. I realize now that I should have worked on this flow view right from the beginning. I did have a storyboard, but I see now that it’s a good idea to get the storyboard right before plunging in to drawing and painting. I’m going to live and learn…and do more work on the storyboard when I do the next book in this series.

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Organizing all of the book's drawing

79/365

No drawing today. The time has come to color the images I’ve drawn over the last two months. These are exciting times!

Tomorrow I’ll see if there’s a slick way to use my iPad to color these. If I end up spinning my wheels, I’ll go back to my iMac and use Photoshop.

Here’s a screenshot of the PSD files I’ll be working with. All of these drawings are based on my crude storyboard thumbnails. Thank you, crude storyboard, for your rock-steady guidance9

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Wrapping up the storyboard for my children’s book

46/365

Today I wrapped up the storyboard. I’m happy to say that despite my Inner Critic telling me that my new story really sucked and that I should come up with a new plot, I turned down the volume on that voice and turned up the volume on the Milt Jackson album and went about my business.

The page below will give an idea of what my concept of how I do storyboard. At least this is my concept of my first story board. It may look a little chaotic and verbose, but it’s all going to be okay. I now have a starting point for creating the final drawings.

After experimenting with gouache, limited palettes, heavy outlines, grisaille, I’ve decided to return to my natural style, which is simple pen and ink…with a little watercolor wash now and then.

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In my world a bird can talk to people, and the other way around, or course.

Getting back to the storyboard

45/365

Today I decided to get back to basics and do a second draft of the storyboard. When I started this project, the first thing I did was a quick storyboard with some sketchy thumbnails. Now 45 days later I’m redoing the entire storyboard to match the bigger story I want to tell. I completed 2/3 of the revision tonight, and I’ve left myself a righteous possibility of completing the storyboard tomorrow.

I sketched everything in ink today in the interest of saving time. It’s just faster for me to use ink instead of pencil. When I sketch with pencil I have a tendency to try to fix bad drawing. With ink I have no regrets…it’s full speed ahead.

The story has grown larger and picked up a new character and more pages. I’ll have to do some editing to get it down to 24 pages. Here’s a snippet showing my final drawing for today…a pair of eyeballs in a dark place.

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