THE THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF DUMMY BOOK COVER

This is the cover I have for the dummy. I posted the entire cover (front/back) and a close up of the front. There's not much in the way of point of view, but I thought it did a good job of introducing the goats. I decided to leave the troll out of the cover.

I'm still working on the last pages of the book. ANY feedback, good or bad, is really always welcomed. 

I hope to take pictures during the assembly process and post them here in the coming weeks.

IF: ADAPT

The Troll is trying to adapt to the changing circumstances by compromising with the two Billy Goats and letting them cross the bridge while waiting to eat the older bigger brother.

I missed last week's IF and missed visiting many of my favorite blogs...I really need to catch up! It was a busy week since we are wrapping up the school year and there's a lot of functions and extra curricular activities for the kids. The next couple of weeks will probably be  just as busy as we try to adapt to the new summer routine. I'm not looking forward to the scorching heat that's for sure!

My goal is to finish, print and bind the Three Billy Goats Gruff dummy book before our summer vacation which is in about a month. It seems like a lot of time, but really with all of the stuff that I have going on, seems a bit unrealistic. Well, nothing like working under pressure!

Have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by.

IF: CONTAGIOUS

Poor Timmy, he's home sick with Chicken Pox!

It's a good thing his dog is keeping him company!

I needed a break from my troll and goats.  So I drew this earlier today. I had the idea in my head, but I did not think too much about composition, perspective, etc. If I had to do it over, I would change it some.

YES! I won last week's challenge at Monday Art Day! Please check them out if you haven' done so already. They have some great talent!  I was so surprised. I had not submitted anything in months because of time, and I submitted something last week and it won! It feels great to have a little validation.

I promised I would post the progress I'm making with the Three Billy Goats Gruff dummy. I had an incredibly productive week last week. I am also becoming more familiar with InDesign, which seems to be the software of choice. So long for Quark Xpress! 

There's a couple of spreads that I'm thinking about revising because now that I see them in color, the composition doesn't work as well as it did when I was looking only at the line work. Rather than getting stuck on revisions, I will continue to move forward and do the revisions at the end. -- I'm half way through. Yay!

Comments are always welcome!

This is the middle Billy Goat

IF:PARADE

The Small Billy Goat Gruff was unaware that the Troll was about to rain on his parade. Crossing the bridge would not be so easy!

This is a stretch for this week's IF.  However, I am happy to be making progress on this dummy book. I will be adding the text after I am finished. So the bridge may seem a bit much, but that's where the text is going to be.

I am painting birdhouses at the moment to give myself a break from the troll and goats.

Have a great weekend!

IF: HIERARCHY

The Three Billy Goats Gruff walking in hierarchy.

This is another spread for the BGG book I am working on. I really feel more comfortable with this medium than I did a few weeks ago. I can consistently replicate textures and brushes digitally and I really think it feels very much like my traditional work. I am very pleased with the progress I am making. Now if I can only get my 7 year old epson 3000 stylus printer to print without any lines, then everything would be working as it should!

Have a great weekend!

If: THEATER

This is an old sketch I thought would work for this week's prompt.

I don't know what is happening in my cosmic field lately, but I just can't seem to

get enough time to make enough progress on anything! Things keep popping up that need my attention and take me off track. 

Here's a color version of one of the sketches from the Billy Goat Gruff.

IF: IMPOSSIBILITY

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Dummy Book Sketches

Pencil and Photoshop

Detail

The youngest Billy Goat Gruff began to cross the bridge not knowing the impossibility of what was ahead...

 

I am making some progress with my dummy book, and I am very excited about it. This project has made me re-think my process. I am realizing that spending a ton of time on one illustration is okay, but when there's about 14 spreads to create, each step represents time that I could spend on another project, and it minimizes my productivity.

I had thought about time vs. productivity constrains before, but didn’t give it too much importance, since at the time I was more concerned with achieving a certain level of quality regardless of time. Today, I feel that I have more control over the outcome of the illustrations, and have become more comfortable working with acrylics, pens, brushes, and pencils. However, I do spend a great deal of time on my work. 

I have been fighting going completely digital for my own comfort. I enjoy the touch and feel of the paints, brushes etc, and it makes me feel like a true artist. It probably has something to do with having the traditional stereotype of an artist holding a palette while painting on a canvas with a brush etched in my brain.

Up until now, I have used the computer mostly to scan or tighten original sketches, or create a color guide for the final illustration. I have played with some IF posts where I’ve done a quick sketch, scanned it, and then colored it in Photoshop. These quick exercises have made me realized that I can make the cross over and cut my time in half!

I’m pretty pleased with the results so far and I think I will continue in this digital path… I guess you could also say that I am working against the seeming impossibility to cross over to digital

ROUGH - PICTURE BOOK DUMMY

I really wanted to see what the accordion dummy book format would look like. Seems like an added step, but at the moment it helps me visualize the final product. The final dummy will be 7” x 9”, so that it would be easier to print, but this dummy is 85% smaller. Now that I can see and flip through the pages, I can begin to make the tight sketches for each spread. I have a meeting with my local SCBWI and look forward to getting some feedback on both the characters and the rough dummy.

Some questions I'll ask the group (and feel free to comment if you know the answer) are: Does everyone still work with this accordion format? Is there a difference between the dummy you submit to a publisher hoping to get it published Vs. the dummy you make during the production process of a book? 

WHY CREATE A PICTURE BOOK DUMMY FOR YOUR PORTFOLIO?

One of the things I took away from the Florida SCBWI Conference was that if you are trying to stand out and show your skills as an illustrator, you can not leave things to chance or hope that an AD can look at your work and imagine how it would fit in with their manuscript. You need to show them!

For instance, if you want to illustrate a children’s book, don’t expect to be noticed by having amazing portfolio pieces that would be perfect in a children’s book, but don’t show your understanding of the publishing world. But, how do you show understanding if you have never been published, you might ask? Well, create your own book. Illustrate and entire book for your portfolio, and have it bound (dummy). It doesn’t have to be an original story; it could be a public domain story that you take to show your strengths as and illustrator. There are many reasons for doing this, but mostly it shows an AD that you can take a character and portray him consistently throughout a story. It also shows that you understand the ins and outs of book publishing such as layout, bleeds, gutter space, word placement, flow, continuity, assembly, story-telling etc.

Hearing this at the conference really made a lot of sense to me. Many years ago I had the opportunity to interview many print graphic designers that were trying to make the transition to web design, and unless they had specific web samples in their portfolio, I could not be sure that they really understood the web world, even if their work was top notch. Designers that had web design samples always had an advantage.
Needless to say, I am now creating my own book dummy to include in my portfolio. I must say that creating one illustration Vs. illustrating an entire book is completely different, and if you are an aspiring children’s book illustrator I highly recommend it.

I am illustrating the Three Billy Goats Gruff. I started out with the character studies of the goats and the troll, shown on previous posts. I need to work on a color version of the characters and change the troll to have one eye. Since the story calls for a one eyed troll (I’m learning that it’s important to be true and honest to the story).

I would like to make more progress but at the moment all I have is a few hours a week for this, so it may be a while before you come to see something other than goats and trolls on this blog.

Below are the thumbnails for the layout. These are based on a 32 page picture book with 4 pages of front matter. The sketches are very loose and a little bigger than a stamp to focus primarily on flow, overall composition and layout. I first started with the text and broke it up into sections/pages to then illustrate that part of the story. There are a few pages that I’m not quite sure about…still making decisions…

ANY comments and criticism are welcomed!

Second Billy Goat

Small Billy Goat Gruff

Yes, I am illustrating "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". This is the youngest Billy Goat. I'm enjoying these character studies. They are not as simple as I thought. 

I still have the second Billy goat and the Troll to come up with.