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Sharing Notes on The Creative Practice, Writing & Illustrating Picture-books, Career Advice for Artist, and Publishing Industry Chat.
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I’m starting work on a new Picture-book today. Yay! (Book 4)
I started by making a checklist, here it is.
Tell Mom! (She sends prayers, those help!)
Take notes from the brief, write questions, and schedule a chat with the Creative Director.
Print out the text
Immerse yourself in the text
Study the competition
Create a moodboard
Itemise icons and locations to draw
Develop Characters
Sketch Covers
Thumbnail book
Sketch Roughs by Christmas
Then make another list
What did I miss?
I’m starting work on a new Picture-book today. Yay! (Book 4)
Congrats on starting book 4! It might be part of your "thumbnail the book" stage, but something I'd add in would be to identify the magical moments, circle them in the text and ask these questions: Which spreads are you most excited to illustrate? How do you see those on the page? At what point do they fall in the story? What spreads come before and after and how can those support each other? (designing a book for impact is one of my favorite parts of the thumbnail process, so I'd just separate it out as a stage on its own).
Congratulations Adam! You forgot "taking breaks" in there! Make sure you are not over-working. Very easy to do so nowadays 😅