books – Page 22 – James Foley

The all important opening scene- part 2

Last week I wrote about how opening scenes work, and showed some early roughs of the opening scene for Last Viking.

I tried various options that didn’t quite work, which helped me become clearer about what I wanted the opening scene to achieve. It needed to do several things:

Introduce Josh and Wolverine, and show the closeness of their relationship (who)
Show that Josh is a creative, imaginative and resourceful kid (who)
Introduce Josh’s problem (fear) and have the reader empathise with his feelings (what)
probably show Josh in his room- night-time would be easiest to show fear, but daytime would be easiest to show Josh and Wolverine playing (where, when)

So with those things in mind, I kept sketching. I did a little set of thumbnails where the double page spread would have two panels. One would be big and dark, showing Josh’s room at night time. Josh and Wolverine are visible only as silhouettes, seen in a cubby made from a blanket. The bulk of the text would relate to this panel and go in a column at far left. The thinner panel on the right would show Josh and Wolverine poking their heads out from the cubby the next morning, with the line, “But other than those things, Josh is as brave as a lion” written close by.

Here’s a bigger version with some tone added. There is still a silhouette of a dinosaur on the far wall. Josh’s skateboard is on the floor next to Wolverine’s cushion.

Continue reading “The all important opening scene- part 2”

The all important opening scene- part 1

The opening scene of a picture book is so important:

it introduces the main character/s (who)
it introduces the main problem or conflict (what)
it introduces a world (when, where)
it sets the emotional tone (via the writer’s voice and the illustrator’s pictures)
and if it works, it can hook readers in instantly.

But if an opening scene doesn’t work, people won’t want to read the book. As Norm has said to me on many a facetious occasion – ‘no pressure, Picasso’. It took me a while to get an opening scene I was happy with, so I’ve put together some posts outlining the process.

The opening text for The Last Viking doesn’t spell out an obvious scene, so I found it quite a challenge to illustrate. The text goes like this:

Young Josh is very brave.

He’s not afraid of anyone or anything – except maybe the dark and the sound of ghosts whistling in the trees at night.

Pirates worry him a bit, of course, and so do boy-eating dinosaurs, and monsters under the bed. He’s also just a little afraid of dragons and vampires.

But other than those few things, Josh is as brave as a lion.

Sort of.

The text introduces the character (Josh) and the main conflict (Josh suffers from fear). So, we have our who and our what. But it doesn’t specifically say where or when the scene takes place. This would be up to me as the illustrator to decide.

Norm had seen some illustrations of mine, where I’d drawn a young boy dressed as a knight and various other characters. So his initial idea for the opening illustration of Last Viking was to have Josh dressed as each of the characters mentioned- a ghost, a pirate, a dinosaur, and so on. However, I couldn’t imagine Josh dressing up as characters that he was afraid of, and I didn’t think it would set the right emotional tone. That is, if Josh is afraid, the picture needs to be scary.

Here’s the very first sketch, and a stretched-out landscape version.

p2-3-original — original thumbnail sketch

p2-3-original-landscape — original thumbnail, adjusted to landscape format

Continue reading “The all important opening scene- part 1”

Sneak Peek Week

Hi everyone,

as I’m feeling incredibly lazy, but also superbusy, I’ve decided to just show a couple of sneak peeks of the final artwork.

Here’s page 4:

breakfast

And here’s the panels from pages 10-11.

Ive decided to become a Viking Pop

Set design- interiors

Last week I blogged about the designing the outside of Nan and Pop’s house. This post is about the inside.

Most features were made up, but one room has its basis in real life- Pop’s hallway is based on Norm’s hallway.

When I first visited Norm’s house, I was amazed at his collection of Viking artefacts. They take pride of place in the hallway, just as you enter the house.

Here’s Norm’s house, with Norm. Get out of the way Norm, I’m trying to take a photo.

That’s better.

Continue reading “Set design- interiors”

Set design- exteriors

I grew up in a house that my great-grandparents built in 1936. Four generations of my family have lived in the house (only two at a time though); my parents and sister still live there. Its a Californian bungalow design, common in older suburbs around Perth like East Fremantle and Mt Hawthorn.

I remember snippets of visiting my great-grandparents when they were still living in the house. I was only 3 or 4. Great-grandma would take a tray of just-baked cupcakes out of the Metters stove. We would sit in the front room and eat, while family members with big white moustaches that I didn’t know the names of looked down from frames on the mantlepiece. Great-grandma was always smiling, at least I think she was- or maybe that’s a made up memory based on the only photos I know of her. I don’t remember great-grandpa very much. In his photos he looks kind.

Pop’s house in The Last Viking is essentially my family home. Obviously my parents don’t live in a house with Viking ornamentation all over it, but the basic similarities are there.

Continue reading “Set design- exteriors”

Creating the Cover Part 4- the final final cover

Hi everyone,

the book has gone to print now. All the work is done- for now. There’ll be promotional things to do later on, and a launch in a few months- but for now we can relax a little and await the finished product. Soon, Norm and I will be holding advance copies of The Last Viking and giggling like it’s Christmas.

Originally I’d intended only three posts in this series showing the development of the cover- but, there’s some final changes to show.

Book designer extraordinaire Tracey Gibbs finished her work on The Last Viking last week. She added the text to all the pages, cleaned up images, and adjusted the cover.

Here’s what the cover looked like in the last post:

…and here’s what it looks like now.

I love it, I think it looks much better. You can see the title text is slightly smaller and a different colour now. Our names are bigger. Tracey has also increased the brightness and saturation of the colours. (We may have a ‘spot varnish’ on the printed cover- where certain parts will have a glossy coating added).

Continue reading “Creating the Cover Part 4- the final final cover”

Creating the Cover Part 3- final colours

Over the last two weeks I’ve talked about the initial designs and how Cate and I refined those designs. Now- here’s how I coloured it in.

I started off doing all the shading in light brown, just as I did for all the internal pages. This helps me see from the start where the light sources will be. (For those digitally minded, the light brown layers are actually a dark brown colour, but set to 40% opacity. As I’m using Corel Painter, I’ve set the layer mode to Gel rather than the standard Photoshop choice of Multiply- Gel seems to let the colours interact the way they would do if they were watercolour paint. I’ve found it produces richer colours).

Here’s the brown tones (what I’ve called the ‘sepia layer’) half done.

And the sepia layer completed. If I can see a sense of depth in the picture at this stage, then I know that it’s all going to look okay once the colours are completed.

Next up was the background colours. The sky and cloud tones are very important as they contribute greatly to the effect of light.

Continue reading “Creating the Cover Part 3- final colours”

Creating the Cover, Part 2- refining the design with Cate

In last Tuesday’s post I showed the first tiny sketches for the cover. I also showed you a mockup I sent to Cate for feedback- here it is if you missed it.

She had a good look at it, and emailed me back to say that it looked like the different parts of the cover were competing for attention. If they were rearranged a bit it might look more balanced. She also said that brown generally doesn’t look good on a cover, so she switched the border to blue. She fiddled around with the different elements and sent the cover back to me, looking like this:

Continue reading “Creating the Cover, Part 2- refining the design with Cate”

Creating the Cover, Part 1- initial designs

Hi everyone,

I’m going to run you through the process we took to design the cover. I’ll split it into three parts- initial design; refining the design with Cate; and final colour.

So- initial design… Norm and I started by looking at the posters for epic adventure movies- things like Lord of The Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones – and of course, Viking films. Adventure films all have a similar ‘design dialogue’- features that set them apart from other movie posters, and make us think adventure without realising it. There are often many characters shown on the poster- the heroes, the villains- and maybe an important scene from the film, or a creature, or a vehicle of some sort. Characters are all sorts of different sizes, with the main characters towards the front and secondary characters smaller and more faded towards the back. Often you will just have a character’s head shown. They will often brandish their weapons. There is dramatic lighting. Etc. Posters for comedies don’t look like this. Posters for horror films don’t look like this. Posters for thrillers or ‘chick flicks’ or romantic comedies don’t look like this- they’re all features found on adventure films. And it doesn’t whether the film is set in Middle Earth or Norway or Nazi Germany or A Galaxy Far, Far Away- if it’s an adventure film, that’s how the poster seems to look.

Seeing as this picture book is a bit of an epic saga, Norm and I thought it would be good to follow the design dialogue of the adventure movie posters for our cover. Here’s the first thumbnails sketches I drew- they were very small, each only 3 or 4 cm across.

Cate liked the look of these and asked me to draw up a larger rough. Here’s what I came up with- this was my first sketch for the front cover:

Continue reading “Creating the Cover, Part 1- initial designs”

So I dreamt I signed up for a swimming marathon…

For the past two and a half months I’ve been colouring colouring colouring. And now, it’s all done. Hurrah! Crack open the virtual champagne, there’s also some digital soft drink around here somewhere if you’d rather, there’s microchips and dips, make yourself at homepage. Sorry, I’m a bit low on sleep at the moment and the filter in my brain has decided to conk out.

This book-making process began on the 7th of June 2009 , so it’s very exciting (and a great relief) to finally see it done. If all goes to plan The Last Viking will be out in the middle of this year.

As I type this I’m in the midst of getting ready to take a break- I’m traveling to New York for the Society of Children’s Book Writers’ and Illustrators’ annual Winter Conference. I’ll set up some posts for the next three weeks that will take you through the process of designing the cover of The Last Viking.

In the meantime, here’s a teaser- it’s the colour for one of my favourite scenes in the book. And when I say colour, it’s just the colour- I’ve removed the linework and the background and the borders 🙂

Onward to Glory,

James

P.S. you may be wondering what the title of this blog post is about. I completely forgot to say. A few weeks ago I had a very vivid dream in which I had signed up for a swimming marathon. I am not a particularly strong swimmer, so this was an odd thing for me to do. Even odder, it was a tandem event- you swam with a partner the whole way. Even ODDER- I had signed up to swim two races at once- one tandem, one solo. I was bumping into friends on the way to the start line and couldn’t stop to chat, because I had to get started on the race, everyone else had already gone, quick rush do it do it do it! Only thing was, I kept trying to get to the starting line and I could never find it.

So. Before we get too deep and psychological, I’ll tell you what it meant to me. I have been finishing this book with Norm. It’s been a tandem marathon. I’ve also been trying to get another book started, one that I’ve written and will illustrate myself. It will also be a marathon. And lately I haven’t been able to catch up with people as much because I’ve been head down bum up. It’s one of the few dreams I’ve had in my life where the meaning was completely obvious to me when I woke up.

And now that I’ve finished the illustrations, I can finally get some sleep 🙂