Weekend Activities
Many of you may be on vacation this weekend and that’s great. Though Smart Dummies officially starts on September 1st there will be no official activities planned until September 3rd. Sunday I will have a schedule up for the week and we’ll officially start Tuesday from the beginning. If you want to work ahead, that’s fine! If you are gone this weekend, don’t worry. I’m going over everything again starting September 3rd.
This Weekend's Project
You can work on anything you’d like this weekend (or nothing at all). If you already have your character(s) figured out you can either work on Full Character Drawings (pages 10-11) or Thumbnails (pages 18-19). We will be going over all of this later so don’t worry about getting behind.
Full Character Drawings or Thumbnails?
I think it comes down to personal preference for order of creation at this point. I’ve heard both ways from professionals and in illustration classes!
Full Character Drawings/Turnarounds: The lines on this page are to make sure you keep everything in line. Make sure that all the facial features line up. Alternatively you can get some graph paper and use that to plan out your character drawings.
Thumbnails: If you are doing thumbnails only spend a minute or two drawing each one. They don’t even have to look like anything but scribbles. You can always make tighter thumbnails later.
Weekend Reading
Here is a great post from Rachel Armington about Trim Sizes:
https://rachelarmington.com/publishing/trim-sizes-for-picture-books/ If you have time this weekend take a look! It’s good to have your picture book size in mind when you start on your book. It’s also necessary to know your images should be set up before you start on your finals. I’ll be referencing this post several times throughout the event, because layout is so important throughout this whole Dummy making process.
It’s necessary to know your images should be set up before you start on your finals. I’ll be referencing this post several times throughout the event, because layout is important throughout this whole Dummy making process.
I had one project for a client where I didn’t know the sizes of the images. I was lead to believe the images were 8″x 8″ when they were 6″x 9″ which is a huge difference! I was able to fix the problem in time. If you are working on your project you decide the size. In general I’d suggest the images be 8″x10″ (and 10″x 8″ is also a possibility, but not as common) because that’s the industry standard and most likely how your book will be published. This is a standard for picture books and some graphic novels. I’ll get back to you on more page sizes for other books later!
If you haven’t already sign up for Smart Dummies here: http://ngi.c96.myftpupload.com/register-for-smart-dummies-2019/ This page has everything you need! Sign up, grab a booklet, sign up for emails and get the badge! Be sure to contact me if you have any problems!