A Question of Voice

By Anne Marie Perks with Bridget Strevens Marzo
Illustrator Masterclass Series last event for 2011

Bridget Strevens-Marzo

Author illustrator and SCBWI International Illustrator Coordinator Bridget Strevens-Marzo began the afternoon with a slide show.

The first image was to inspire us, an image from the French Book Fair in Paris, Salon du livre et de la presse jeunesse, always the first weekend of December. My own experience of this fair a few years ago was an amazing, creative experience being inspired by French publishing for Children. We all briefly mused on an Illustrator’s Masterclass Series trip to Paris.


The next slide showed several images of illustrated elephants and Bridget asked us to pick the oldest one. Of interest, the oldest one actually looked contemporary and was illustrated by an Australian illustrator, Harry Rountree, in the 1920’s. The images also showed that there are a 101 ways to illustrate an elephant.

We also had a look at Scott McCloud’s pyramid of different ways to illustrate a character, moving between reality to abstract.

Then we got into the discussion point of the masterclass, talking about style and voice. Bridget told us all that she actually hated the word style, because there is something that overrides that. And that something is ‘voice’. Our own unique ‘voice’ that makes our work authentic and our own.

In art school, we are told that you need to have a style to sell.  But, where we got to is that it is really about content and having something to say.

Lots of ways to illustrate an elephant!

Illustrating Children’s Picture Books, Steven Withrow and Lesley Breen Withrow, RotoVision Publishing - 
filled with interviews from published illustrators and Bridget is one of them.  Second book is on creative exploration.

 Bridget showed us a few pages from Quentin Blake’s book, ‘Drawing for the artistically undiscovered’,  and noted that illustrators could be divided between painters and writers. Quentin Blake is a writer. It is easy to see whether the illustrator favours lines or shapes and, it is possible to be both! An expressive line that tells the story one way, or might be more sophisticated for older children, and very simplified shapes and colours for younger readers. Bridget also suggested that If you want to add new ideas to your work, go to old books. There is so much in the past that we have barely even grazed!

‘So,’ Bridget asked us, ‘What kind of children’s illustrator are you? Are you a fox or a wild boar?’

This was a question asked of Bridget by a French art director. He then went on to tell Bridget that the fox sniffs around the forest and get’s excited and looks things up.
Meanwhile, the wild board tends to stay with it’s family, in it’s own corner. Strong in what it knows how to do, but sticks in one place. A fox is adaptable and fits what they are doing to the voice of the story. Bridget is a fox.

Busy, busy, busy.

Just a taste of lots of different art materials around the table.

Looking at more inspiration!

More playing with art materials.

So again, we come back to, It is the voice that counts, not style.

In this journey to figure out our sense of identity as artists, Bridget asked us to ask ourselves the following questions.

How old are you deep down inside?

What kinds of children’s books do you positively enjoy reading?

What ideas for books do you enjoy wrestling with the most?

Stories? Concepts? Activities?  Pop-up?
There are non-story, activities books. Games, which made me think of Highlights Magazine and the range of magazines that are part of Cricket Magazine Publishing such as Baby Bug, Lady Bug, Spider, Cricket and Muse Magazines - Cricket publishing.

Other illustrators are very conceptual. Alphabet books tend to be one of the first projects many illustration students work with.

And for those who are worried it’s too late, or that publishing gap has been going on a while now; the award winning book, Not a Box, was illustrated and written by Antoinette Portis, a designer who was over 60 when she produced it.  And, it sold all over the world!

There are fold out books  and artists books for children. Bridget pointed us to a fabulous exhibit in Paris that is only opened by appointment, Le Tois Ourses.

We also all agreed the kind of storytelling in which your character takes a child reader by the hand... This means your reader needs to immediately know who the main character is and that one character begins and ends the book.

If you are working on bringing more expression to your character’s face, Bridget suggested a great website called, artnatomia.net. On this site, it shows expression either as a mask or as a realistic drawing for reference. She also referred us to whole books on drawing eyes, noses, hands, and so on for reference. Don’t just focus on facial expression, jump into drawing your whole character in lots of positions. Look at body language as part of the expressive language you work with.

For fun, have a look at Ed Vere’s youtube video on, ‘How to draw Mr Big’.

The shape/silhouette of your characters and how they alter with gestures and expressions tell us more than a specific feature.

Part of Bridget’s workshop included written feedback on images sent to her in advance to the workshop. One of the participants said after her feedback. ‘I think I’ve got it. It’s more about what they do, and how they think and act.’ For me, it was the reminder that our characters are actors moving across a stage and interacting with each other.

Bridget also told all of us.
‘A key design word to grab (and keep) us and visual readers interested is,
CONTRAST!’
How do we show contrast? I know it seems like one of those basic design principles and elements talks, but, it is never said enough.

We do this by how we work with the following elements of design:
Space - full or patterned areas versus empty areas
Scale/size - clearly articulated big/medium/small in one composition, plus add surprise changes in scale from page to page.
Value - lights versus darks, even within colour ranges (light yellow versus dark purple)
Colour temperature -  warm versus cool colours
Colour saturation - strong versus diluted colour including chromatic greys and blacks.
Line - thick versus thin, spotty, straight, curved ...

If your work is contemplative, you have to come out of that contemplation to action and  interaction with the environment, other characters.

‘Illustrators we can easily get hung up on style - one way to do things, one type of process. To me, that’s putting the cart before the horse.’ Bridget said. ‘The horse is the content and
content is what really drives us.  It’s what we want to ride over to the reader!’

The action ‘doing’ part of the workshop was given to us as a two part mission. The first mission: Draw a character in the way you usually draw it now and try to draw it with a different expression than you’ve done before, or put in a situation that is different for that character.

The second mission: Use someone else’s art materials to colour that character. Let the strangeness of using different art materials than our own take us to a different view.

Though we had a small group, the time was full. If anything, maybe it made the afternoon even more intense in that we all love what we do and want to keep progressing in our craft.

A few lovely things I took away from this afternoon’s work are:
An introduction to a wonderful deckle edged sketchbook from Paper Chase with lushes paper that shows tonal work and colour to it’s best.

Remembering that my characters are ‘actors’ moving across my pages, telling a story.

And, an idea for a future workshop on colour and composition.

Converting a Picture Book into an Interactive App

By Paul Morton

Just finished work on the conversion of Ga Gunk to become an interactive app. The artwork for Ga Gunk was finished a couple of years ago and has been seeking a publisher ever since. It's a very short, sweet little story that features two cute little froggies. They fall in love one magical moonlit night under the shooting stars.

Ga Gunk is the sound that American youngsters think frogs make. I must admit that I'd never heard of it either, but it kinda makes sense once you've become accustomed to hearing it.And boy have i become accustomed!

This adaptation took around 3 weeks of solid work with many a late hour working on it and liaising with the Interactive Touch Books team in California.

They were always available to help and explain their brilliant (but complicated at first) web.app software.

Ga Gunk is now one of the 30 or so books available in the ITB bookstore and hopefully will prove a popular little tale.

You can get it HERE

The words came from Susie Ramsey who contacted me to illustrate this tale and told me that her grandma used to sing to her when she was little.

The PB app features 13 pages with a colouring-in page, a build-your-own-froggy puzzle and a Ga gunk song and narration by Rachel Baier.

I now have two further books in development and plan to offer my app creation/conversion skills to other authors and illustrators who might not be able to tackle the online creation process.

Although I already had all the a/w fully layered in photoshop I still ended up creating from these layers around 400 extra image and sound 'assets'.

If anyone else starts to work with ITB on their book then don't hesitate to give me a call for assistance.

Great Expectations at the SCBWI Conference 2011

By Candy Gourlay

First published in candygourlay.com

I've just come home from a most moving weekend. It was the annual conference of SCBWI British Isles* - an organization of writers and illustrators that has had a huge impact on my creative life. 

This year my book Tall Story won the inaugural Crystal Kite Prize for Europe, the only peer-given prize for children's books.  I was awarded the trophy at the conference and asked to deliver a speech.

I was also surprised to be given this year'sOutstanding Contribution Award. It was particularly poignant for me because last year the prize was won by my friend Margaret Carey, whom we lost to cancer last summer. 

Receiving the two awards was like getting a huge hug from an organization that has been family to me since I joined in 2002. 

I am not supposed to be doing anything online at the moment, as my book deadline looms, but I just wanted to share my Crystal Kite acceptance speech. I wrote it with a lump in my throat.

Here is the shortlist, and below, my speech.

Shortlist for the Crystal Kite Prize for Europe

The Crystal Kite Award

Thank you so much. 

Before anything else, I’d like to say thank you, Natascha Biebow (regional advisor of SCBWI BI), who was the first person I met in SCBWI – luckily when I met her, I didn’t realize she was a commissioning editor at Random House or something embarrassing might have happened. 

Thank you to all the members who voted for Tall Story. I am so honoured to be chosen for this award.

I hope everyone’s had a great first day of the conference – I remember my very first SCBWI conference. It was in Winchester and it was 2001. The keynote was Geraldine McCaughrean.

I was very nervous. I didn’t know anybody and I’d spent so many years being pregnant I was not in training to be sociable. 

I was also nervous because I’d left the latest baby in the care of my husband and there were two big rugby games on that weekend. 

But most of all i was nervous because I thought this was it. This was going to be my big break. In my bag I had all the picture book texts I’d ever written, ready to thrust at the first editor or agent I met. I figured that they were going to be overwhelmed by my astonishing talent and I was going to walk into that conference a wannabe and walk out, an author.

Did it happen? 

Why, yes, I think it did. 

I walked into the Conference a total beginner. I thought that that children’s books looked simple enough, surely getting published was going to be easy.

I thought I knew how to write – I’d been a journalist for many years. 

But after the conference, I discovered two things. 

1) Writing for children? Easy? No no no! 

And 2) Writing for children was totally utterly the life for me.

That was ten years ago. Maybe I was a slow learner. 

And so I began my quest. I attended all the conferences, signed up for the professional series, volunteered ... and as time passed, I became a better writer and i became a little bit wiser to the children’s book world. 

The rejections also became a little bit better. They began to sound a lot more personal. Some were even handwritten. 

Here’s one from a publisher that I keep pinned to my noticeboard: 

Dear Mister Gourlay, Many thanks for sending us your manuscript. Although we thought it was a sweet story nicely written, unfortunately it is not quite strong enough for our list at this time. I’m sorry for the wait you’ve had for this reply.

Sounds familiar?

More than anything else however I was beginning to Get It. 

• I GOT that Publishing is a business and editors and publishers are not just looking for talent, they are looking for a product.

• I GOT that There were a LOT of good writers out there, a lot of good writers who had ideas more brilliant than mine. I had to raise my game.

• I GOT that to give my writing a fighting chance, I needed a special something, a unique selling point, that set me apart from the rest. It took me a while but then I discovered what that special something was: ME.

• And finally ... I GOT that this long journey was not just about getting published, it was about LIVING A CREATIVE LIFE and all the striving, the struggling, the honing your craft, the finding the time, the rejections? That was part of the package. I had to stop yearning for the Creative Life because the Creative Life was NOW.

Early this year I was lucky enough to win a grant from SCBWI for my volunteer work. It was a grant to attend the New York conference. One of the keynotes was YA author Sara Zarr.

She described those dark, awful times when she thought her writing was ready but nobody was paying attention. 

At a meeting with a literary agent, she couldn't speak, she was so close to tears. The agent told her:

The time between when you are no longer a beginner but you are not yet in the business is the hardest ... and one of the biggest frustrations is: no one can tell you how long this phase will last. Read Sara Zarr's keynote

That was so totally me (I’ll bet there are few in this audience who see themselves there too). 

There came a point when I knew that I was ready. I had done my time at the slush pile. I DESERVED to be published. 

But nobody was noticing me. Why was that? I spent some time blogging about it on my blog Notes from the Slushpile – if you can call whining, blogging. 

By this time I’d given up on picture books and was writing novels. The novels were getting much more positive responses than the picture books ever did. Except at the end of a positive letter, there was always the comment: ‘But this is a quiet, literary novel and we cannot publish this at this time.’

When oh when was it going to happen? 

I am not embarrassed to say I looked long and hard at self publishing – could I go through it without a publisher? But self publishing had such a bad press. I didn’t have the courage.

My husband tiptoed around me. He was careful not to use the word, but when I was feeling very very down, I tortured myself, asking: is this just a HOBBY? 

Friends who knew I was writing would ask, how’s it going? Are you published yet? They listened politely while I explained that it was not a quick process – probably thinking, she’s just not good enough. Which was exactly what I was thinking. 

My cleaner told me she was cleaning for someone who was also trying to get published. ‘She sits at her computer, writing all the time. Like you, she doesn’t comb her hair and wears rubbish clothes [Candy's note: Frances disapproves of my jeans and t-shirt approach to fashion] . Writing and writing and getting nowhere. JUST LIKE YOU.’ Thanks a lot, Frances.

Then one day Frances came in to work with a gobsmacked look on her face. 

‘Oh my god, Meg’s book is going to be published!’ 

‘What’s her name again?’ I said.

‘Meg Rosoff.’

Rosoff? I’d never heard the surname. 

But I soon did.

Then I won a place in the first Undiscovered Voices anthology. This is it, I thought. It’s going to happen.

I got signed by an agent.

This is it ... at long last ...

And then ...

Nothing. 

The only difference was that it was my agent who was getting the rejection letters. The rejections said dystopian fantasies? We’ve had enough of dystopias. (It was 2008, before the current dystopian rush)

So my agent tried submitting my coming of age novel. Guess what the rejections said? It’s a quiet literary novel. Too quiet.

Then I wrote Tall Story. And just like that, the door opened. 

And now here I am, up on a podium, talking to you.

It was official, I was living my dream. 

Except the reality was not quite what I thought. Yeah, it’s been one of the best years of my life ... but it has also been one of the worst. 

Here are the good things: I saw my book in the shops. I met my writing idols – Jacquelyn Wilson, Michael Morpurgo, Malorie Blackman – I had my picture taken with them ... whether they liked it or not. 

I actually get fan mail. My Mum is proud of me. The Philippines is proud of me. Tall Story was shortlisted for eleven prizes.

But instead of enjoying every short-listing, I found myself panicking. I had to write my second novel but I was finding it hard to write, I just couldn’t find the words. 

My blood pressure went sky high. I was grinding my teeth at night and my dentist was in despair at the damage I was doing. I was distracted and not paying enough attention to family things. Sometimes I was convinced that I would never write another book again.

It wasn’t writer’s block as much as writer’s freeze.

When I finally handed my second manuscript to my editor last summer, I knew that there were a lot of things wrong with it.

I went to a meeting with my editor, Simon Mason (author of Moon Pie, shortlisted for 2011 Guardian Prize) ... I armed myself: I prepared a synopsis, a step outline, I got ready for a technical discussion – cut here, paste there.

The first thing he said was: ‘It’s good, Candy.’ 

Uh oh. I thought. Here comes the BUT. BUT it’s not quite strong enough for our list at this time.

But Simon's been in the business a long time, he’s seen his share of second book blues. 

So what he said was this:

‘When you approach revising this book, you must not focus on problems and fixing them. You must focus on what is GREAT about it.’

And then he sat me down and said, ‘... and you know what’s great about this book? It’s GREAT because of this ... it’s GREAT because of this ...’

For half an hour he just told me how great my book was. 

I came out of there with my head spinning. 

I stopped looking for failure. And when I began to focus on what was right instead of what was wrong, I found the book that I wanted to write.

A few weeks ago, Michael Morpurgo was asked in a Guardian interview: ‘What is the greatest threat to publishing today?

His answer:

‘Not giving room and space to new writers. They are no longer nurtured in the way that I was.’

Actually, I know many editors and publishers who believe in nurturing their authors, but times have changed since the days when editors fished their authors out of the pubs, paid their gambling debts and stood guard as their genius sat at the typewriter. The pressures publishers are under today - economic or otherwise – are mind-boggling.

And as for TALENT ... hah! Look around you. This room is FULL of talent. One thing I’ve learned is that in this business, Talent is not the bottom line. 

You need a big idea, good luck, and PERSEVERANCE – LOTS OF IT. 

David Fickling, my publisher, told me, ‘This is who you are now, this is what you do.’

But who am I? This past year has been such a whirlwind that I kind of lost track of myself.

Who am I? 

I am that person who arrived at the SCBWI conference with all her hopes packed in a bag. I was looking for something ... and it was not just an agent, not just a publishing deal, not just tips on how to write ... I was looking for a way of life. 

It’s not true that nurturing no longer exists in this business. Nurturing is what we do here in SCBWI. 

This business is such a roller coaster ride and it’s great to have so many like-minded fellow travellers sharing the highs and the lows ... we mentor each other, cheer each other on, cheer each other up, and generally lift each other up to the next level. 

So Thank you, SCBWI. Not just for voting for Tall Story, but for nurturing me. 

The Outstanding Contribution Award

*Visit Notes from the Slushpile for a comprehensive round-up of blog links and photos of the conference

New artwork style for Bug Belly

By Paul Morton 

 Following some enthusiastic feedback from a couple of publishers and a consensus that they'd like to see non-digital artwork ("or would I mind someone else illustrating it") I've bitten the bullet, given up on the wacom tablet and enjoyed myself with coloured pencils and collage. Here are some of the results and if you click on this LINK to ISSUU you'll see my updated picture book dummy that is ready to do the rounds again.

Itsy-Bitsy Book Cover

By Lynne Chapman

Remember the issues we had with Waterstones not liking the yellow cover which I originally designed for Baby Goes Baaaaa!? Well, I thought we had sorted everything with the new duck-egg blue cover, but I suddenly remembered something...

On the inside, there is this illustration of Nana Croc reading to Baby Croc. Now, whenever possible, I include my own books in my illustrations. Cheeky, but why not?

I thought for Baby Goes Baaaaa! is would be sweet if, instead of one of my other books, Nana Croc was reading the actual book she was in! Clever eh? Except trouble is, that book no longer has a yellow cover... Uh-oh.

Remember the patch I made for Baby Croc's bare bum on the cover of Baby Can Bounce!? Yep, you guessed it: 

It was so very tiny, it was a bit of a nightmare to do, but quite cute, I think you'll agree. When it was finished, I scanned it in and pasted it over the professional scan of Nana Croc from repro. Then, in Photoshop, I tinkered with it until it fitted like a glove. What do you think?

The Bic Picture Competition: What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

By Mike Brownlow

Last month I had the pleasure of being invited to be a judge in the annual competition run by BIC -- the BIC PICTURE -- to find talented young artists amongst Britain's primary school children. My fellow judges were children's TV presenter Kirsten O'Brien, and colour expert Cecile Parenton, who heads the children's division of BIC. The winners have just been announced.
The theme was 'What I want to be when I grow up,' and the ambitions of the nation's children ranged from becoming a mad scientist to a roller coaster designer. If this small sample is representative, there'll be lots of footballers, astronauts, dress designers and chefs around in the future! 

It's not as easy as you might imagine, picking winning pictures from a room full of shortlisted entrants, and there were several good-humored arguments along the way. We had some really delightful designs to sort through though, and choosing an overall winner was especially difficult. Well done to all who took part. Congratulations to all the age group winners, and especially to Laura Burton who won the main prize. Laura wants to be a children's book writer and illustrator, and with her winning picture she's made an impressive start.

I've pictured a few of my favorites here, but this is a link to the BIC Kids website, which gives more information: http://www.bickids.com/index.php?p_sa=actualite&p_actu=1 and to the Flickr site which shows more of the winning entrants: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebicpicture.

The Halloween Forest

By John Shelley

Although this won't be released until next year, here's a sneak preview of my upcoming Halloween themed book for Holiday House in the US. The Halloween Forest, written by Marion Dane Bauer, is a fantastical romp in a spooky bone forest. Fingers crossed it will find a publisher in the UK too. Woooooo!!!!!

Yorkshire Sculpture Park sketch crawl

By Paul Morton

This was a sketch crawl of just one - me, tho I did see at least 4 others doing the same.
The weather was wonderful (Thursday 29th reached 28 degrees), I'd just sent off my last job, couldn't jump on the mountain bike due to an injury so thought right! I've not managed to join the Sheffield crawlers so i'll have my own right now.
The Jaume Plensa sculpture exhibition is breathtakingly superb. I heartily recommend it and I'm sure YSP will make a fantastic location for any future sketch crawl if the Sheffield contingent want to travel up the M1?? Please contact me if anyone wants to make a future date and i'll arrange the details.
My energy trailed off after a break for lunch, so in future I think I should stick at the drawing and reward myself with the break at the end.

Young readers phonics book

By Anna Violet

How Anansi Got His Stories has just been published by Oxford University Press (Oxford Reading Tree Traditional Tales series), and I'm very excited, because I did the illustrations for it. It is the first time I have been published in children's books, too.

Anansi is a trickster spider from traditional West African/Caribbean tales. The other characters include a leopard, a snake, hornets and a sky god.


Here is a selection of some of the illustrations. The cut-out typeface to the cover has been done by OUP.

Viv Schwarz character design and comic workshop

Viviane Schwarz playing with shapes. 

By Anne-Marie Perks

Viviane started the session talking about coming to graphic novels from picture books. In her last book, co-written with Alexis Deacon for Walker Books, A Place to Call Home, Viv used panels and speech bubbles.

As soon as Walker got a graphic novel department, Viv proposed her graphic novel, Sleepwalkers, a wonderful imaginative story in which children can leave a letter under their pillows asking for help in stopping their nightmares.


An unlikely crew with a Yoda type character, Viv's description, a sheep, and a bear and rabbit work together in helping children work out how to stop their own nightmares. As an added bonus, we got to look through a pile of press proofs for Sleepwalkers during the workshop. We also looked through a variety of graphic novel formats and styles represented in the books Viv brought with her such as Neil Gaiman's, Anya's Ghost, Fish and Chocolate by Kate Brown, Rumble Strip by Woodrow Phoenix and Spiral Bound by Aaron Renier.

Character design made by playing with random shapes.

The hands on part of the workshop started with choosing random shapes cut out of coloured construction paper and lots of 'eyes'. Playing around with these shapes in various positions and playing with eye shape and placement quickly made up lots of fun characters around the table. To do this for yourself, cut out random shapes of all kinds starting with the usual triangle, circle, square, bean, rectangle, thick, thin, curvy and so on in different colours. Make eyes as you go along and play! Viv talked about how she would document promising character shapes using a camera for future sketching into more developed characters.

Getting to know your character - walking the line.

 In getting to know your character, Viv gave us a couple of exercises to put our new character through their paces. This one I am calling, walking the line, but Viv called it creating a terrain for your character to travel across. She pointed out that a common mistake students and beginning illustrators make is spending lots of time drawing the face and facial expression and not understanding the character's body or gestures at all. The next two images shows how hard we were working!

Everyone working hard creating characters.

More playing with shapes while Viv gives encouragement.

Another getting to know your character exercise,
put your character into random shapes.

 In the exercise shown above, you place your character in random shapes drawn on a large piece of paper forcing your character into a variety of positions and gestures.

Viv's character design from random shapes.

Another great character in the making from random cut out shapes.

Viv putting together a character.

The last part of the workshop was spent on quick exercises where we took our 'default' characters and placed them with our new characters in four frame sequences. These quick sequences were timed with the first set at 10 minutes a frame and the second set 3 minutes a frame! The first set of four frames began with the character we brought to the workshop doing 'something' in the first frame, then bringing in the new character in the second frame. The next two frames resolved in some way the interaction between the two characters. The second set of four frames began in frame 3 with a climatic moment between the old and new characters. Then we resolved the event in the fourth frame and then drew what happened before frame 3 in frame 2, then how it began in frame 1, emphasising the fact that you can start in the middle.

To wrap up, here are a few of the great suggestions that I managed to write down.

Start by giving yourself limitations; limiting colour and giving yourself a panel grid.

Use Celtex or Scrivener for preparing your script.

Be obvious!

Don't keep going back, work through it and be persistent. That way you get the story out without suffering too much and trying to make something 'awesome' right away.

It's important to get to know your characters first, you need your characters to drive the story.

Write lists of characteristic qualities and history for your characters then do lots of drawings showing how your characters 'express' those qualities through gesture and body language.

Keep a book on personality types that you can feed into your ideas.

Explore themes and ideas in your comfort zone first, then later, jump into areas less comfortable.

And lastly, at least what I wrote down, explore improv theatre! Recommended by Viv; Improv for Storytellers by Keith Johnstone. It's already on my wish list!

Our next Illustrator Masterclass is 10 December with Bridget Strevens-Marzo; The Style Question, exploring voice and style. There are still places available.