The Anatomy of a Monster

©Nicola L Robinson

The nights are drawing in, the shadows are getting darker....  As Halloween approaches, who better to divulge the method for making monsters than SCBWI's spookiest illustrator Nicola L Robinson. Sharpen your pencils, connect the power, bring the creature to life!!





Monsters fascinate me. Particularly the scary kind with big teeth and claws who lie waiting under the bed or in the attic and haunt childhood nightmares. They've always been part of my universe and as an illustrator they still make up a decent chunk of my creative work.

With Halloween almost upon us, I've been invited by the lovely SCBWI Words and Pictures blog to share some thoughts (by no means definitive) from an illustrator's perspective about these compelling creatures and consider what makes a monster, and a few guidelines for drawing your own...

Frankenstein - Nicola L Robinson

Monsters are widespread across most cultures and places, both feared and worshipped they have been kept alive through the ages via the arts, through visual representations in paintings and drawings and through retellings of myths and stories.

'Monster' is defined by the Dictionary as - 'A large, ugly, and frightening imaginary creature.' A Middle English word from old French 'monstre' and Latin 'monstrum' derived from the root 'monere' meaning, appropriately, 'to warn'.

Behemoth and Leviathan - William Blake

Monsters are traditionally big. From Biblical monsters like Behemoth and Leviathan, to mythological monsters the size of mountains. Being colossal in size, emphasises the strength and power of the monster. Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent from Norse mythology, was particularly massive - big enough to wrap itself around the entire world.

Monsters are commonly ugly, which is a little unfair, but generally the uglier the monster's appearance, the more monstrous he/she is perceived to be. Particularly ugly monsters include demons, man eating ogres and big smelly trolls...

Billy Goats Gruff - Nicola L Robinson

Imaginary or otherwise monsters are frightening. Even more so during the time less travelled and enlightened than ours where people could expect to find dragons and other beasties over the horizon. Before Darwin's Origin of Species it is easy to consider how the discovery of a huge dinosaur bone or strange shaped skull could have fuelled belief in monsters. An elephant skull with its large central hole for the trunk could have been the skull of a Cyclops, or a narwhale horn that of a unicorn. 

Monsters invoke fear and sometimes represent it too. If something out there is supposedly big, powerful, dangerous and has a mouth large enough to eat you, it's probably a good idea to be afraid of it. It is no accident that many monster characteristics are closely linked to our innate phobias, both environmental -  darkness, deep water, fire... and in appearance - snakes, poisonous spiders, bats etc...

The Gnarled Monster - Gustave Doré

Monsters, being imaginary, follow no set rules when it comes to appearance, although they are often inspired by nature, particularly exaggerations of it. Sometimes they are illustrated as a muddle of animal parts, like the work of a bad taxidermist, horrifying, but not aesthetically pleasing.
A good example is the Chimera, having the head and body of a male lion, with an extra head of a goat midway along its spine and a snake as a tail.

The Chimaera - Ulisse Aldrovandi

Monsters can be more subtle too. When a monster has an uncanny resemblance to something more familiar and less obviously threatening, it can be particularly frightening, consider the many horror films where a small child or family pet turns out to be more than it seems...

Mythological monsters are often human formed, usually with beastlike modifications, for example Medusa the Gorgon with her hair of snakes, the mermaid with her scaly fish tail, the Minotaur with the head of a bull and the giant figure of the Cyclops, man shaped in form but with a single eye in the centre of his forehead.

Cyclops - Nicola L Robinson

Even in our modern scientific world, where the monsters of old can be explained and written off as fiction, we are still fascinated by them. From literary monsters like Dracula and Jabberwock, to classic film monsters from Ray Harryhausen and our modern CGI incarnations, monsters have established themselves in our world, and they are here to stay.

The Jabberwock - John Tenniel

 
Obviously it goes without saying that monstrous things don't necessarily come monster shaped and sometimes the most monstrous monster doesn't have big teeth or breathe fire at all.

Drawing Monsters

There are no rules when it comes to drawing monsters, However here are a few guidelines which you may wish to consider -

Monster - Nicola L Robinson

1 - Start with an animal, a dangerous one is good, but if you make it big enough and with enough teeth even a guinea pig can be monstrous. You don't need to use the whole animal, but it can be a useful starting point to develop the monster's overall body shape. Experiment.

2 - Accessorise. Borrow a set of antlers, pair of fangs and a hairy mane, or whatever takes your fancy. Try to blend the elements together rather than applying monster taxidermy and sticking an extra head into the middle of the back ala Chimera.

3 - Texture. By combining hairy manes with a scaly belly, slimy tongue and feathery wings you can add more interest and texture to your monster.

4 - Like creating a character, adding a back-story can help flesh your monster out and make him or her even more monstrous, elevating him from just a big hairy shape with lots of teeth to something a little more sophisticated. Consider things like - where does the monster live? What does he eat? Does he have any special powers?  Etc and adjust his appearance accordingly. For example a pond monster might have gills like a shark and spiky fins, or a cave dwelling monster might have very tiny eyes, or none at all, compensating with his particularly keen sense of smell.

5 - Exaggeration. Think big, think extreme, think monstrous!

I hope this helps a little in your monster making, and continues to keep the traditional monster species very much alive. They may well be out there somewhere, perhaps closer than you think.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Monster Listening Party - Nicola L Robinson

Monster Links 

Monsters, Inc - An Interview with Ray Harryhausen

The Lure of Horror - Christian Jarrett, The Psychologist

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Nicola L. Robinson is an Artist, Illustrator and creator of monsters...
Nicola's website - www.nlrobinson.co.uk
Nicola's blog - http://nlrobinsonart.blogspot.co.uk
Nicola on twitter - @NLRobinsonart
Nicola's shop - www.teethandclaws.co.uk

Making a Picture Book Dummy

Tools for making a dummy

As publishers lean more and more towards picture books both written and illustrated by artists, creating a presentable dummy to show illustrations and text together is an important skill for illustrators today. This week Margaret Sturton explains one method.




 

I have had a fair amount of experience in bookbinding sketchbooks but making a dummy book is a challenge. I think the problem lies in having images and text already on the page that have to be kept in order. I used to try sticking images into a sketchbook but the results were disappointingly messy and changes were time consuming. 

I learnt the method described below last year. Watching a tutor make one made the learning process easier and the finished book was good enough to show editors and agents.

The main challenges of making a dummy book like this are the range of possible mistakes. I have stuck a dummy book together so all the pages were back to front. I have sliced off text and once when cutting down the book I strayed irretrievably from the ruler. I now check the order and orientation of the pages over and over again.

The whole process takes around 30 minutes to an hour. Good luck!

  Materials

 

Metal ruler

Embossing tool or equivalent blunt point

Box wood modelling tool or other blunt knife for folding. A butter knife would do just as well

Sharp Stanley knife or scalpel

Cutting board

32 pieces of double sided sticky tape – length about half the height of the page (10-11cm for A4)

 
Your book printed out or photocopied as double page spreads. I usually scale down the pages to 70 or 80%. You should have a total of 16 pages if you are printing a double spread to A4 or A3 and have included end pages and title pages.

Method

This is a fairly easy way of mocking up a dummy book without the hassle of trying to split up the spreads as a publisher would. 

1) Put the cover to one side. If you have the front and back cover on separate sheets, don’t worry, you can sort that out later. The other pages should be stacked in order, first to last page.

2) Take each page in turn, image side up, and score down the centre line using the embossing tool and a ruler.

Keep the ruler in place, fold and flatten the centre line using the modelling tool so the page lies flat. 

Stack the folded pages in order. Do not worry if the pages look wonky. That will be sorted out later.

3) Take a page from the top of the stack. Stick a strip of tape to the folded page close to the spine. 

Work through the rest of the stack, from the back to the front of the book. Keep checking the orientation of the pages.

4) Stick each page to the one in front using the guides on the cutting board to keep the spine lined up. Work from front to back. 

5) Fitting the cover is the next step. Using the cutting board as a guide, score two lines, 2mm from either side of the centre line. 

Use the knife to flatten the folds. You need a snug fit so make the fold for the spine smaller than the book.

6) Making sure the cover and book are the same way round; stick the cover to one end-page along the spine. 

 Flip the book over and stick the cover to the other end-page along the spine. To make this as neat as possible, stick the tape close to the spine.

If your front cover and back page are separate, do the steps above with a blank sheet of paper. Cut and stick the images on afterwards.

7) Mark pencil guides on the edges of the book to show where the images end. Use the cutting board to square the book. Trim down the top and bottom with a metal ruler and scalpel. Cut away a couple of pages at a time. Work from the spine to the outer edge and remove the scraps as they come loose.

 
8) Mark guides for the final rough edge and trim down.

9) Stick tape inside each set of blank pages.  

Remove the tape backing and stick the pages together, working from the back to the front so the final book lies flat.

The finished dummy

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Margaret Sturton is a writer/illustrator based in Winchester. Her website is at www.margaretsturton.co.uk

Picture Book Basics: Pop-Ups

Last month, pop-up book virtuoso Trish Phillips showed some of the processes involved in designing her distinctive three dimensional books for children. Now, especially for our Picture Book Basics series, she turns to the nuts and bolts on how you can plan and build pop-up books of your own. Ready with scissors and glue? Over to Trish!




My previous article was a basic insight into my own process in producing pop-up books for Caterpillar Books, where I was lucky to have a lot of help and advice from their paper engineer at the time, Martin Taylor. 

In part 2 it’s your turn. Maybe you have an idea for a story and want to present it to a publisher as a pop-up or novelty, or it is a fun, personal project. Either way here are some hints and tips to help you get started.  

What’s the idea?
  
You have an idea for a story, but before you go any further there are a couple of points to bear in mind if it is aimed at a publisher. Firstly, keep it short. Due to high production costs, a pop-up usually will have less spreads than a picture book at around six or seven double page spreads rather than twelve. Or sometimes it will be a picture book with one pop-up page at the end. Of course for your own project you can have as many as you like. 

Secondly, not only are there fewer spreads for the story but on each spread there is less space for text as the pop-up will take up more room than a conventional illustration. 

So divide up your short story into your spreads, thinking about the pace, rhythm and page turn. Why not take a look at the writing features on Words & Pictures which might help?  

Thumbnails 

Now you have condensed your story into your spreads let’s have some thumbnails. Where will your text be? Where will your pop-up be? Allow space for everything, create a nice balance and don’t try to cram too much in.  

What’s the Pop? 

What do you want your pop to do? What is the purpose of it? Are the pop-ups to show movement or to create a 3-d scene? Are they for drama, for laughs or to scare? Get ideas from the great books that are around in the bookshops and libraries. You will soon see the different things they do and get a picture of what type of mechanism would suit your book. 

Initially sketch some ideas that you might like to happen and this will help you decide if it can be done. Shown here are early ideas for The Fish Who Cried Shark. Several of the ideas made it to the final book although not all worked or were appropriate. 

Another example below is from Clever Little Crocodile. The initial sketches below ended up quite different in the final version. 

Basics

  
A few basic tips which may or may not be obvious: 

• A pop-up needs to be fixed to a pull tab or a folded page, or an additional layer on a page to activate it. 
• When making your first dummy keep it small; say A5 folded to A6 (if you take a regular A4 and fold it in half twice it gives a good size and double thickness adds strength). 
• Keep the pop-up piece very rough – literally just an approximate copy of the shape. It may take a few goes to get it right so don’t waste time getting into artwork detail at this stage. It is more about shapes, movement and balance on the page. 
• Make the pop-up and test it fits! Crazy tip but many a time you will have a brilliant pop and think it is glued exactly where you want it until you close the page and find it sticks out. 
• Use masking tape which is easily removable to temporarily stick pieces on to allow for constant adjustments. 
• When you are happy with your page spread you can then make it larger and with thick cartridge or thin card, still keeping it white. Now you can go into more detail, but keep it fairly sketchy. This is after all just a 3-d dummy. 
• Use all the facilities you have available as you would with illustrating i.e. Photoshop, scanners and printers so that you can reproduce as many copies as you need. This will also enable you to add text into your dummy if you are going to do that. 

Try some of these for size 

Here are a few ideas, see what you can do with them and adapt them to your story. 

Above is a layer on which you can draw or use as a base to stick on a figure or shape. Imagine the layer is just a small hinge on which to attach something. Made up of two parallel horizontal cuts joined by three vertical folds. 

Whatever distance you make the left vertical fold from the spine fold down the middle of the page should be equal to the distance of the second to the third vertical fold. 

The arrows on this rectangular cut out are only there to show the direction in which the pop-up will move as the page is opened, you don’t need to add them. Cut more and more shapes, experiment, as on this image. 

Another very useful base is triangular, which is simply made by cutting one horizontal line across the central vertical spine and two diagonal folds joining at the top. Turn the whole thing upside down and you will have a different effect. These can be improved on by sticking the triangle or rectangle onto the page rather than cutting out of the page.  

Angles and Moves

  
The bigger the angle, the more movement will be created and this applies to angles on the pop-up piece as well as the angle it is placed on the page. Change the cut, change the angle, make it off centre, add two together. 

This timeless book by Kees Moerbeek is a favourite of mine using the above methods for the faces and by splitting the page creates hilarious combinations of creatures. 

Kees Moebeek Beware of the Pog! (Child's Play, 1988)

Need Some More Help? 

When I was learning there were a lot of helpful books around but these two were invaluable: 

Paper Engineering for pop-up books and cards by Mark Hiner with 10 working models to make up yourself. 

Pop-up! A manual of Paper Mechanisms by Duncan Birmingham with over 100 mechanisms to make, this should keep you going for a while. 

Here are a couple of my own books which have easy to follow step by step projects to make:  

The Practical step by step guide to making pop-ups & novelty cards by Trish Phillips & Ann Montanaro 

How to make Pop-up cards by Trish Phillips 

Also, be inspired by David A. Carter the master of pop-ups, Jan Pienkowski’s many pop-ups, and Marion Bataille. Some others to follow are Martin Taylor, Paul Stickland, John O’Leary, David Hawcock and Ray Marshall to name but a few.

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Long time SCBWI member Trish Phillips is an author, illustrator and paper engineer, her website is www.trishphillipsbooks.com
Twitter: trish_again Blog biglittletale

Picture Book Basics - Character Dynamics

In the third part of a series on Picture book Basics we're looking at characters. Successful Picture Books, especially those for younger children, can hinge on the design of it's cast. So what makes a great character? Here are just a few ideas to explore.


We all have different styles, techniques and approaches, so I'm not attempting a universal guide, but I hope this is of relevance to all illustrators, nomatter what your style. For me, the key elements of a good character are:

• Immediacy - it should be instantly recognisable. 
• Pathos - it should carry an emotional appeal for the reader
• Flexibility - the character should be adaptable to a variety of situations and be easy for the illustrator to reproduce in successive spreads. 

Simplicity is the key to strong characters. Some illustrators convey convincing emotion with the most minimal of designs or simplest of lines, for example....

© Peter H Reynolds

Find some element or detail that makes your character unique within the setting, something that makes it stand out from other background figures, for example striking hairstyle, identifiable clothes, distorted facial features or expression. Using colours or patterns that stand out from the background and which contrast with other figures can be very effective. Accessories can also help - you only have to think of Peter Rabbit's blue jacket, or the Cat in the Hat's hat. sometimes these elements can be the springboard for stories.

David McKee's iconic Elmer - strong character colours against a more subdued background. In many of the Elmer books the patchwork colours are the key to the story, the nature of the character itself creates the tales. ©The Andersen Press

Illustrators often start with sketching character ideas. So, look at your character studies and consider, is this a picture of the character at the beginning of a story, or at the end? Sometimes the very thing that makes the character unique can be the source of a story. How did they reach this condition?

Expression

Experiment with the size and position of facial features, the eyes, the nose, mouth, forehead etc. We’re programmed to find babies faces attractive (both animal & human!), thus characters with infant-like feature proportions are appealing, larger heads on smaller bodies, smaller chins, lower faces etc. Try drawing the character’s face in different emotional states - happy, sad, surprised, cross etc. 

Avoid cartoon generic stereotypes, like big bug eyes with white highlights (ala Disney), perpetually grinning "happy" faces, or manga - cartoons use these graphic short-cuts to thrust their message forward, picture books on the other hand are more sophisticated and subtle, they invite the reader into a more refined world, and characters should reflect this. 

Pose

Once you have an idea of the appearance, try drawing the character in various poses, from various angles. Include plenty of movement - running, climbing, bending over, sitting down etc. Personally I tend to design characters in curves rather than angular straight lines as this naturally leads to more naturalistic figures. Don't worry about reproducing every muscle, but it might help to keep in mind the poise and lightness of ballet and the stage, also how emotion and movement is conveyed in silent movies - body language that is emphasised, but not over-exaggerated. Try holding the pose yourself, feel where your weight rests, which muscles are used, the tension of the pose. Then exaggerate slightly in your drawing. 


 

a progression of early development sketches - all curves!

While comics often require very dynamic characters, in picture books vulnerability can be very effective, as it again appeals to our subconcious love of helpless infants - aim for tenderness and charm, but not over-sentimentality. Characters should be attractive, but not maukish.

Character Connections

Think how characters interact with each other and their environment - show them exchanging glances, use body language to indicate their connection with others on the page, look for the visual dialogue offered by the composition. The character should fit in with the world around them, the setting may also dictate the mood of characters. How does the environment affect your character? How are they feeling? What are they thinking? Place yourself on the page with the character, consider how their surroundings might affect them.

© Tor Freeman has a masterful sense of narrative

These are just a few things to ponder, I hope these ideas help to grasp characters that connect with readers. 

All images © the artists and publishers
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John Shelley is the Illustration Feature Editor of Words & Pictures and current Central East Network coordinator. 
He's illustrated over 40 books for children, many of them published in Japan where he lived for many years. His latest title The Stone Giant is out in Japan now, and will be released in English by Charlesbridge in the US in Spring 2014.   www.jshelley.com

Traditional vs Digital Techniques in illustration

Julia Groves offers some observations on blending time honoured printing methods with modern computers. 




As a printmaker and illustrator I have developed a rather eclectic method of making images, utilising both traditional and digital media to create images which retain a ‘hand-made’ quality. 

I consider myself rather fortunate as I had a traditional art education in the (almost) pre-digital age of the late 1980’s/early 1990’s.Training first as an Illustrator at Cambridge School of Art, working almost purely in traditional non-digital media such as paint, collage and printmaking, typography was hand-rendered and we used the library for all our research, no Google back then! My love/hate relationship with printmaking continued as I pursued a Post-graduate Diploma in Fine Art printmaking at Brighton University, where I discovered that traditional methods of printmaking are both time-consuming and frustrating, but there is also a wonderful sense of achievement in the hand-made.

Isabelle Vandenabeele illustration from Een Griezelmeisje ('A Horrorgirl' written by Edward van den Vendel, published by De Eenhorn 2005)

 The recent revival in traditional printmaking techniques and the rise in popularity of beautiful children’s books with a ‘hand-made’ aesthetic may be viewed as a reaction to computer generated illustrations and the digital book. As much as we embrace the digital world, we are seeking the tactile familiarity of the books of our childhood memories as a counter point to the screen. 

Traditional illustration seems to have come full circle, from falling out of favour to photography in the early 1990’s to being superseded by CGI and vector graphics as digital technologies evolved. There are now more opportunities than ever for a broad spectrum of traditional and digitally created images (or better still a combination of the two) in picture books. 

I admire Illustrators such as Marc Boutavant, who creates all his work digitally, yet his images have a beautiful mid-century auto lithography aesthetic, combining retro colours and charming animal characters. Belgian artist Isabelle Vandenabeele creates beautiful illustrations combining traditional wood cuts, which are then scanned in layers and coloured and composed using Photoshop. John Lawrence works in a similar way, his intricate wood engravings are again assembled using digital techniques, this method was utilised to great effect in his illustrations to Treasure Island (Walker Books, 2010) and more recently Wayland written by Tony Mitton (David Fickling Books, 2013).

A wood engraving by John Lawrence (© John Lawrence/Walker Books)

Although I now regularly use Photoshop as part of the process of making illustrations, I also have a genuine respect for traditional methods and this will always be the starting point of my work.

Printing from traditional wooden fonts in the letterpress studio at Cambridge school of Art

The final text, scanned and digitally coloured using Photoshop

I have long been fascinated by the idea of printmaking without a press and combining various techniques into one illustration. I enjoy making mono-prints, transfer drawings and hand-cut block prints, all of which can be done with very basic equipment. I use water-based inks for speed of drying.

Monoprints are created by rolling a very thin layer of printing ink onto a smooth surface (such as plastic, glass or even a table top), next place a piece of paper over the ink and draw on the paper. The pressure of the pencil transfers the ink onto the paper, creating a beautiful ‘feathered’ line. Interesting effects may also be achieved by painting printing inks directly onto the clean surface with a brush, laying paper on top and taking a print by applying gentle pressure with your hand. Different effects can be achieved by wiping ink from the surface with a rag, or drawing into the inked areas.

Making a Monoprint

Printing blocks can be created by cutting shapes from sponge or rubber and gluing onto a wooden (or mdf) block. These can be inked with a roller and pressed onto paper, rather like a rubber stamp. Linocuts are also easy to create at home without a printing press. Use a linocutting tool to carve your design onto a piece of lino, ink with a roller, place a piece of paper over the inked lino and apply pressure by ‘burnishing’ with a spoon.

Rolling ink onto a linocut

I usually print everything in black ink or sometimes I’ll cut just shapes out of black card, scan and then colour and assemble the final illustrations in Photoshop.

Printing from handmade relief blocks

The final illustrations, coloured and composed digitally using Photoshop

The important aspect of this process for me is the sense of retaining the original traditional starting point in the finished digital illustration.

I also recommend Martin Salisbury’s books (Illustrating Children’s Books, Play Pen: New Children’s Book Illustration and Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling)

All images © the artists and publishers.
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Julia Groves works as a lecturer in Illustration and graphic design, but is also currently in her final semester on the MA Children’s Book Illustration course at Cambridge School of Art.

Follow her blog here.