From Start to Finish: Mooin, the Bear's Child

Project Number Three has commenced!

You may notice that I've still got a little bit of work to do on my two previous projects, however, as many of you students out there understand... What Teacher says, Student does!

Our third and final project for Children's Book Illustration II is a storyboard and a double-page spread of a folktale.  It must include a child, and it must be completed in acrylic paint!  It can be any size, theme or style we choose, as long as it matches well with the story.

I chose to do the Native American tale of "Mooin, the Bear's Child."  In this class, I have done a Japanese themed project in watercolor, a Chinese themed project with acrylic and cut paper collage, and I think it will be fun to try a Native American theme for the last project.  I love nature, and all things woodsy (my daddy does woodworking- love the smell of sawdust!) so I am entertaining the thought of painting this all on pine... but I guess we'll see how it goes.  Art tends to have it's own mind when it comes to things like this!

Our first job was to paginate the story, which means we need to break down the story's text and determine where it will go, and on what page, in a way that enhances the story.  I've learned in my writing class that this is also an essential part of writing a picture book - you need to make the story build itself up, create tension and excitement, and slowly bring it back down to a conclusion.  And you can do all that not only with the plot, but also how and where you place the text.

Here's what my story looks like paginated:

 

The next step is to do a storyboard, or a visual layout of text and page composition of the entire story.  This includes things like borders, square-ups, and page bleeds.

Mine read from left to right- across both pages. 
(The pages are numbered...follow those and you'll get the idea!)

Then we choose our favorite double-page spread that features a child, and we work on possible compositions:

(I didn't include the ugly ones...maybe one day I will when it won't be so incriminating!)

Then we need to work on the final sketch.  This part is much harder for me, because my story is about bears, and I've never actually drawn real bears before!  So I went surfing around the web and watched some nice bear videos, clips from Disney's Brother Bear movie, and browsed Google images.  I also reserched Native American iconolgy and symbols, because I might be using them for a border. 

 Here are some sketches I can now use for my composition:

That is all I've got right now, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done!  I've got more wrestling bears, boys, and comps to draw, and some serious polishing up to do.  Though I've got an image in my head, I'm still excited to see how it all turns out!

In the meantime, Happy Drawing and Writing to you!  :)