"Do You Want To Create A Picture Book?" - A Panel Discussion with Nate Williams, James Yang, Giuseppe Catellano, Jim Hoover, and Kirsten Hall

"Picture books are kind of like the guitar solo for illustrators."

With those words of inspiration (or maybe challenge), author and illustrator Nate Williams kicked off this panel discussion at the Society of Illustrators. In this video recorded on February 10, 2015, Nate outlines his creative process—from ideation to publishing. He is joined by James Yang (Author/Illustrator http://www.jamesyang.com), Giuseppe Catsellano (at the time an Art Director, Penguin Young Readers Group http://twitter.com/pinocastellano), Jim Hoover (Associate Art director, Viking Books), and Kirsten Hall (Agent/Producer http://catbirdagency.com/).


As shared on the Society of Illustrators video archive.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Illustrators: Must-Read Advice on Your Portfolio from Art Director & Illustrator Giuseppe Castellano

There's a lot of great advice in this article, The Illustrator's Portfolio, including:

"When I look at portfolios, I don’t look for kids or cats. I look for your voice as an illustrator (“The Who”), and how well you execute your illustrations (“The How”). What should you put in your portfolio? Good art. That’s the answer. You should display art that’s executed at a high level. No matter what your visual handwriting is—from realism to abstract art—it must be done well. Show that you can convey a feeling or a narrative with a strong understanding of your medium." 

Giuseppe also covers whether you should show one style or multiple styles, presentation (like how many pieces to include) and much more. Oh, and this smart tip:

"Straighten Out! Do yourself a favor: remove all of the factory-inserted pages and burn them. You’re already printing your work, right? So why not create a Photoshop template at the actual size of the plastic sleeve? Make the background black (or a neutral, or whatever you want). Then you can place your art digitally onto this template. Hit PRINT. Voilà! Every page will fit perfectly in the sleeve, and you’ll never again need to tape one piece of paper crookedly onto another piece of paper."

He's even included a page template as a springboard for how you might organize your portfolio more like a book.

Go read the whole thing. And while you're at it, bookmark Giuseppe's Art Tips blog.

Illustrate and Write On! 
Lee

Wisdom From Animators Who Have Crossed Over To Illustrating Children's Books

Giuseppe Castellano, Executive Art Director at Penguin Random House, asked 12 animators to share their kid lit #arttips on his blog, in this post, Animation and Children's Books.

Among the great bits of wisdom shared were these three::

"In those 32 pages, I not only want to illustrate what has been written, but I also want to be able to show the reader who the character is and let them get a sense of the world that lives in between the words of the story."

- CLAIRE KEANE Visual Development Artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios (Tangled, Frozen) and a Children’s Book Author/Illustrator

Here's an interior spread from Claire's Once Upon A Cloud:

"In film school, I studied the 5 C’ of Cinematography: Camera Angles, Continuity, Cutting, Close-ups, Composition. Every single one of those applies to picture books. Too often, I see animator’s illustration portfolios with a well-designed, solidly-constructed character that is just standing there, static. Make them act! Or there are characters, but no background. In animation, you may have a specific task (character designer, colorist, background designer), but as an illustrator, you need to wear all of those hats."

 -TINA KUGLER Former Storyboard Artist for Walt Disney Television Animation, Nickelodeon, and Warner Bros. Television and a Children’s Book Author/Illustrator

"I think the one thing that I learned in animation (from doing storyboards particularly) is to not be too precious about my drawings initially. I draw probably thousands of storyboards on any given film and you have to be willing to throw away something you just drew in order to draw a better idea. The whole point is to get the film up in storyboards as fast as you can so you can get it wrong as fast you can and change/fix it. If we spent all our time rendering our storyboards so that they look pretty but don’t really tell the best story in the animation reel (rough cut of the film in storyboards) then we just wasted all that time polishing storyboards we now have to throw out and redraw. So to apply that to book making is great because I can rough out a book in a day or less and then take a look at it and fix the story structure before I even worry about tones or useless details that will change as the story evolves and gets better. If you spend a lot of time on rendering your sketches or drawings then you start to become attached to them and it will be harder to toss them out and start over to get a better idea and story across. remember, STORY is KING. Focus on the story, not the rendering. If the story doesn’t work, the rendering won’t make it better. So my advice to anyone would be to focus on the visual story structure, character development, staging, compositions, pacing and word play and THEN you can add the details and rendering later.

-OVI NEDELCU Picture book Author/Illustrator, Visual Development, Character Design & Story Artist for Laika, Sony, Disney, and Cartoon Network

Here's an interior spread from Ovi's The Cat, The Boots, The Legend, from Simon and Schuster.

Illustrators, go read the whole piece - it's well worth your time!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Giuseppe Castellano's "10 Mistakes Illustrators Make" is essential reading

Check out this post, 10 Mistakes Illustrators Make, by the award-winning Designer, Illustrator and Art Director at Penguin Random House Giuseppe Castellano.

Some of it's good technical advice (like the issue of getting file types right to the color space problems of how artwork created in RGB will be printed in CMYK.)

Some of it's good artistic advice (a sky is more than just one shade of blue, change your POV, careful where you crop.)

But all of it is really smart to know about.

Read Giuseppe's post, part of his #arttips series, here.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee