I'M BORED sketches, first passes, pacing & advice for aspiring picture book writers

A continuation of my series of posts about how I'M BORED was created. To catch up, see the post archive. Or you can go back to the Main I'M BORED Homepage.

After Justin Chanda  and I had some back-and-forth about the main characters, he asked me to come up with illustration ideas. There were some very rough art notes in Michael Ian Black's mss, but I was also given a surprising amount of leeway when it came to the visuals.

This made the whole process WAY more fun than I expected. I'm not sure how it works with other publishers, but one reason I enjoyed working on I'M BORED so much was because I was treated like an essential part of the creative team. You more experienced types are probably used to this, but I was expecting to be told exactly what to draw.

Rather than "you should draw this and this and this," however, it was more like "what do you think?"

The first few times this happened, I was worried about saying something stupid because of my lack of experience. And I probably did say some stupid things…but Justin and Laurent never made me feel like it. I learned so much during our discussions, gradually gained confidence about contributing ideas and (I know I've said this before but I can't help but repeating myself) HAD SO MUCH FUN. 

The experience changed my opinion about including too many art notes in picture book manuscripts. To you aspiring picture book writers out there:  Resist the urge to include detailed illustration instructions throughout your manuscript. Leave room for the artist to be creative. 

I appreciated what MIB did in his I'M BORED mss: included enough guidance to keep his intended story on track, but didn't nitpick over details.

But back to the illustration process:

My early attempts were too rushed in pacing, and I tried to fit too much into a spread (see above).

Here's my next attempt, where I simplified and slowed down pacing:

At my first meeting with Justin Chanda and Laurent Linn (see my previous post), there was a lot of cutting and pasting involved as we worked on further improving pacing. Here are photos I took of the two modified spreads after my meeting at S&S:

Notice how much the pacing has already improved since my sketch at the top of this post.

I experimented more with the little girl's bored poses. Meanwhile, though, I still hadn't settled on the girl's appearance (more on this in a future post), but that didn't matter as much in the beginning. The most important goal in those early stages: figure out the best visual pacing for MIB's story. The finer details could be worked out later on.

Here are how the final spreads turned out:

And it comes out on SEPTEMBER 4th!!! I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

Ahem. Apologies for that outburst.

More on the I'M BORED process soon...

I'M BORED character sketches: The Potato

Continuing my series of posts about how I'M BORED was created...

In addition to sending Justin some character sketches of the little girl, I also sent him character sketches of the potato:

I got a huge kick out of the fact that I was doing character sketches of a POTATO. And I actually did buy a bunch of different potatoes from the grocery store as examples of different potato shapes and textures and colours.

Yes, I knew that most of the details wouldn't need to be exact in the final version but hey, I needed to grokk the essence of The Potato!

After studying all my potatoes, of course, I cooked and ate them.

:-D

Photo: laurenipsum

Since working on I'M BORED, I see potatoes in a whole new light. They all have FACES, for example. Don't believe me? Check it out yourself:

1. Buy a potato from the supermarket.

2. Put it on your kitchen table.

3. Look really hard at it. Focus. Try thinking potato thoughts. Become one with the potato.

4. THERE! You SEE it? Just for a moment, that potato face, glaring at you?!??

5. Okay, so maybe you didn't see a face. But it's there, I swear! Try drawing potatoes for over a year and you'll see a face in every potato, too.

Hm, I think I'm going to have to have a Create A Potato Face Challenge at some point in the future.

But meanwhile, here are Some Boring Facts About Potatoes.

Creating I'M BORED: Character Sketches

After reading the unedited manuscript (which I loved!), I was asked to come up with some character sketch ideas for the little girl in the story.

Here are just some of the ideas I sent to Justin:

Justin liked Option C the best. "I love her!  I think she is just great so expressive with such minimal line."