Making that children's book
/You may recall that my one post last week was about an assignment I gave to the lazy, lazy writers at Backstreet Writers** to create at least a mockup of a 16-page children’s book.
I scribbled some ideas in an impromptu WASTE BOOK…
… then moved into Canva’s free Affinity to start playing around with my scribbles in the book’s actual layout.
I will say here that choosing the right typeface for your book is the best TASK AVOIDANCE ever. Here were my options.
I gravitated towards the first typeface up there, but it was far too reminiscent of the typeface used in Mo Willem’s delightful Pigeon series. Yes, I’m that much of a typeface geek. I ended up going with the fourth one down.
What I most want to impress upon people is that even though I went to the layout program, this is still an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT. I placed Bug’s dialog boxes where I thought they would go, then printed the book out full-sized and started sketching in everything else.
Notice the test-sketches for Bug. My original thought was to practice until I could reliably replicate the image and then draw Bug and his adventures by hand, and finally scan the whole book back in. Hold that thought.
I went through all the pages and sketched in where Bug and his adventures will go…
… then headed back into Affinity to start drawing this on the screen. Out came the graphic tablet, and I got busy.
The problem I soon encountered is that my tablet skills suck, so I had to give up on the idea of sketching Bug’s every appearance. Instead, I’d create an acceptable Bug, then copy/paste the critter everywhere I needed it. There was a short kerfuffle when I applied a tool that didn’t do what I thought it should do, which then puzzled me when I started renaming the copies to Bug p2 so I could tell all the layers apart and all the copies would be renamed the same thing.
After a short jaunt to a community bulletin board for Affinity users — whose denizens were very kind and helpful to the newbie — I fixed the problem and now…
Very close, but you can see where I’m still making SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATIONS even on a basically finished page.
Still to go: Illustrations for the flower, the “pond,” the ant hill, the ice cream, and of course the dog poop.
I’m telling you, guys, this thing is adorable. Even my Lovely First Wife said so when she read the proof copy last night. You’re going to want a copy for your own self.
And it’s given me an idea for the Backstreet Writers if they all come through with cromulent books.
** The writers at Backstreet are not lazy.
