How I Make a Picture Book

And not the only way to make a picture book, obviously.

If it’s not my own story, then I’m starting with just a Word document or whatever of the author’s manuscript. Sometimes you can tell by the way he broke up his sections how he thinks the book ought to be paginated. But I’m free to ignore that if I like–paginating the book is the illustrator’s prerogative.

A manuscript as it appears on my computer-machine. This is actually some text from the next book I'm doing with Gaiman–couldn't find the last one.

So I print that manuscript out and start marking it up. I draw brackets around sections that I think ought to stay together on a page or a spread. This turns into a bit of a puzzle for at least a couple reasons–because you want to be deliberate about where your page-turns are falling, and because virtually all printed books have a page count that’s divisible by eight. In a novel you can just throw a bunch of blanks at the end to round out another eight pages if you have to, but with a picture book you need to be more precise. Add to this that nearly all picture books are either 32 or 40 pages long, and it gets even more restrictive. Few PBs are more than 40 pages. None are less than 32 (board books don’t count).*

I probably just lost half my readers discussing this stuff, so I’m bailing out now. But there are a lot of tricks for getting to the right page count, and not all of them are obvious. So to the guy in the comments section who is going to claim he found a PB with 35 pages I preemptively say: Nope. You didn’t. We can talk about it after class.

Once I know what’s going where I can start sketching the thing out, and I always end up doing something like this:

Actually the thumbnails to Chloe and the Lion.  Couldn't find the thumbs to Chu's Day, either. Should I have made a "panda thumbs" joke here?  Because pandas have thumbs? Maybe it's a little too on the nose.

I draw 32 or 40 or whatever little boxes on a single page of my sketchbook and start filling them in. I only have the most rudimentary notion what each page is going to look like, but this is where I usually discover the ideas that will make this my book as opposed to a book that was merely illustrated by me.

Once I have all my pandas in a row I probably sketch character designs. This is easily my favorite part of the process, when everything's still new and the book in question is still the best thing I've ever done or will do.

On this sketchbook spread you also see Merle Lynn, a character from my COLD CEREAL trilogy, and also Abraham SuperLincoln fighting an octopus on the moon.

I refine the page thumbnails into loose sketches, and the loose sketches into finished sketches.

Eventually I compile all the sketches into a dummy of the whole book.  In the old days that meant a lot of photocopying and binding together a physical mockup.  Nowadays I just assemble a pdf. This is often the first thing the publisher sees from me.

The pdf is named for its inventor, Paul Diogenes Format.

Now's when I start entertaining comments from the editor and art director, and make changes, and fight for things I don't want to change.

 I don't remember there being much disagreement over this particular book, though HarperCollins didn't care for the way I was treating the text in my pdf. They nixed the CMY bubble-things, and hired a letterer so I wouldn't have to worry about that, as I was already several months late at this point.

At this step I consider why I fail to meet deadlines, and why I'm such a constant disappointment to all who depend on me. You may want to skip this step, but I can't seem to.

Anyway, you can guess the rest. Once the editor and I agree on everything, and the author either likes it or else the editor decides the author is wrong for disliking it and therefore doesn't tell me, then I finish the illustrations.

I render the finishes a little differently on each book.  About halfway through I'm so sick of pandas I'm actually glad they're endangered.

When I turn in the art I'm worried that it's totally inadequate.  When the book arrives in stores a year later I only see mistakes.  A few months later I love it.

Goodnight.


*Okay, almost none.

Chu's Day is out...

...and I can't help but link to a blog post that Neil Gaiman writes about it.  So go read that.  But I hope he won't mind that I stole one of his images, which I present below.

When Gaiman presented his manuscript to HarperCollins, he actually included his own B&W dummy, a drawing from which you can see above.  I don't actually know how many authors do this, but it was the first time that a publisher forwarded along such a dummy to me.

Anyway, it was understood that I didn't have to make the book-dust blower an elephant if I didn't want to.  But man, why NOT an elephant?

Chu's Day Trailer

Fun fact–Gaiman wasn't available to make this video, so I played him wearing a Neilsuit a la the British "pantomime" tradition.

Effin' G's!

There Was a Lot of Pepper Dust in the Air...

Slightly dodgy photo of first finished spread from forthcoming picture book with Neil Gaiman. Click to enlarge.

I Suppose if the Chinese Don't Publish It, It'll Be Because of My Disrespectful Painting Style.

From an interview with Neil Gaiman:

The last time I was in China, I was very puzzled because none of my children’s picture books are in print in Mainland China. They’re in print in Hong Kong and in Taiwan, in complex Chinese characters, but they are not in print in Mainland China. I asked my producer, “Why aren’t any of my children’s picture books in print in Mainland China?,” and they said, “It’s because of their disrespect for authority.” I said, “Really?!” And they said, “Yeah, look at them. The Wolves in the Walls is about this little girl who tells her parents that there are wolves in the walls, but they do not believe her. There really are wolves in the walls, and thus her parents are proved wrong. And, in The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, these kids swap their dad. If that happened, society would crumble.”

So, suddenly, it became a goal of mine that was almost a little obsession to write a children’s picture book that would be published in Mainland China, that they could not help but publish, but still could have all of the things that are in my children’s picture books, and I did it. I wrote this book and it’s being painted right now by this wonderful artist, and it’s called Chu’s Day, and it is about a baby panda who sneezes. There is no way that anyone can resist a baby panda who sneezes. This is the single cutest book I’ve ever written. It is written for two-year-olds and is designed in such a way that I’ve tried it on kids and it actually works that when you get to the end, they just look at you and they say, “Read it again!” The only words on page one are, “When Chu sneezed, bad things happened.”

Thanks to Jorge Lacera for the link.

TGIP

I think this is it–the culmination of all my panda-related efforts this past week. A little cub wearing a t-shirt and a pilot's helmet and goggles. This is what it's all been for.



I hope the Home Office agrees that I can't responsibly get any cuter than this. What would they have me do? Draw a panda in a onesie? Or with...I don't know...wings or something? Or dressed up as an entirely different animal? Or even–and I hesitate to suggest this–a panda covered in smaller pandas?

Special Request

My Illustratophone started chugging away again last night, much to my surprise. This morning I had a special request from the Illustrators Home Office:



It's nice to see them showing an interest. I think the assignment must be going really well.



Brian Biggs commented on a previous post that he was disappointed with the Apple Illustratophone App. I've been thinking of getting an iPhone–anyone else have this problem? I love my landline Illustratophone but it goes through kerosene like nobody's business.

Pandamonium!

Big emergency this morning. I sat down to draw the day's batch of pandas and I guess I went into some sort of fugue state, and when I emerged I'd accidentally drawn Abraham SuperLincoln fighting an octopus on the moon.



And to think I almost sent this to the Home Office! This kind of thing doesn't usually happen to me when I draw, though I can tell you that I've often begun writing what I intended to be an international bestseller and mistakenly ended up with a book nobody wanted to read.

Anyway, I got back on track, and ended the morning with what I consider to be a passable panda-in-waistcoat sketch.



One reader asked about my Illustratophone, seen previously. I realize I'm lucky to have one of the nice old ones. I'm told it was formerly commissioned to Clive Lumley, who of course is best known for the popular "Lumley Girl" series of illustrated hosiery ads in the 50s and 60s.

I prefer to remember him for these, and not for his slow decline into pornographic album covers in the 1970s and beyond.

The Illustrators Home Office Continued

Yesterday I mentioned that I'd gotten a new assignment from the Illustrators Home Office in Pueblo, Colorado. I'm pretty jazzed about it now. I don't know why they need all these pandas and I'm not going to ask. This offers a good lesson for the art students and up-and-coming illustrators who read my blog: DON'T QUESTION THE ILLUSTRATORS HOME OFFICE. The one and only time I asked for a little clarification they had me drawing hands and complicated Rococo furniture for a month.

Anyway, here's today's batch of pandas. I think I'm really getting somewhere.

The Illustrators Home Office

Late last night I got an assignment from the Illustrators Home Office. I hadn't heard boo from them in two years but then I'm suddenly awakened by the chugga-chugga noise of my Illustratophone. I didn't even know it was plugged in.

I hate that chugga-chugga noise.

Anyway, I checked it this morning and the assignment's a peach, so I must be back in their good graces:



Here's the first batch. They'll probably have me doing these all week. I won't know I'm done until the Illustratophone makes the pinging noise and raises the little flags and the tiny metal bird goes back and forth on the track with the yellow things, and you know what they say–a watched illustratophone never pings. So I may as well keep my head down.