Before I start a new project, I read through the manuscript a few times. My first step is to doodle some aimless drawings—to warm up, I guess—then I begin the serious business of drawing thumbnail sketches in the form of a storyboard. As I’m doing that, I stop every so often to work on model sheets of the characters. The first ones are just like this sketch of Barnacle Bleackear, from Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies and Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates.
To really get into a character, though, you need to draw the heck out of it. Here is a model sheet of the duck from The Perfect Nest. Drawing the character in a bunch of poses helps me to understand how it looks from different angles. After drawing the same character many times, it’s a whole lot easier to incorporate into a page sketch.
Here are the goose and hen from The Perfect Nest.
And here’s Jack the cat from the same book. I design each character before I begin the tight page sketches. It’s crucial that these characters look consistent throughout the book. My audience is 5-8 years old, and many of them are just learning to read. They need to be able to identify a character every time it appears. You can see that these sheets help me work out and understand each character’s proportions—and also allow me to develop the expressions, gestures and poses that establish its personality.
Once you’ve got your portfolio together, you want people to see it—specifically people who can hire you.
Let’s make this an assault on multiple fronts. You young illustrators have many media available for self-promotion.
The world-wide web. Get yourself a website. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just a place to put up some samples of your work and your contact information. Nowadays everybody expects to be able to find you on the web, so make sure you’re there. Because we live in an age of technological marvels, you can build a website yourself, for free: http://www.moogo.com/. Here’s a review.
I’ve noticed illustrators have been posting their samples on flickr, which doesn’t cost you anything, either. Same with Facebook.
Print media. Even though I have a web presence, I rely on print media to let potential clients know I’m there. I strongly recommend that you consider a postcard mailing campaign. This will cost you a few skins, but I’ve found the return on investment to be worthwhile. I go to Modern Postcard to print my postcards. They’re in California and all they do is print postcards. A batch of 500 will set you back around $120.00. Once you go to their website, they really take care of you. There are downloadable templates so you may design your postcard to fit US postal requirements. You may submit everything to them electronically. They’ll turn your job around in less than 2 weeks.
Put a show-stopping four-color image on the front of your postcard, and tell everyone how to find you on the back. If you can afford it, consider sending a series of postcards that tell a story. I did this and I got a great response from art directors—and a couple of jobs. I told a story in four images, and mailed my postcards every Monday for 4 weeks. By the time the fourth postcard was mailed, the ADs were waiting for it.
You’ll need a mailing list of people who might hire you. When I began, I wanted to break into children’s publishing, so I needed a list of art directors who work for children’s magazine and book publishers. I transcribed my list from Children’s Artists’ & Writers’ Market. If kids’ illustration isn’t your bag, a more general list can be gleaned from the 2009 Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market Of course you can buy mailing lists, but I prefer to build and maintain my own. Don’t forget to send a postcard to every member of your family and everyone you’ve ever met. You never know who may turn out to be an important contact.
Creative directories. These are catalogues of illustrators—you buy a page, put your images on it and the directory is sent out to zillions of art directors. This can get pricey. I stick with Picture Book only. I’ve tried some of the others, and I’d never been able to establish that I got a return on my investment; that is, the page didn’t generate more fees than I paid for it. Picture Book is a small slice of the illustration market—children’s only—which is the more effective way for me to promote myself.
Competitions. Don’t necessarily generate sales.
All your promotion should be run at a profit. If you spend a dollar on promotion and don’t get more than a dollar back, stop doing that kind of promotion and try something else.
DON’T e-mail art directors with unsolicited samples.
https://www.johnmanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/JohnManderslogo300w1-300x58.jpg00johnmandershttps://www.johnmanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/JohnManderslogo300w1-300x58.jpgjohnmanders2009-08-17 05:22:222009-08-17 05:22:22How To Become An Illustrator, Canto IV
Besides picture books, I’ve done a couple of chapter books that were lots of fun for me. Chapter books are for an older audience (9-12) and the ratio of words to pictures is very different! There is typically one black & white image per chapter, plus a color image for the cover.
Pete and Fremont and Pete’s Disappearing Act, are both circus yarns starring Pete the poodle (or Pierre le chien, as he’s billed on the posters). Both are written by Jenny Tripp. Jenny is a fantastically good author and it was a treat to work on her stories. She creates engaging characters and writes dialogue that perfectly expresses those characters—which shouldn’t be a surprise since she’s a screenwriter.
Here are some sketches and final images from Pete’s Disappearing Act.
Rough sketch of Pete—who finds himself far from the circus— dancing on a barrel in a barn. To the left are the lady who owns the farm and her menacing dog, Buck.
Samantha McFerrin, my art director, decided the image was too crowded. Here’s a revise:
Yes, this works better. That’s Quackers the duck on the left. Now I do the finished drawing, which is linework in black Prismacolor pencil and tones done with brush and India ink washes.
Here is one of Pete’s new friends he meets while trying to get back to the circus—El Jefe, the one-eyed military macaw who is slightly dotty from having spent too much time with ‘humming beans.’ He suffers delusions of revolución.
https://www.johnmanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/JohnManderslogo300w1-300x58.jpg00johnmandershttps://www.johnmanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/JohnManderslogo300w1-300x58.jpgjohnmanders2009-08-14 21:49:412009-08-14 21:49:41Pierre le chien
Model sheets
illustration processBefore I start a new project, I read through the manuscript a few times. My first step is to doodle some aimless drawings—to warm up, I guess—then I begin the serious business of drawing thumbnail sketches in the form of a storyboard. As I’m doing that, I stop every so often to work on model sheets of the characters. The first ones are just like this sketch of Barnacle Bleackear, from Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies and Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates.
To really get into a character, though, you need to draw the heck out of it. Here is a model sheet of the duck from The Perfect Nest. Drawing the character in a bunch of poses helps me to understand how it looks from different angles. After drawing the same character many times, it’s a whole lot easier to incorporate into a page sketch.
Here are the goose and hen from The Perfect Nest.
And here’s Jack the cat from the same book. I design each character before I begin the tight page sketches. It’s crucial that these characters look consistent throughout the book. My audience is 5-8 years old, and many of them are just learning to read. They need to be able to identify a character every time it appears. You can see that these sheets help me work out and understand each character’s proportions—and also allow me to develop the expressions, gestures and poses that establish its personality.
How To Become An Illustrator, Canto IV
illustration careerStep Four. Promote.
Once you’ve got your portfolio together, you want people to see it—specifically people who can hire you.
Let’s make this an assault on multiple fronts. You young illustrators have many media available for self-promotion.
The world-wide web. Get yourself a website. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just a place to put up some samples of your work and your contact information. Nowadays everybody expects to be able to find you on the web, so make sure you’re there. Because we live in an age of technological marvels, you can build a website yourself, for free: http://www.moogo.com/. Here’s a review.
I’ve noticed illustrators have been posting their samples on flickr, which doesn’t cost you anything, either. Same with Facebook.
Print media. Even though I have a web presence, I rely on print media to let potential clients know I’m there. I strongly recommend that you consider a postcard mailing campaign. This will cost you a few skins, but I’ve found the return on investment to be worthwhile. I go to Modern Postcard to print my postcards. They’re in California and all they do is print postcards. A batch of 500 will set you back around $120.00. Once you go to their website, they really take care of you. There are downloadable templates so you may design your postcard to fit US postal requirements. You may submit everything to them electronically. They’ll turn your job around in less than 2 weeks.
Put a show-stopping four-color image on the front of your postcard, and tell everyone how to find you on the back. If you can afford it, consider sending a series of postcards that tell a story. I did this and I got a great response from art directors—and a couple of jobs. I told a story in four images, and mailed my postcards every Monday for 4 weeks. By the time the fourth postcard was mailed, the ADs were waiting for it.
You’ll need a mailing list of people who might hire you. When I began, I wanted to break into children’s publishing, so I needed a list of art directors who work for children’s magazine and book publishers. I transcribed my list from Children’s Artists’ & Writers’ Market. If kids’ illustration isn’t your bag, a more general list can be gleaned from the 2009 Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market Of course you can buy mailing lists, but I prefer to build and maintain my own. Don’t forget to send a postcard to every member of your family and everyone you’ve ever met. You never know who may turn out to be an important contact.
Creative directories. These are catalogues of illustrators—you buy a page, put your images on it and the directory is sent out to zillions of art directors. This can get pricey. I stick with Picture Book only. I’ve tried some of the others, and I’d never been able to establish that I got a return on my investment; that is, the page didn’t generate more fees than I paid for it. Picture Book is a small slice of the illustration market—children’s only—which is the more effective way for me to promote myself.
Competitions. Don’t necessarily generate sales.
All your promotion should be run at a profit. If you spend a dollar on promotion and don’t get more than a dollar back, stop doing that kind of promotion and try something else.
Get this book and read it: Your Marketing Sucks.
DON’T e-mail art directors with unsolicited samples.
Pierre le chien
illustration processBesides picture books, I’ve done a couple of chapter books that were lots of fun for me. Chapter books are for an older audience (9-12) and the ratio of words to pictures is very different! There is typically one black & white image per chapter, plus a color image for the cover.
Pete and Fremont and Pete’s Disappearing Act, are both circus yarns starring Pete the poodle (or Pierre le chien, as he’s billed on the posters). Both are written by Jenny Tripp. Jenny is a fantastically good author and it was a treat to work on her stories. She creates engaging characters and writes dialogue that perfectly expresses those characters—which shouldn’t be a surprise since she’s a screenwriter.
Here are some sketches and final images from Pete’s Disappearing Act.
Rough sketch of Pete—who finds himself far from the circus— dancing on a barrel in a barn. To the left are the lady who owns the farm and her menacing dog, Buck.
Samantha McFerrin, my art director, decided the image was too crowded. Here’s a revise:
Yes, this works better. That’s Quackers the duck on the left. Now I do the finished drawing, which is linework in black Prismacolor pencil and tones done with brush and India ink washes.
Here is one of Pete’s new friends he meets while trying to get back to the circus—El Jefe, the one-eyed military macaw who is slightly dotty from having spent too much time with ‘humming beans.’ He suffers delusions of revolución.