With all those pesky woodworking project out of the way Soule Designs has shifted full bore onto completion of the children's book Peck, Peck, Peck! This installment is going to focus on the process of creating the drawings for the book and refining them into a digitally "inked" state ready for color.
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| I'm too young to die! |
Above is an example of an inked illustration, which is really the third step in our pipeline. Yes, I used the phrase pipeline, I've been reading way too many 3d/cg magazines. Anyway, our process is as follows:
First, Laura sketches the initial concepts via pencil on paper, if you don't know what pencil on paper is I'd advise getting off my lawn before I release the hound.
Next, I scan in the sketches and then tweak to fit the InDesign layout (either single page or spread) and digitally sketch over to match character reference for continuity.
The final step before color is "inking" where I use the digital equivalent of an ink brush in Photoshop to lay down the line work. In this phase I also do slight composition tweaks as you can see with the ink laid over the sketch above.
On a side note, our InDesign file was created based off a template from the self publishing website Blurb. For Peck, Peck, Peck! we opted for a 8x10 format based solely on the fact that it is the closest to Dr. Seuss book proportions, and honestly if you're looking for inspiration on kids books there is no better muse. Hopefully the InDesign screenshot has wetted your appetite for Peck, Peck, Peck! goodness because there are a ton of illustrations and we'll be going more in depth into the designs in the coming weeks. Simple? Maybe not, but this process has proven to be the most effective and it allows Laura and I to share the workload :-) We'll get into the coloring next time...