The Smartest Part of a Picture Book is the dummy! From the Storyboard where you explore and imagine, the dummy is where you really see the book. You problem-solve, you work things out, smartly. Holes in the story will appear as you turn pages and see the text next to the art. This is the place to resolve what you set out to do in the storyboard. I like to work small in this phase. In fact the book dummy for Coyote In Love was sewn together just like a miniature book. The editor was delighted, “Can we publish it as a tiny book?!” Luckily not, it became a high quality hard cover book.
The book dummy will help you think of the following tips each time you turn a page:
1) remember you are moving ahead in time
2) there is always a change of scene
3) change of pace (action gets more exciting toward the end)
4) a new character is introduced
5.) be sure tiny details or faces go into the gutter (the crease in the middle of a double spread)
To illustrate and write your own story is very, very rewarding. There is always a point in the process where your creative energies flow back and forth between the words and pictures. You have the freedom to change the pictures to match your words and vice-verse, not so when you illustrate someone’s manuscript. Then, your job is to bring something fresh to the story through your illustrations. You will end up creating a whole that is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
I always try to remember this great advice by a seasoned professional.
“The images in a picture book are the driving forces that tell the story. The words tell only what the pictures can’t.”-Dan Yaccarino/author/illustrator
read more about him:http://nccil.org/experience/artists/Yaccarino/index.htm
click to download the book dummy for Coyote In Love
Revised cover for paperback edition
Coyote In Love original hardback