Start Your Dummies! A Look at the Coming Week - September 1 - 7

Today is the first day of Smart Dummies! Did you sign up yet? Sign up here: https://daniduckart.blogspot.com/p/registration-for-smart-dummies-is.html 

Facebook group is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/548159692008535/

The weekly schedules goes from Saturday to Friday (because Smart Dummies starts on the 1st). Please download the free booklet so you can follow along. http://daniduck.com/my-blog The printable version is to the left and the reading version is the one in the middle. Please let me know if you have any questions here or at smartdummies@hotmail.com

Feel free to work ahead at any time!


Reg. (or regular) Is for people starting Smart Dummies today!
Adj. (or adjusted) Is for those who did the pre-event for Smart Dummies.

Here is the look of this week:

Reg. Schedule:

Note: Page 32 should include doodling under September 2nd.

September 1st: Plan Your Pages - read through Page 5

When you plan your pages you are dividing up your manuscript into different sections. Make sure you know how many pages you need to illustrate for your format (Usually 12-15 spreads) and what page you are starting on.

More Reading:

https://daniduckart.blogspot.com/2018/08/plan-your-pages.html

https://taralazar.com/2009/02/22/picture-book-construction-know-your-layout/


September 2nd: Research - page 6, Doodling - Page 7

Do your research on everything you want to draw now! If you have kids see if you can get them to pose for you. The more pictures you have to work from the better. You can use these images for doodling!

More reading:

https://daniduckart.blogspot.com/2018/08/research-and-little-more-planning.html

https://daniduckart.blogspot.com/2018/08/doodling.html




September 3rd: Start Your Characters - Pages 8-9

You want to get a feel for what your characters look like for the rest of the week. I would fill up as many pages as possible with character ideas. I generally use copy paper for this, so break the bank and steal your printer's paper to make some fun characters

More Reading:
https://daniduckart.blogspot.com/2018/08/start-your-characters.html



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Adj. Schedule:

All Week: Loose Drawings  - Page 19

Here's where you start to get into creating your characters in their images. You can choose to work full size on these, or sketch on smaller sizes. I had an illustration teacher once suggest that I use note cards for this so that the image will be close to the correct final size when the image size is doubled. Most picture books are 8x10'. So keep in mind your final size when creating your images!

These images are like thumbnails blown up. Some people may want to skip this step entirely and go right into their finals and that's fine. I'm just giving you the tools that have helped me in the past, but your individual needs may be different!

Some of the loose drawings I create are not so loose. They end up more like what the final will look like without me trying and making adjustments is hard. Other times the images are so loose that I will have no idea what they are about if I leave and come back to them! So maybe the best idea is to find a happy medium in your loose drawings!