On our blog you will find a lot of useful information to use in the picture book workshop such as:
- Thumbnail templates
- How to make a book dummy step by step
- Character sheets
- Helpful Hints
Welcome to Words and Pictures
Book Requirements
• A front and back cover.
• Cover includes title, author, and illustrator.
• Make an inside title page (dedication page is optional).
• Page numbers
• Picture book 16-24 pages.
• Try to limit your story to under 1000 words.
• Book must be illustrated. Pictures may be drawn, cut out of a magazine or brought from home.
Picture Book Class Word Definitions
ant’s eye view: the underview, as it might be seen b and ant.
bird’s eye view: the overview, as it might be seen by a bird.
book dummy: a rough copy of your book based on your storyboard. Word and more detailed pictures can be pasted or drawn in the book dummy to understand page flow.
close-up: an enlargement of a small part of a character or scene, such as a hand, eye, key hole, or a door knob.
cover: includes the title in large letters and the names of the author and illustrator.
double page spread: a single picture or design spreading across facing pages.
frame: one of the 28 small squares in the storyboard.
page turn: the suspenseful moment of turning the page.
stick figures or circle characters: sketches that have little or no detail.
storyboard: a grid of 28 small squares, or frames. each frame represents a page in your book.
turnaround: the climax or turning point in your story. This usually occurs in the area of frames #11 to #15.
Words and Pictures Notes
Storyboarding Your Plot
• Now it is time for action! It is time to draw your plot on a storyboard, but you are not going to write your story until after you have drawn it.
• With a pencil, begin in frames #4 and # 5 and swiftly draw the action of your characters as a circle or stick figures all the way to frame #24, the end of your story.
• Frames #1-#3 will be used later for special information.
• You could even begin drawing where your characters are in their worst or mot dramatic place in fames #12 and #13.
• Finish from there to frame #24 and then go back to #4 and fill in the beginning. This keeps you from telling us more than we need to know about your characters.
• This is process is storyboarding your plot. It is not about making not beautiful art so without adding details of hair and clothes and background, you can easily finish storyboarding in and hour or less.
Hints for Storyboarding
• It is action you are drawing, not all talking heads.
Hints for Storyboarding
• Make bodies show what is happening by the way you make them move and relate to each other.
• Use a variety of views - bird’s eye, ant’s eye, and big close-ups.
• Decide where you want your illustration to go and where your words will go.
• Because it gives more power to spread a drawing over facing pages, you may sometimes want to use a double-page spread.
• Think about the suspense of a page turn.
• It is your characters that a reader will care about, so make them large. Don’t draw tiny figures along the bottom of the page frame. Put them higher up and fill the space.
• Most important, jump into your story feet first. For example; your reader doesn’t want to hear about the alarm clock going off, brushing teeth, saying goodbye to Mom. They want to see what happens when your character gets on the school bus and has to sit next to the school bully. Get right into the action of the story.
• You don’t needs word right now just pictures and lines that indicate where the words will go. Later we will paste your words and pictures into your book dummy.
Double Page Spread
A double page spread is a single picture or design spreading across facing pages.
Usually this is an illustration with a lot of action. Find a part of your story where you have something really exciting or that can move across your two pages.
Here is a good examples of how an artist used two pages to show action and storytelling with very few words.
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