That children's book again

[LukeW]

Wow, one page takes a long time to finish (I have been working on the rest of the book all drafts are done and I'm now starting the good copies).

This is a culmination of the advice received in these threads: A children's fantasy picture book [images] A very short passage (250 words)

A big thanks to the people that helped out.

Anyway, I think this page is complete and will be sent off with the dummy work as an example of what it should all look like.

Just to be clear, there are two pages here, the left and right with the gutter being roughly where the journal page ends (slightly offset to accomodate image loss).

I'm seeking final critiques before this gets printed out at a print shop and sent away with the rest of the book. I showed my wife and she was pretty critical about the colour choice of the right-hand page, saying it was too bright.

I'm also unsure about the flying creature I threw in the top right corner. It was a bit of a space filler, though I've been tempted to wipe it and leave the space blank.

The image is around 1MB so I will post it as a link. You may need to zoom in to view it correctly.

Cheers

http://www.lukewebster.net/pics/first2pages.jpg

[The Judge]

Hi Luke

We don't usually like links in Critiques, but I think in the circumstances it's probably best here.

Re the journal:

wandering through the... forest... getting lost and killed -- as written, this means they all were killed!

before we could unload our last remaining wagon -- this implies that they'd arrived there and unloaded other wagons previously and gone back for the last one. Is this what you meant?

Unfortunately, we lost most of our pickaxes fleeing from the twisted witch Esme (as well as one of our party... ) -- as written this means they fled from Esme and from one of their party. You need to invert the sentence so it's something like "Unfortunately, as we were fleeing from the twisted witch, Esme, [commas needed, by the way] we lost most of our pickaxes, as well as one of our party..."

me and Jeorg -- your narrator is quite well-spoken in his/her writing, so this rather jarred. It really ought to be "Jeorg and I".


Re the pictures:

It's a shame you lost the original layout with the border, as I liked that. It gave it a Noggin the Nog feel!

The colours are a bit bright for me, too -- I'd have liked them to look a bit more hand-coloured, rather than computer-generated.

The nearby village suggests that they're not quite as far removed from people as 182 days of travelling through the forest would appear. Unless the villagers play a part, why not change that to Esme's house in a clearing?

I didn't like the flying green creature, either. You have hardly any birds -- couldn't you put in some more -- a big eagle or something?

All good stuff, though. Good luck when you send it off.

[RcGrant]

I love this. I'm also insanely envious of the art. The Judge picked out everything I saw with the writing, so I can't really say much there. Maybe consider adding specific dialogue. I know it's told from one person, a bit like a travel log, but some of it came across as dry, and adding some immediacy may change that.

I like the right hand page and for me the colours were fine. I particularly like the man buried underground. The dragon-thing confused me. Are there such creatures in this world? Are they going to be featured? If not, I'd lose it. Like Judge says, you can throw some birds in without it looking out of place. I'd be inclined towards a vulture - spread a bit of doom and gloom!

Congratulations.

[ctg]

I'm not going to complain about the writing or the artwork as to me there's enough of work there to prove that you'll be able to produce a proper children book for the geeky families. I especially liked the flying cthulhu monster at the upper right corner. Nice touch. There's so much details in the forest that a children will get lost in there for quite some time. However I'd have liked hand painting and inking over cgi.

[LukeW]

Thanks for the tips. I'll get rid of the green monster.

The Judge, thanks for the corrections. Some pretty obvious things there, but I think I've just looked at it too much to notice. It's always good for someone else to check.

Originally Posted by The Judge

The colours are a bit bright for me, too -- I'd have liked them to look a bit more hand-coloured, rather than computer-generated.

I experimented a lot with different techniques. Originally I was going for a painted look, but found that it was too time consuming and didn't give the desired effect. The other thing that I had to be mindful of is that the physical copy will be smaller than what you see on screen, so some of those bold lines won't be so noticeable.

I think with the colour I'm going to run a few different variations out of the printer and see what they look like physically. One of the issues I've had with this is that my graphics tablet does not share the same colour scheme as my monitor (which is a lot brighter), so I end up with two different colours.

Originally Posted by The Judge

The nearby village suggests that they're not quite as far removed from people as 182 days of travelling through the forest would appear. Unless the villagers play a part, why not change that to Esme's house in a clearing?

This plays a major role in the story. There's a couple of scenes later on that show how the human village turns into its own city, and brings about a final conflict with the dwarves.

Originally Posted by RcGrant

I particularly like the man buried underground.

That's Gimli. Although I could probably argue that there's some symbolism there about the old dwarves being dead and buried and the new dwarves arriving, if I'm being honest I only put him there because I thought it would be funny.

[SleepyDormouse]

It's really nice to see this again and see that it is still being developed.

I liked the humour in the writing, and can't see anything I would change in it (other that what's already been mentioned) apart from the "shelf ornament" because i had to think on that a moment before I realised what you meant.

I really like the aged paper effect on the left hand page, and the line drawings are great. I like the green blobs to stick the photo on, much better than the old version with sellotape. But I feel that the photo looks to crisp and new on the background of the crumpled yellowed paper. Plus why has the female dwarf got her leg up in the air, like in an old film when people kissed, is it supposed to make her look a little dim witted? And what is that in the bowmans hand.. I thought at first he had a strangely bent finger, but is it a snake?

The right hand page, I agree the flying monster looks odd so glad you are thinking of removing it. I can see you don't want to do pen and ink style on both sides, and while i would personally prefer that, I like the brightness of colour as a contrast to the left page. There is still lots and lots of detail on the right page, which I love, especially the frog on the toadstool and the hunter with the deer in the background. I'm probably nit-picking here, but do you need a pile of stones that have been excavated? I can see you have a dwarf with a wheelbarrow full of stones, but is he taking them off the page?

Overall, I think its great.

[TheDustyZebra]

You know, I just noticed the question at the end of the other thread, and while it may be too late to bother commenting on it, I have to tell you that there are plenty of landscape-formatted books out there. I really think this one would benefit by being landscape instead. I keep trying to scroll over to see what else is on the pages!

Off the top of my head, we have a Polar Express book in landscape, and LMNO Peas, and Sendak's Brundibar, and all the Clifford books, and about half the books we check out at the library are landscape.

On the other hand, to be fair, the page style with the photos stuck on reminds me of the Detective LaRue books, and those are portrait. But when you say that your pages will be smaller, that surprises me -- most books that yours remind me of are quite large, generally of a 9x12ish size (I'd have to go measure, and I'm not at home).

All that aside, I think this is absolutely beautiful work, and I hope I can buy one for my daughter sometime soon!

[Dozmonic]

The entire delivery and content of this is top notch, well done. I could see it sitting on the shelves at work quite happily.

[springs]

Hi Luke, I'm with Dozmonic - this would sit in any booksellers very nicely and enhance it (and the good ones would be glad to have it in situ). Ref. landscape it could go that way - your artwork seems to lend to it - but it's harder to display esp if a bookseller relies on spinners and dumpbins to give space. Really nice, a pleasure to look at.

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm glad you're getting rid of the green monster, because it does look poorly drawn compared with the rest. I'm with TJ about the colors; I don't really like them. The effect is harsh.

But otherwise, I think the artwork is wonderful.

[Dozmonic]

I should add that if your target audience is the 7-9 range, then the colours and artistic style are pretty apt in my opinion. If you chose to merchandise this, you'd be able to port that style directly to an online format - it screams to be made into interactive flash games.