My current process to create an illustrated novel

In this post I'm going to share the steps that my brother and I are taking in a streamlined, non-messy fashion. Of course the actual process has many steps and other aspects that are integrated or left out of these several clear steps, but these are the necessary components of how we're getting our ideas onto and into a finished copy to publish, after much exploration and more to come.

Step 1) Writing

Most of the writing is done on paper by hand or on the computer in Libre Office or X Mind. The scratch notes and ideas are then compiled and interlaced into an actual scene that contains characters and flow of conversation, rather than journal notes, incomplete phrases and monologue inquiries. It's passed back and forth through programs, but X Mind has a nice way to organize the actions of the characters or scene on the left, and the colour coded dialogue of the different characters in lines on the right. Then it may be taken from this format and re-placed into Libre Office to print and work on the scene on paper again as needed.

Step 2) Layout

Once the writing is done, the Layout is a simple process of getting a basic, rough idea of where text and images go together on a single page. The layout of this book is likened to something like Dinotopia or a children's book, but with words more spread out than single large paragraphs on each page. Each page has sketches like stick men or worse at this point, and scratchy coloured pencil to mark where the words of the characters will be placed along with the illustrations. We as authors can barely even understand what we're looking at here, but it's a necessary step in the process. When we can draw really good, really fast, this step will be more integrated with the next.

(Words in red coloured pencil. Super rough sketches in pencil.)

Step 3) Better Sketches

The next step is to draw out some images that would be understood if someone were to look at the page. We are taking standard office paper and sketching out each page in a rough, but much clearer form so that we can see where the final piece might end up. This is a big jump from the stick men, pillow head drawings from the Layout phase. This is done without adding any words to the page.

(Just one sketch example - different from the whole page as it's described)

Step 4) Photoshop text

I then scan these preliminary drawings into P.S. and throw them on a fixed template page that will eventually be the final format and file to print and publish. After doing this, I copy and paste the text from our Writing files and place them accordingly within the scanned sketch pages we have pasted and arranged in the document. This may require some adjusting and resizing of the images and words to make them fit together and not overlap. It is still in a rough format, but it is readable with the words and pictures together for the first time.

(Not an official sketch page. More images and words would be there.)

Step 5) Style Guide

The context of our story inspires many types of art. As a way to continue studying artwork in an academic sense, but directing this studying into a streamlined focus on moving the finished pages of the story along, I've started to create Style Guides for each page. In a sense, it's like doing colour thumbnails for a complete book, such as James Gurney did for Dinotopia, or others would do for movies and so on. In my approach, I'm using other people's artwork that I like and would like to emulate as an overlapping template to guide the visualizing of the finished page. The images carry a certain tone or style that symbolizes and emphasizes what I'm feeling from our story in this page, these words and image. After adding the text into Photoshop, I create a folder with many layers of other artwork I've dragged in over top of the sketches. The art is placed over top of the sketches as a guide to see the whole page with a representation of where the art could be in the end.

(The content of the artwork reference pictures won't necessarily match the content of the illustrations needed for the story, but the style and visual reference will influence the final versions.)

Step 6) Studies and Final Page Creation

With the Style Guide in place, I will first do master studies of the artwork I've selected for each page. Then I will draw the images on the page as they need to be in the story. I will carry some essence of my studies into my own artwork by aiming for the greatness that I see in the referenced art and at the same time creating a new piece that is directly framed into the story and the final pages of it. It will be as good as I'm able to do it at this time, and then I will move on to the next page. I may also have to do additional studying before drawing the final image. Say for example I have pasted a certain style over top of an area where I'm going to draw a character's head, but I don't know how to draw the character yet. I will have to draw the character, based off whatever photo reference or ideas I have for them, as well as the style inspiration, then combine the two together. I have to learn to study while I create this story, rather than learning to eventually create it one day far in the future when I'm 'better.' This is the surest way I've come up with to apply my education in art to the actual goal right now, which is the process of bringing this to a complete stage of readability. Thus, after this step, the images are all compiled into the printable Photoshop document to be read and enjoyed with flow and harmony. Then, we are ready to show it to everyone.

(Example: You'll see when it's done.)

What do you think? Share in the comments or on Social Media.

- When Anthony Was

#organize #philosophy
The seeing of separation

"This is a message of the quiet world."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

We live in an interesting time for publication.  Anyone can make anything and put it in a virtual space that's open and shared everywhere.  It's becoming a world that is less and less separate, from mentality to information.  I think it is in the same way that we are becoming less separate that the separation is becoming more evident.  The awareness of it is coming into us and so it is everywhere on the news, internet and wherever the loudest voices are.  The quiet world, the one that is completely shared, doesn't have to announce itself.  It is easier to show off and be noticed than it is to not show off and be noticed.  The loudness of the world is only half of the whole.  The quiet world is more powerful, but less often on stage to the larger audience.

We're all tired of seeing the same old things.  The internet, though a valuable tool for sharing, has more spam than good.  It is an expression which the loud and quiet worlds both use.  The quiet videos may not have as many views, but can change somebody's life for ever more.  The loud videos speak of change, or improvement, but often are skewed in their vision.  They do not see the whole.  They do not see the way that things are is because of the way they are.

The quiet world, knowing that reality changes on observation, sits and is still.  The quiet people give the universe at large it's say, and stop trying to control it with tools.  Thus their world functions in little chaos, because it is the way of the world, not the way of the people who misunderstand themselves and what they are.  They think they're separate from the world, but are not.  They announce this separation to anyone they can, because they are insecure about their idea.  It has to be proved, or else they would be running in circles in life.  This is what they are doing, unconscious people, but they have built ideas around as a false sense of stability.  If only clouds had walls around them, and we would never have rain.  It is not for us to decide how the laws of nature accord, it is for us to accord as them.  Otherwise, separation is, and conflict continues.  This is a message of the quiet world.

#organize #read #resource

"But what I couldn't figure out was, what was the connection between this long corridor and Marcel Proust?"
- Haruki Murakami / Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

In April, I invested in WorkFlowy Pro. WorkFlowy is as they say, a notebook for lists.  It's free, but I needed more space, so I went pro. 

So far, playing with it for these last two months with the determination that 'I've paid for it and will find the best way to use it,' has shown true promise.  For personal documentation, or, to quote myself, "documenting the creative life," it is better than whiteboards, large paper calendars, Google docs, Evernote and other ways that I've attempted to keep track of things in the past.

I am currently using it as a daily log, with bullet points of what happens each day, which I can reflect on later and remember the details that happened along with each event.  Something like this:

• Made smoothie
• Did dishes
• Started Master Study of Matt Smith art
• Watched Jeff Watts Master Study video X 2
• Continued Master Study - finished lay-in
• Ate quinoa and Artichokes
• Drew random stuff

And so on...  It is also my daily, monthly and yearly calendar all in one.  Tags are a sufficient way of organizing myself.  I can tag the days that I need to @meet someone, or when I have an #event to attend.  Tags are customized to whatever you put an @ or # symbol in front of.  I've started to use the tags #today1, #today2, and #today3 to list the things I want to do soon with priority listing.  1 being most important and 3 being something to do soon, but less soon than 2.  I also tag #today with no number for things I want to do every day, such as meditation.

It's also my organizer for everything else in my life, such as my art, writing and reading.  I read in a recent post by Austin Kleon, who I've borrowed the daily #log idea from, that some woman reads five books at once and connects what she gets from each of them to each other. So I added reading to my #today (daily) lists and started on five books at the same time.

I've organized my reading as follows.  These are the five books I've started reading, and I calculated how many pages I needed to read on a daily basis to get all the pages of each book read within two months.


Reading

• Frankenstein - 5 pages per day - done in 2 months (May 11th-July 11th) - 269 pages to go

• Read 5 pages #today *
• 
  

• Hard-Boiled Wonderland - 7 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th-July 11th) - 386 pages to go

• Read 7 pages - #today *
• 
  

• Super Mario - 5 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th - July 11th) - 291 pages to go

• Read 5 pages #today *
• 
  

• Swann's Way - 10 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th - July 11th) - 277 pages to go

• Read 10 pages #today *
• 
  

• Noble Eight-fold Path - 2 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th - July 11th) - 115 pages to go

• Read 2 pages #today *

It's nice to have to read only two pages on one book and have ten to read of another.  I think the diversity is going to prove useful in the consistent practice of reading this amount daily.  It's not much reading in a day.  It's enough to do without tiring yourself out or being overwhelmed by the amount of pages before you even look at a book.  Five books in two months for one year will be thirty books.  Not bad compared to my usual reading year.

You can see the #today tags there and the * next to it.  I've used the * to show myself when I have read my pages.  WorkFlowy has a cross off feature as the application is based on making lists and that is a very listy thing to do.  However, a * is simple enough for me to see that I've read today, and I will erase it before the next day's reading begins.  Small steps on a daily basis work best.