Illustration: Beyond dummies and rough sketches

If you are illustrating a picture book, or a graphic novel, rough sketches and dummy books are the way to go when in the beginning phases. You need to ensure your illustrations work well as a unit with the text, suit the page orientation and have proper pacing prior to creating the final art.

Dummy book rough sketch of rabbit and bird. Note the centre fold line ~~ © Patricia Pinsk

There is the upcoming Smart Dummies - A Picture Book Challenge that can help guide you through this process. It starts September 1, 2015 and runs for the whole month. 

For further dummy book info, you can also refer to:

• Writing and illustrating a picture book 
• Picture book dummy, picture book construction
• Part 1- Making the Dummy Book
  
• Part 2- Preparing the Dummy Book to Send to Publishers
• Part 3- Sending the Dummy Book to Agents and Publishers

Final illustration of rabbit and bird ~~ © Patricia Pinsk

Specs, bleed and fold

Once you have your dummy book, and are ready to start the actual illustrations, the next steps include the following:

• Determine the illustration specs before starting your project.            

           o   Unlike dummy books, the actual illustrations have set sizes.
           o   Size is always determined by the art director. 

• Create your illustrations to spec size (or 10% bigger) and orientation (landscape or portrait) of the intended book or graphic novel. Sometimes you are requested to create an image larger than the final printed version.

           o   1.5 the size is also known as ‘half up’. It's 1.5 times the diagonal of the finished size.
           o   Double the size is twice or ‘two up’. It is two times the diagonal of the finished size.
           o   Remember that tiny details are lost when an image is reduced in size.
           o   Ensure digital images have a resolution of 300 to 600 DPI (dots per inch) .
           o   Ensure digital files are in the required mode (CMYK, RGB). 
           o   Refer to Why size matters when it comes to digitizing art.

• Include a 5mm (1/8 inch) horizontal and vertical ‘bleed’. This is the area of your composition that doesn’t contain anything important, and extends outside the trim lines of the image.
• Keep important parts of your illustration away from the fold line (center of page).

           o   This area is about 13 mm (.5 inch). 
           o   Never put small details such as hands or faces in the center.
           o   Keep text at least 2.54 cm (1 inch) away from the fold.

Final digital steps

Whether you work digitally from the beginning, or scan in your final image, ensure the following: 

• Image resolution is 300 to 600 DPI.
• Illustrations are clean and free of erasure markings etc. 
• Color and lighting is adjusted (if necessary) for cohesiveness and consistency throughout all your images.

Templates

Here are some templates that are available online: 

• 32-page picture book dummy template
• Comic template 
• Manga template
• Magazine double spread template 
• Magazine template

If you liked this blog post, you may also like:

• How to illustrate POV and perspective without ending up in the ER
  
• Illustration: hand-drawn illustration in a digital world
• Words, words, words: Does a title make the art?