SCBWI Conference 2011 Part 1: Apps, Apps, Apps!

Last year's SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) conference was held just a day or two after Steve Jobs had revealed the iPad to the world. Even though the devices weren't even on the market yet, at every panel I attended, worried conference attendees were asking the speakers from the publishing world about what the devices would mean for the future of publishing and in particular what implications they would hold for the future of the picture book. The industry experts answered by unanimously stating that paper books would always be around. As far as pictures books went, they pointed out that the 'page turn' when reading a picture book to a small child was too integral to the experience and could not be duplicated in the same way by an electronic device. Well, one year after its announcement and now on the market, the iPad was still a major topic of conversation and the subject of many questions. The main difference between last year and this year was that many of the conference attendees now actually owned the device and were carrying them around. I can't tell you how many people I saw with iPads or other electronic reading devices. While waiting in line to get my books autographed by Jane Yolen, Lois Lowry, Jules Feiffer and the other authors (more about them in my next post), two women directly ahead of me in line had their iPads out and were showing them off to their friends.

To bring home what an impact the iPad and e-readers have had on the industry, this year two of the panels I attended for illustrators were devoted to developing books for apps to be used on these devices, while a third panel talked not only about apps but about using websites in conjunction with books to further extend the reading experience. As a matter of fact, the topics for all of the panels in the illustrator's intensive had to do with the possibilities of work beyond books, i.e., websites, e-readers, iPads, social media, animated TV shows, and licensing your designs and characters for uses on products besides books. The author/illustrator Dan Yaccarino even entitled his talk "Beyond Books." Several speakers, including Mr. Yaccarino, emphasized that we are at the dawning of a revolutionary era in publishing. Mr. Yaccarino, in his powerpoint presentation, displayed a series of slides depicting the evolution of devices that man has used for telling stories. In the beginning, our earliest, hunched-over ancestors used fire to throw shadows onto a wall. Then came chiseling images on to stone tablets. Next came writing on papyrus scrolls and other forms of paper. Finally the invention of the printing press brought about books more or less the way we know them today. For his final slide, Yaccarino presented an image of a now upright man holding an iPad. In other words, this device is just another stage of evolution in the  growth of our storytelling tools and abilities. One of the key points of his talk was that with these new devices, we now have fewer limitations than ever before for telling a story. But, he added, even all the new bells and whistles like sound and animation that these devices bring with them will not make a bad story any better. His last point was that good stories and compelling characters will always be the most important elements, the elements that will transcend any medium.

One of the most interesting panels on the topic of Apps was the one titled "Development of Original App" hosted by Rubin Pfeffer and John Carlin. They made several interesting points that helped put the iPad, the e-reader and other new devices into perspective. Though they didn't go back as far as torch-wielding cavemen, they too talked about the evolution of storytelling devices and emphasized how we are still in the pre-history period of digital media. As an example, they pointed out that the technology for motion pictures was invented in the late 1800s but it took more than 15 years before anything we might recognize today as a movie was developed. They talked about D.W. Griffith, the pioneering film director who is often credited with developing the language of storytelling in film (the close-up, cross-cutting, etc.) and how we haven't yet had a D.W. Griffith come along to develop the storytelling vocabulary for digital media. Their talk emphasized that we are in a new frontier, nothing has yet been set in stone and encouraged us as illustrators to experiment and to take advantage of being involved in a revolution that is still in its infancy.

To help us take our first steps into this revolutionary new world, they provided a list of building blocks. They said to think of creating apps as you would if you were creating a puppet show rather than a series of illustrations. Think not only about the characters, but the props you would need to tell your story, as well as the backgrounds and settings. Make any interactive elements fundamental to the experience and not just decoration. An interesting thing they pointed out is that devices like the iPad, that utilize these apps, have the technology built into them to know where the reader is while he/she is reading the story, what time it is when the story is being read and even what the weather is like where the reader is located. They talked about thinking of ways to experiment in using the device's knowledge of this information to personalize the experience of the story that is being read. One thing they said to always remember - that even with all of this new technology, the most important interface for getting something meaningful from a story is always going to be in your reader's mind and imagination.

Pfeffer and Carlin also pointed out that as artists we should not worry about having to learn how to program code. What is more important is that we understand how the technology is used and how it can be experienced by the user. Just as illustrators now often collaborate with other authors, editors and art-directors, in the future another collaborator may be added to the mix - the programmer or app developer.

Finally they talked about using Common Sense when developing an idea for an app. First of all you still need a great story. Second, be realistic about what type of illustration style is going to look good on the different types of screens used in this technology. Some of these devices, like the iPod Touch or iPhone, have very small screens so keep this in mind when designing your art. Third, just because something can be done using this new technology, doesn't necessarily mean it should be done. In other words avoid being gratuitous in using interactivity in your story. Remember that this is still a reading experience. Know the limits of interactivity, know when it is being used creatively and when it is being used as just a novelty.

They closed with two final thoughts:  1) On many levels, good old-fashioned books are still more interactive and exercise the reader's imagination more than any of these new technologies, and 2) At this moment in history, there are amazing opportunities to help invent a new medium, to develop a new vocabulary, it would be smart to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

In a later panel, Rich Richter from Ruckus Media pointed out how the iPad is the fastest selling electronic device ever.  Like Pfeffer and Carlin, he pointed out that the things that happen in an app should happen for a reason and like them, he also emphasized the need to have a great story. Some other tips and info he shared on apps: 1) aim the app at the right age group, 2) be creative, 3) keep the point of view at eye level, 4) adapt a classic or create a new story from scratch, 5) take things to a new level by integrating an interactive game, 6) make apps that respect kids, 7) be aware that platform wars are most likely on the horizon as competing developers bring out other devices (the example he used is the Android tablet). 8) Things are going to get competitive, so market aggressively.

After listening to all of these speakers over the course of an 8 hour day, the three things that I took away from these talks were: 1) There will always be a need for content. This new technology gives us new opportunities for more work and new ways to share existing work; 2) Don't be intimidated by this technology, instead, explore it and experiment with it. Realize that you don't need to know the technical side of everything. As long as you can grasp its potential, you can work with someone who will develop the app for you. Just as an art director and editor would help guide you in the creation of a picture book, a developer will help in the creation of an app; 3) The most important thing to remember: It doesn't matter if what you are creating is going to be a regular book or an app for an iPad, the story and characters still need to be compelling.

In my next post, I will talk about the wonderful authors that spoke at the conference and I will pass on some of the choice bits of wisdom that I gleaned from their talks. Until then, thanks for reading Light and Shade!

Illustration Friday - Dusty

For this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge, which is the word "Dusty," I could have just taken a picture of the shelves in my office, but I had another idea in mind, one that came to me because I've been thinking a lot about David Lean's 1946 film version of Charles Dickens' novel, "Great Expectations." The new theater that recently opened on the campus of Indiana University, here in Bloomington, is presenting a retrospective of the films that earned David Lean an Academy Award nomination for best director. "Great Expectations" is coming up on the 31st.  It's always been one of my favorite movies and I think it is without a doubt the best film adaptation of any Dickens novel (I'm not counting TV mini-series here, since there are some amazing BBC adaptations. The 2005 version of "Bleak House" is one of the best).

Anyway, to get back to how "Great Expectations" relates to this week's word: In Dickens' story, the character of Miss Havisham, who plays an important role in the life of the young protagonist, Pip, lives in a house of shuttered windows, cobwebs, decaying food and lots and lots of dust. She is a bitter woman who wears a tattered wedding dress and has stopped all of the clocks in the house at twenty minutes to nine. She shares her home with her adopted daughter, Estella, who she is raising to be a young woman who will break men's hearts. The scenes in the film where Pip (played by Tony Wager) goes to the home of Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt), where he has been hired to entertain her by playing cards with Estella (a young Jean Simmons), are unforgettable. These scenes are some of my favorites in the film and each of them is a masterpiece of art direction and cinematography.

For my illustration, I wanted to pay tribute to this film and in particular to the scenes with Miss Havisham and Estella, but I didn't want to try and do a realistic rendering of the actors or to capture any particular moment in Lean's film.  Instead I wanted to attempt to do a somewhat stylized, sketchy painting that utilized a limited color palette.  What I had in mind as I worked on this image, were some of the illustrations I remember from the Reader's Digest Condensed books of the mid-1960s.

Before I started on the actual painting, I decided to do a few sketches of the Miss Havisham character. You can see those sketches on the left.  The first three were done without any reference to the Lean film.  The fourth one was based on the character as played by the actress Martita Hunt.  I felt the first three sketches that I did looked too much like an old schoolmarm. After consulting a DVD of Lean's film, I created sketch number 4. I felt I really couldn't improve on Lean's interpretation, so that's the look I decided to go with.

Once I had decided on the look of Miss Havisham, I took a few DVD screen captures from Lean's film to use as inspiration and a visual reference for drawing the cobwebs and the costumes. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted this to be somewhat stylized and sketchy, so I tried not to get bogged down in duplicating too many details.  Below are a few of the screen captures that I used for my inspiration.

The next thing I did was to create a digital pencil sketch in Corel Painter, which is my favorite program for drawing and painting. I decided to do a portrait of Miss Havisham and Estella and here is the sketch I came up with.

My next step was to use a leaky pen brush to ink in some lines and details.

After that I used one of Painter's oil brushes, a dry bristle brush to paint in some gray tones. I started with the lightest shades and gradually added in the darks.

In this screen shot, you can see where I've begun to paint Estella's dress. You can see my reference image behind my canvas.

Here is what the image looked like after I competed painting in the gray tones.

When I created the original sketches of Miss Havisham (see above) I did an experiment on my fourth sketch where I added a light green wash to parts of the figure.  I liked the way that looked so I decided to do the same thing for the final image.

In the image on the left, I have turned off the visibility of the ink layer so that you can see what the image looked like with only the gray and green layers.

I didn't want to go overboard trying to draw dust particles, so I tried to convey the feeling of dust by using textures. I used some pastel brushes and sponge brushes to add texture. I also tried to convey the look of cobwebs by using lights and darks in conjunction with the textures. Hopefully I succeeded in creating an image that suggests a setting of neglect and decay.

Finished Image

What I've Been Up To

I haven't had time to do a regular blog posting in a while because I'm getting ready to be part of a local gift fair. This will be my first time as a vendor at a fair, so I'm not quite sure what to expect. I'm making lots of stuff though so I hope it's well attended. Here are a few quick pictures I took of a few of the things I've been working on.

Here, I'm getting ready to make some bottle-cap magnets.

These images are being glued to glass tiles and will be turned into pendants and magnets.

 My cluttered work table.

A basket full of prints of some of my illustration work, all ready to go.

Dog-tag necklaces.

These images are attached to scrabble tiles and will be turned into pendants. They just need to have the pendant bails glued to them.

I will also be selling bookmarks, polymer clay jewelry, stickers, greeting cards and a few stuffed animals that I made.

One of the greeting card designs I will be selling.

One of the laminated bookmarks I will have for sale. This one is part of a dog series that I did, each with a different dog related quote. This one is a quote by Edith Wharton.

Memories of the Arrow Book Club

One of my favorite memories of my grade school years (and there aren't that many of them, good memories anyway) was the day that we received the new brochure from the Arrow Book Club.  Since I believe Arrow still exists, you may already know that it was part of the Scholastic Book Services and was aimed at kids in 4th, 5th and 6th grades.  Each month a new catalog came out allowing kids to choose and order their own books, right from the classroom.  What I liked even better than the day when the new catalog came out, was the day that the books arrived and they were handed out.  As I recall, all of my teachers gave the students a few minutes to look over their purchases before returning to our lessons. But even after lessons resumed, the excitement lingered, knowing that those brand new books, that you yourself had chosen, were tucked away in your desk, waiting for you to take them home so you could begin reading them.

I still have most of my Arrow and TAB books (TAB was the book club for kids in 7th grade and up) and I even have one of the catalogs.  As you can see in the inside of this particular catalog, I even had the order blank all filled out and ready to go. Since I never clipped out this order form, I must have had a duplicate of this catalog, or maybe some of the books were repeated the following month, because I do have two of the books that I marked on the form. As I look at these books now, it amazes me that you could purchase some of them for a mere 25 cents.  These days, I doubt there is anything under $3 to $5 dollars.  (By the way, you can click on all of these images to see them enlarged).

Here are some of the books that I have in my collection.  A couple of these belonged to my younger sister.

 "The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet," and its sequel, "Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, "were two of my favorites.

 "The Enormous Egg," was another favorite. Although I don't remember a thing about their stories, two of my favorite cover images were from "The Runaway Robot" and "The Forgotten Door."

My love for stories involving time travel were satisfied by "The Magic Tunnel" and "Tunnel Through Time."

I loved books on animals but one of the reasons that I was attracted to "Here, Buster!" was because I had loved the Disney film "Sammy the Way Out Seal," which had come out a year or two before and shared a similar story to "Here, Buster!".  I had always loved reading the Mark Trail comic strip in the Sunday paper, so I was excited to find a whole book devoted to his animal stories.  

Books of science fiction, ghosts and the supernatural were other favorite topics of mine and tended to make up a large part of my book orders, especially as I got older and started receiving the TAB book catalog.

Many of these books are available in either new, or used editions.  Many of them can be found at fairly reasonable if not downright inexpensive prices.  For example, there is a listing on Amazon for "Humor Horror and the Supernatural," for only 58 cents.  I quite often see some of these books for sale in our local Goodwill store.  So, if you're interested, they're not too difficult to find.