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Writing and Illustrating a children's book - part 2 writing your story

Stephen Lursen

Writing and illustrating a story

Project Requirements:

  1. Your story must have a beginning, middle, and end. “To be continued…” is not allowed. It is not an ending and thus will cause your story to be disqualified from grading regardless of the quality of illustrations. Please create an interesting story that clearly describes your main character or characters, the place and environment where the story occurs, an event or series of events, and a resolution to bring closure.
  2. Your story must be long enough to enable at least 2 interior pages of illustrations. If you're writing a children's book with only a sentence at the bottom of each page, then your story needs at least enough sentences to properly tell a beginning, middle, and ending. If you're basing your style on a Sunday newspaper cartoon, then that means at least three sentences, for the three parts.
    1. You must have at least one recorded inspirational work, either because you want to imitate or draw from the story, or because the illustrator’s style is inspirational and you want to emulate their style. This reference must be recorded and given credit in the, yet to be created, dedication page which will be made later. Please record your inspirational source so as not to forget it when it is time to write your dedication page.
    2. Your story must be original! Your inspirational source may be connected loosely in some evident way, which is both expected and acceptable, but you may not copy another source. An exception is if you are quoting another source with credit immediately following or within the story - like one character reciting a known poem or referencing a line of another book while giving credit (attribution) within the narrative.
    3. Late, your illustrations can be made using any of the following, and it is highly recommended that you spend time researching children's book illustrations to find one that truly inspires you. You would use the media that illustrator used to emulate their effect and style. Some options include (but are not limited to):
      1. Drawing with pencil and ink on paper
      2. Collage imagery (books by Eric Carle)
      3. Watercolor painting (The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, -or- Journey by Aaron Becker)
      4. Color pencil
      5. Markers
      6. Photography (Example: Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams II & Jean Stoick)
      7. Digital art in Adobe Photoshop (monthly rental fee) or Gimp 2.10 (free)
    4. If you have any clarifying questions, please ask me in class or via the comments below in this post. I will answer for everyone to see. Your question might help another artist!

     

     



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