Creative Coaching at Central Normal School Day 8

We still had to re-do quite a lot, as text was on wrong lines, and there were quite a few grammatical errors. I helped a few students finish their storyboards, making suggestions about illustrations and doing a rough plan of each picture. We thought of some little quirky things, there was a teddy-bear that the character was throwing back into a room to “remove the evidence”, and we decided that in the illustration the teddy would have a little label around his neck with the word “evidence” on it.

Although we are still fighting the trend for making things too complicated, I think we have made progress. Finishing the storyboards with the students; I showed them with my very stick figures all that we needed with each square – we needed to get them totally finished, and I think it got the message across that it Yesterday Tracye was sick (she still is, and is dragging herself around drugged up to the eyeballs) so I had the class myself. We worked on their storyboards, though there were still parts of text they needed help with and grammar that needed fixing up. We looked at their characters and how they would draw or depict them, and I suggested drawing them over and over so they could get a feel of being able to reproduce a recognizable character. Maia is doing a chipmunk, and did some on the whiteboard, copying my superb example of last week. It was quite tricky without Tracye, and I had trouble reproducing one myself, and wondered whether I had actually done it in the first place. We got something working in the end, and I think it’ll be fine. I tried some mild bollicking when I thought that some students were doing other things than their picture book, but it was a half-hearted attempt and my heart wasn’t in it.

We made some good progress, and most students had their storyboards nearly finished by the end of the session.

Today – some students are up to the “roughs” stage, and Tracye printed off three copies each of the final text with room for illustrations. was the idea in the square that was important, not the picture. This had been a sticking point with progress and after discussing it together, Tracye and I feel we may have contributed to the problem. Although we have shown them simple books like Spot, and Eric Carle, they have been enormously attracted to Philip’s pictures of Piggity, with their vast amount of information and detail in the double spreads. Because there is a Piggity book in progress we used it as a model of how books are produced, and examined the illustrations in detail. In hindsight, we should have said something like “there is a huge amount of information and highly-developed skill in these, yours need to be much more simple and more like Spot, for example.” As far as illustrations go, we want them to have an individual achievable goal, and not be overawed by what other people can do. We want the children to realise that the text and illustrations must complement each other, and it be obvious to the reader what the author’s intent is.

Tracye has come back with the tea, and says that I am good enough to write school reports now.

Our next step is to look at the children’s completed rough illustrations, and make any suggestions for changes before they carry on with their final copy.

Diana Neild

Photos Creative Coaching Diana Neild at Central Normal School

Creative Coaching at Central Normal School Day 7

Today we started by showing the students some picture books that used simple drawings and different methods of drawings. We looked at Eric Carle’s “Today is Monday”, and how he’d only put one character on most pages, big and bold, and “Mister Seahorse”, where there are two characters on most pages, using simple shapes. We looked at Spot with his simple shape, and the use of pop-ups to reveal more information that’s not in the text. I showed them “Naughty Teddy”, which just used photographs of a teddy doing different naughty things, and we talked about what might work for their characters. Tracye insists that it’s quite simple to draw simple characters, but she is a bit of an illustrator, so I thought it would be a good idea for me to try and draw something on the whiteboard under her supervision. Her examples looked fairly daunting to most of us, even she she scaffolded it (Tracye dictating again). My first chipmunk had a very odd shaped head, but after I’d fixed that it was awesome (Tracye dictating again) – photo to follow. I’m thinking of illustrating my own book now, but it’ll only have one picture and it’ll be called “The Lone Chipmunk”. The kids thought it was terribly funny, I was almost offended.

After we’d really pushed the point about simple text and illustrations some brave students decided they needed to start again, and it was a good idea. One student felt that her text wasn’t what she wanted, and was too complicated – she had some really good parts but she just wasn’t happy with the whole thing and it had become daunting to try and make the whole thing work. I was really pleased that she had made this decision, because she hadn’t looked happy for any of the sessions. Within ten minutes we had the makings of a workable simple story and she was much happier. Another student wasn’t happy with the middle of his, he said it didn’t make sense. By changing it from past to present tense we made it more exciting and direct. I was really happy with the result of doing that and so was he. He’d wanted more “fire” in it, I think he got it.

Our next step is to have the text in the correct position for their roughs, and for them to know what medium they’ll use for their illustrations. We think we might make it yet by the deadline. Hopefully. Perhaps.

Diana Neild and Tracye Katon

Creative Coaching at Central Normal School Day 5 & 6

Today we started working on the storyboards, working out what pictures they’d put to go with their words. We talked about making another layer of story on top of the words, rather than just repeating what they’d written, and about trying to bring out little funny simple things into the picture. Tracye gave a good modelling demonstration of how to simplify a character – for non-professional illustrators it can be a bit daunting trying to reproduce an animal and make it look cute. She showed them a fox for an example, using really simple lines and taking the essential parts of what makes it look like a fox – the skinny long face, bushy tail, dainty limbs – she used stick limbs for those. By adding a bow she could make it look like a girl, and adding curly eyelashes it made it a really girly-girl. The tendency with the kids was to clutter the page with a whole lot of detail, and we had a bit of trouble getting across to them that we just wanted basic shapes and ideas – I think they wanted it to look like a finished product. So we talked about camera angles, and what the space on the page looks like e.g. close-ups, mid-shots, aerial angles (we used Philip’s roughs from the Camping Holiday as an example). We also looked at using other methods than drawing things – things like a night time scene where the character was leaving a room, just having a black page with two eyes, and a door with an exit sign. (or a crack of light around the door). We talked about mechanisms (this is Tracye dictating here, I don’t know all this teacher-speak, but I’ll look it up later in an educational dictionary) such as pop-ups, flaps and even using envelopes with extra information inside like an advertisement. Talking together without the kids after the class, we almost want to give them a medium to work in, like Eric Carle with tissue paper. We are fairly desperate to get them to stick to simple shapes, so that they are recognisable. By the end of tomorrow’s session we’d like them to have finished their storyboards, but some of them will have to start again with a more simplified approach. We need to go back to their characters and make sure they can be reproduced from different angles, and this can only be done using simple lines. We’re going to bring in some books to show them tomorrow – Meg and Mog, a collection of Eric Carle, the Spot books – anything that uses easily-reproduced shapes.

Diana Neild and Tracye Katon

Creative Coaching at Central Normal School Day 3 & 4

Day 3

We had a week off last week, as the school had sports and it wasn’t going to work, so the children had had nearly two weeks to finish their writing and put the page numbers in. Tracye asked for a show of hands of who had finished, and only two hands went up. The rest were delivered a most impressive bollicking, she was not amused. They were tough kids though, no one dissolved and we got on with the writing and made some good progress. I think I need some bollicking lessons from Tracye, maybe I’d get things cleaned up faster round here at home. Some kids were having trouble with their rhyme, and were making up the rhyme before they thought of what they really wanted to say, and a few others were compromising on grammar for the sake of a rhyming word. We did some work on that, and one or two dispensed with the rhyme – one just used a little rhyming refrain that worked really well.

Day 4

Quite a few students had their stories typed up and printed off, and it was easy for them to see how it was working as a story. We checked grammar and changed some things, got language a bit tighter, and looked at things that connected within the stories, such as whether their characters were consistent. I think by next week every student will have a complete story ready to start illustrating – one is going to work with me by e-mail to get it finished. We talked about thinking about how their characters will look, and how to get another layer of story over the top of their words with the illustrations, instead of just drawing exactly what the words said. It was interesting to look at their stories at this stage now, and compare them to what they had started with. There is so much more personality in them now that they’ve invented new characters and thought about them.

I feel pretty confident that we’ll get finished by the deadline, though that might be because we’ve got the writing sorted, and that’s usually the end of my major effort – perhaps I’m just a little ignorant about this illustrating business!

Diana Neild

Creative Coaching at Central Normal School Day 1 & 2

I met with Tracye, the teacher I’d be working with, the Friday before the week we started our project. We talked about the outcome we wanted and hatched a plan of how to get there, with a rough time-line. We decided that thirty-two pages would be too daunting a task to complete, so we thought about sixteen to twenty might be about right. The students had already written some stories that they were going to use for their picture-books, so it was a matter of adapting them to fit a story-book format. We both agreed that a lot of them would need to change what they’d done quite significantly, as most of them had used a fair amount of description which slowed their stories down. I took some home to have a look at, and to think about some ideas they could use for changing them.

Tuesday: I met with the students for the first time. It was Grandparents’ day and we had some grandparents join us which was lovely. I told the class the story of how my Piggity stories had come into being, and it was nice to be able to share it with the extended family. I had Philip’s originals with me and showed everyone, and that’s always a magic touch. I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t get moved by them, it’s still hard to believe that a human hand did them.

I showed the students some picture books that I thought worked well, and we looked at the structure of the story and how they worked. We looked at the structure of the first Piggity book and how little actually happens, but that there is a beginning, a middle and an end. I told them how I’d invented my characters and how I’d ended up with pigs.

Tracye had already talked to them about reducing their stories to bullet points so that they could see the storyline, and we talked about the possibility of changing their characters to animals, as most of them had done humans. We thought they might have more scope doing it that way, and it might be more fun. (and easier to illustrate).

Wednesday: Some students had done their bullet points, but some hadn’t, so Tracye and I went round and helped those who hadn’t. We started at each end – when I got through two students Tracye had finshed all the rest. Guess who’s had the teacher training! This was quite a slow day, as it was a big job to change the stories to something that might fit a picture book , and I was worried about taking over their work. They really needed to have a character that they were excited about, and changing some of them to animals did help. One story had a sister that mimicked the other, and the sisters became birds – it was a great idea (not mine) – it brought it alive. We talked about the style of writing once they re-wrote them, and I suggested that unless they were really familiar with writing rhyme then it was better to avoid it.

Thursday: I saw Tracye briefly and she told me that most students were going to do theirs in rhyme. I think maybe that rhyme is not the elite sport that I’d hoped it was.

Diana Neild