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
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