Creating layouts

Last week I was sent three images from “Why Am I Me?” with text by the art director. I believe the author Wayne Harris-Wyrick wants to create a video to help promote the book and I guess she felt I should be in the loop.

This gives me an opportunity to do a quick break down on how I created layouts for this publisher.

One:
I am sent the script/text for the story I know that for their picture books it will be 8.75 X 9 inches or if a two page spread 17.5 X 9 the size includes bleed, also I have twenty five pages to tell the balk of the story out of the thirty two pages for the picture book.
Two:
 After many times reading the story I find the breaks or what I fondly call the breaths and start scribbling the page number next to what text will go on what page. This can and usually changes when I start creating a storyboard; the storyboard helps me see the flow.

Three:
Then I layout the pages how I see the images and text put together, I know they like full color illustrations so I give them it not hard and I have adopted for them keeping the background soft and out of focus. You can see with the amount of text per page it is easier to place the written word without overlapping the artwork. If I design it to overlap the foreground artwork I remove my ink line to soften the artwork, trying to make it easier to read the words on that page.

page 12 with text

All the pages in this book except for two pages were two page spreads a lot more fun to work with, I am guessing that the art director did not want to give too much of the story away by sending the full two page spread since there is text on both pages so I had already had a couple up for the last year without text and I have added it to this post.