A Book of Stories Thesis book by Jia Liu
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A Book of Stories Thesis book by Jia Liu
Illustration Practice MFA, Maryland Insititute College of Art www.jia-liu.com / jliu01@mica.edu 3
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Introduction I Don’t Need Friends! The Scariest Thing in the World Thesis Show Conclusion Future
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Introduction My thesis includes two children’s picture books, for which I wrote the stories and designed the illustrations. I chose to create children’s picture books because I want to pursue a career as a writer and illustrator. My interest for children’s picture books started in the third year of my undergraduate studies and it became more and more fascinating as I proceeded. The reason I came to graduate school is to learn more aspects of illustration and apply them to children’s picture books. So I decided to create children’s picture books as my thesis before I had envisioned the story. For children’s picture books, I think the story is the most important part, and the technique is secondary. As a result, I write my story first then try different techniques to depict the plot. My stories always come from real life especially my teaching experience. And I am particularly interested in the relationship between children’s psychology and their behavior. Both of my stories deal with issues children experience in real life. As soon as I had my story, I followed certain steps to accomplish it. First of all I drew thumbnails in picture book format on a piece of paper then scanned them to make them into a tiny dummy book. Drawing all the thumbnails 6
on one page helped me review the overall composition, to see if any element was too similar or too disconnected; making a dummy book with the thumbnails also provided me the feeling of what the book would look like in book format. Common questions I asked myself were: is this story fluent? does every page connect naturally? I stayed at thumbnail stage for a while just to review my story and make appropriate changes. Then I developed my thumbnails into detailed sketches. At the same time I tried out different techniques and styles to figure out which ones would fit the story better. Since I work with many different materials and techniques, especially traditional and digital, I always explored a lot before I started the final illustration. Once my story became very clear and I had certain style and material to work with, I began to work on the final illustration. Things could change or go back and forth, but I think these are the most important steps for creating children’s picture books. Meanwhile, I needed to follow my schedule to make sure I could finish it on time before the thesis show. I think the picture book is a tool of communication. The communication between children and the world they know or they don’t know, between children and their parents, and between children and themselves. So children’s picture books are mainly created for children but not only for them. I hope my story can be a bridge that can help every reader to understand children better. Children can find themselves in it and parents can understand children more through the plot. So my goal is to get my book published so that my stories can reach as many readers as possible.
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I Don’t Need Friends! • Where the story came from • Process • Technique exploration • Problems & Struggles • Final product
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• Where the story came from My first story is I Don’t Need Friends, which I started as a self-directed project at the end of the first year in grad school. The story is about communication barriers among kids. A lonely bird who has no friend and doesn’t know how to make friends, so he supposes he doesn’t need any friends even though he wants them. Eventually he becomes friends with other birds. I wrote this story because I found that some kids always play alone, and they don’t know how to communicate with others or how to make friends. For example, in China the family dynamic is changing, many families have only one child, so the sibling connection which can help children to learn sharing is weakened. And the living condition is changing too.People used to live in yards where many families lived tegether and every child know each other, but now more and more families move to apartments where neighbers don’t know each other even though they live on the same floor. These changes cause these children to have to grow up without supervision from their contemporaries. As a result, many children have little chance to learn how to play with others of their age, share and consider others feelings. The result is a generation that lacks maturity and necessary social skills. Psychologist Xin Meng of the Australian National University in Canberra and her colleagues recruited 421 Chinese young adults born between 1975 and 1983 from around Beijing for a series of surveys and tests that evaluated a variety of psychological traits, such as trustworthiness and optimism. Almost all the participants born after 1979 were only children compared 9
with about one fifth of those born before 1979. The study participants born after the policy went into effect were found to be both less trusting and less trustworthy, less inclined to take risks, less conscientious and optimistic, and less competitive than those born a few years earlier. (cite studies that support this statement) When they arrive at school age and meet other children, communication barriers arise. Additionally, autism rates have arisen. According the report of Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, for 2010, the overall prevalence of autistic among the ADDM sites was 14.7 per 1,000 (one in 68) children aged 8 years. The prevalence of autistic in China is also increasing but sadly there is no offically overall research about it yet. The estimated morbidity is one in 100. My experience in a Beijing kindergarten is an example with 1 in 20 children having autism. Communication barriers happen on both autistic and nonautistic children. In the story, I don’t give a solution as to how to make friends, but I do encourage children to make the first step. The ways of making friends can be changed, but one thing never change is everyone need friends.
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• Process 1. Story board: My very first version of thumbnails was not even in book format; they were very rough and just a visual representation when I wrote down the story at the same time. After that, I developed the story more, created some conflicts and changing moment, and I drew the first story board on the left. This one was still focused more on the story itself, the text and the fluency of the story. 11
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Then I found my composition of all the spreads were too similar, so for the next version of dummy book, I focused more on how to change perspective and vary composition to bring more action to the story. I added woods as background and used different perspective.
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But after that I felt the background was too chaotic, so that I couldn’t focus on the story itself and all the subtle relationships between the characters. So for the third version, I kept the front part of the story with a clean background, just branches and birds, then added background gradually as the story goes and our vision started to be wider and we could see what kind of big environment the birds lived in. Since my story is very simple, every word I used became really important and meaningful. So alone with the thumbnails, I edited the text every time as well. It was also a process for me to discover myself and what I really wanted to address in my story.
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2. Technique exploration The medium I used for I Don’t Need Friends was screen printing, using ink on “ true grain” paper. True grain paper has a sandy texture which will result in a unique texture after being exposed. This new technique was exciting for me after exploring other media last academic year, and has resulted in very positive feedback from my cohort. In my screen printing class, I tried to draw on many different meterials and expose them to see what would happen. And I really like the texture of true grain paper and how it turned out, and I tested many times to get the most texture to show. For example, the darkness of the ink and the time to expose the image both influenced the texture a lot. I really liked that I never knew what the final work would look like until I exposed it and there were many happy accident which made the images looked better. And I drew the characters with gouache and color pencil.
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3. Problems & Struggles The feedback I have received most was that the beginning half of the book’s images look too similar. Even though I changed perspective a little bit, the compositions were still pretty much the same, and the color usage of each page was also very similar. In addition, some critics mentioned that my texture was too strong and disturbing for the storytelling, and my handwriting text seemed not very professional and well-considered. For the storytelling, I think I still need to adjust the text to make the story more fluent.
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4. Changes Since the time was very limited, my adjustment was mainly focused on the storyline and composition. The pace of story changed a lot compare with the original sketch, which could be reflected on the following image of my story board. Since the texture was created by screen printing, and many critic also liked the technique I used, I haven’t made changes yet, but I will try a version with existing typeface instead of handwritten text.
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5. Final product My final product is a 32-page children’s picture book. I finished all the illustration and book design, and made a hardcover book for presentation in the gallery. I think this book will be ready to present to the publishers after I make changes of handwriting, storyline and some pages of the illustrations.
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The Scariest Thing in the World • Where the story came from • Process • Technique exploration • Problems & Struggles • Final product
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• Where the story came from My second story is The Scariest Thing in the World. It’s a story of a little monster who likes to scare others to show that he is not afraid and he think he is the scariest thing in the world. Everyone is afraid of him: his sister, his friends, even his teachers! In order to prove he is the most scary thing in the world, he goes into the dark dark woods. But he was scared by someone else and runs into his mom’s arms. The story was inspired by a boy named Max I taught before. He was so naughty and aggressive that no matter what I told him to do, he would do the opposite way, even his parents didn’t know why he acted like this and they didn’t know how to communicate with him sometimes. I was kind of afraid of him because if he started to act aggressive to his classmates, I would try to stop that then he would turn the anger on me and other kids would follow him. I took a long time to learn how to get along with him, but I found he just wanted to be stronger and didn’t like to be controlled by others, teachers or parents. So he always acted resistant to show he was strong, and he was not afraid of anyone. He also didn’t know how to show how he liked people and would turn his feelings into mischief! Even the nicest child would have aggressive moods. For children like Max, I think both teachers and parents are scared of them sometimes. But sometimes he could be scared by a story I read or some nonsense things I made up, or sometimes he would just hug 31
me in a sudden which totally a sweet little boy would do. In my story, I want to show no matter how naughty and tough a kid is, he is still a kid and he needs to be understood and loved. The Scariest Thing in the World is pop-up book to further express the scary aspect of the story line. The main character’s “scary” personality as a little monster who jumps out of nowhere can be made more dramatic with the mobility of a pop-up. A pop-up helps to develop the story first. Other effective uses of pop-up paper engineering are Under the Sea and Woke Up! Sloth! by artists Anouck Boisrobert and Louis Rigaud. In Under the Sea, the pop-up separates the book into two parts, under the sea and beneath the sea like the profile map, and it tells the story of what happens at the same time under the sea and above the sea. At last, every person on the boat plunged into the sea to admire the thousands of fish among the jagged coral. In this book, they used a very simple structure but very clever way to tell the story very well. Woke up! Sloth! is a story about deforestation. In this book, every page has a die cut at the same position where the trees on the last page can go through, as the reader turning pages, the trees on each page becoming more and more less untill the only three left on last page. Again, the structure is very basic but very tactful. For my story, I wanted to use pop-up as a interactive method to depict the story, which means I might not have pop-up on every page, but only when it’s really necessary.
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• Process 1. Story board My very first story board was pretty much the same as the finished book. The overall idea didn’t change much. As it shows in my thumbnail, the monster was scared by ghosts in the end, because I just wanted the monster to be punished, and I thought the world I created was not real, so the monster and ghosts could all exist. But I added one more frame with a blue pen later that shows they were not real ghosts but were his friends who dressed up as ghosts, because I didn’t want to scare the kids. I like the new ending better because I felt it was more like teasing than punishment, so the kids could get the idea, but also got satisfied with the mischief and were not scared by the ghost 33
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Then I drew a more detailed sketch to make the storyline more clear and figured out the composition. As we know pop-up books always have less pages than normal picture books. Since I was not sure how many pop-up spreads I would have or if I would end up with an illustrated book with no pop-up, this version of sketches was a typical 32-page picture book.
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The last version of sketches included 11 spreads. I deleted several spreads because I thought they were not very strong in terms of the storytelling, but more like a burden. Also because I want to control the book in limited pages in order to develop it as a pop-up book in a very limited time.
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2. Technique exploration For the illustrations of this book, originally I wanted to draw with traditional media just because I thought drawing by hand with brush and pigment was very heartwarming for children’s picture book. And it was also the way I always work, which I was more comfortable with. But I decided to work with digital illustration for this book. I learned digital illustration after I came to MICA and I got very positive feedback on it. I changed my mind later because I wanted to show different aspects of my work in my thesis. Since I Don’t Need Friends was done traditionally, I wanted the audience to recognize my digital work as well. Plus, for pop-up book, the working process is very complicated and different, so I needed to make a lot of changes on my illustration because of the pop-up structure, and it is easier to make changes in photoshop.
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At the early stage of this book my technique exploration was focused more on paper engineering. I did some pop-up samples based on my sketches, and some of them worked pretty well and some didn’t. Through the pop-up samples I found the working process of this book would be very complicated. I had to work out the structure first then created the illustrations based on the structure, after that the illustrations need to be printed, cut, and assembled. Since my paper engineering experience was very limited, for some of the pages I couldn’t come up with a proper solution for the structure, yet I wanted to keep the pop-up structure cohesive overall, not like a mixture of borrowed structures from everywhere.
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3. Problems and struggles I felt a lot of pressure because of the complex working process and I was afraid that I couldn’t finish the book by thesis show. During the winter break I went back to China and showed my popup samples to a group of paper engineers and they suggested me to work on the illustration first, then develop pop-up based on the illustrations, which was an opposite process with what I was doing. And from them I knew if I wanted to do a pop-up book, I would need to draw 2D structure in CAD to make sure everything was right when I assembled them, which was even harder for me. After the meeting with them I decided to finish all the illustration first to make sure I have a finished book by thesis show, and develop some pop-up spreads later. I started to draw color sketch for each spread and considered to do a pop-up stop motion for this book if I didn’t have enough time to create a pop-up book.
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4. Changes In the beginning, I changed the pace of the story as I showed in my storyboard, along with images I also made adjustment on the words I used in the story. Because my story was very simple with very few words on each page, the subject and tone of the language became very important. At first I used third person subject to tell the story, and the character’s name was Max. But many people felt it was too similar with Where the Wild Things Are. Then I changed the subject to first person and eliminate the name “Max”. I think telling the story in first person makes the emotion of the character stronger and shows the monster is the one who thinks himself is very scary, not the audience, which is what I want to address in this story. As I finished up I Don’t Need Friends and moved to this story, I changed my schedule and working process a lot. I decided to finish all the illustration first, and create a pop-up stop motion to show the movement I wanted to bring to this work. And I didn’t decide what I was going to do with the stop motion.
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5. Stop motion In the first year of the MFA Program, we had a stop motion workshop and I did a stop motion A Big Sneeze involved popup. I had a lot of fun with it and I got a lot of good feedback on it. It was inspired by Helen Friel’s Revolution Animation. In this stop motion animation she didn’t just shot how a pop-up book was opened and popped up, but made all the elements move after the book is opened. I think pop-up animation will be a new trend for 3D pop-ups, it is a very effective combinational animation.Personally, a pop-up animation can show my interest in paper engineering and motion.
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After I finished all the illustrations, I did one pop-up spread in the middle of the book for the presentation in the thesis show, and I got a very short time to do the stop motion. In order to finish the stop motion I had to come up with some very quick solution for the structure on each page, and I found simple structure could work pretty well, my thoughts before was too complicated. As I shot it I decided to shoot only the front half of the story and use it as a trailer to promote my book as a popup book.
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• Final product The Scariest Thing in the World is a 22-page picture book including one spread of popup, along with a pop-up stop motion as a trailer of the book. Based on the feedback of the critics, I think this book is ready to be promoted to publishers and agents. The page number of this book is not a typical children’s book, but according to my research, pop-up books all have weird page numbers because of the technique and binding, so I want to make changes on that after I got feedback from publishers.
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Thesis Show My Thesis show included two of my children’s picture books, one stop motion, framed illustrations on the wall, several pillows of my characters, and one light box with screen printing films. I wanted to show not only the books of my stories, but also the process of my work, and what related products were developed after the story. So I used light box to show how I created my images with screen printing, allowing people to understand how screen printing works if they didm’t know about it. I made the pillows at the very last moment to bring my characters to life.
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Tell and Creat As I mention in the beginning, my stories always come from real life, mostly from my teaching experiences with children. Teaching simultaneously while creating books plays a big role in my story telling. To reflect that, I proposed to set put a children’s activity area in the gallery named “Tell and Create”. It provided free reading and art-making workshops. The purpose is to give the stories back to children, and create an interactive gallery environment.
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Conclusion I learned a lot during this year by making picture books. A children’s picture book is a highly complex product, which includes writing the story; transferring words into images; and making the images, images and words work together cohesively. The two books I created allowed me to get more familiar with the working process of different kind of picture books. I drew storyboard, revised story line and images, talked with critics, read stories to kids, which helped me to understand the market in US better. The long-range working process helped me to be more organized so that I could follow my schedule and finish the work on time, which is a very important ability for surviving in the illustration market. Since I was very clear that I wanted to create picture books, and I regarded myself as an author and illustrator for picture books. I intended to improve my writing and image making skill while I was at MICA. I took several very important electives, which were “Writing Children’s Picture Book”, “Digital illustration”, “Screen printing” and “Art and Human Development”. They all were reflected in my books as very important parts. Compared with my old work before I came here, I am more confident and professional in story telling and image making. And I am ready to work in the illustration market.
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Future Market & Goals In the future I want to focus on the children’s book market as well as the editorial market. My goal is to get my book published and work on more books. I will promote my book to publishers, agents, and children’s magazines. Meanwhile I really want to work on editorial illustration because I always consider illustration is for problem solving, and I am very interested in coming up with concepts and solving problems. At the same time, I want to keep on teaching because teaching always bring me energy and refreshes my mind, and helps me to be creative. I will pursue teaching as another part of my career.
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