This started out as an Prompt but I’m a be honest and say that I only halfway read it so I has taken me a lot longer than it should have.
If you want to do this prompt here it is:
Take 30 minutes to sit, watch, and listen to your environment. Do NOT reach for your phone or computer. Sit and absorb your surroundings. When the half hour is up, write down a few notes about you have seen and heard. For this challenge, you will work to hone your skills in storytelling and illustration for a youthful audience. Then take another 30 minutes to sketch out a 10- to 12-panel storyboard for a book geared toward children ages 3 to 7. Organize your working process as follows to make your plot decisions more intuitive. After looking over your notes:
- Spend 10 minutes brainstorming an over-all plot for the book. Summarize the arc of the story in a sentence.
- Over the next 10 minutes, come up with rough sketches of the visual direction and write some copy describing how the story would play out over 20 to 24 pages.
- Use the rest of your time to tighten up your storyboards and tease out a moral, if you can.
My experience:
So I did do step 1: Sit and observe your surrounds for an idea for a children book. Well I know some kids so really for this I just listened to what my friends little sister was talking about. She is kinda warped so I got things about vampires and alligators eating people if they were bad.
I tried to write the childrens story and as I wrote the story I put ideas for how I would want the pages to look later when I drew them I didn’t really come to an end in my story but I think this is definatly something I could come back to and expand upon.
Merri’s Adventure
Merri was always an adventurous girl. She and her friend Alli got through everything together. They were inseparable.
One day after leaving their house they ventured into the woods. It was dark and scary, but Merri wasn’t scared because she had Alli with her.
“Get it away! Take it out of my forest!” A man screamed from in a tree pointing at Alli.
“There is nothing wrong with her, she is my friend!”
“She is an evil alligator not a friend! You should hide up here with me”
Merri could see that the man in the tree had fangs and was cloaked in black: Vampire sprang to her mind. “You just want to separate us so you can eat us! Vampire!”
“Who’s a vampire?” he says looking around in fright, hanging upside down from a tree.
“You are!” exaggerated expression and then a quick transition to the continuing on into the woods.
“No!! Wait for me!” The vampire cries.
He is then standing next to the little girl on the opposite side of Alli.
“You know you really shouldn’t go deeper into there, there are scary monsters.”
“Aren’t you a scary monster? You should toughen up.”
A lighting strike should happen and the silhouette of a girl should appear.
“So there you are father.”
He disappears and is hiding behind a tree.
“I’ve already found you father. You can’t get away from me again.”
“Oh, was that you Alyssa, my darling?” He walks towards her and tries to give her a hug. She teleports beside the other two people.
“Who are you guys?”
“I’m Merri and this is Alli.” Merri gestures to her alligator.
“Oh my she is quite beautiful” Alyssa kneels down and starts petting Ali.
“Alyssa honey… Daddy wants you to stop petting the scary creature.”
“Why?”
“It’s dangerous honey. It’ll eat you.”
Show Ali laying on her back getting her belly rubbed all cutely. They look at him then start talking.
“Yeah, me and Ali go on adventures every week.”
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