Concepts

[ginasketch]

Freddie and the Fairy concepts, based on Julia Donaldson's text.

This is a layout drawing I did to get a feel of how I'm going to do a double page spread. I already see a fatal error.:P Stuff shouldn't be down the middle.

This entry will remain locked until the end of the competition. please keep it that way! Character designs © Gina Allnatt. Text © Julia Donaldson 2009

Comments

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

Uh oh. I did worry that he kind of looked Potterish. Drawing humans for kids books is pretty hard for me. There seems to be this unwritten law where publishers want kids to look as bland as possible, yet all the animals/incidental characters seem much more interesting. Not sure why.

[ms-daisy-cutter.livejournal.com]

There seems to be this unwritten law where publishers want kids to look as bland as possible

Do you think it's perhaps unconsciously influenced by the perception of children as "innocent," or "blank slates"? Or do you think that the intent might be to better enable children to identify with the protagonists? (As in, avoiding the situation of "S/he doesn't look like me, so that can't be me," because young kids tend to be very literal?)

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

I'm honestly not sure. I might start a thread about it on SCBWI and see what people's opinions are. I know Little Tiger Press say they prefer thei protagonists to be animals, and 80% of the books they publish have only animal characters in them.