PICTURE BOOK FOCUS Five ways to generate ideas
There is something about changing up the pace of the everyday routine and regarding the world with wonder, like children do.
During the warm summer days, why not try out some of these great idea generators that our facilitators shared with us at the SCBWI-BI Picture Book Retreat?
- First, allow yourself to PLAY — see what happens!
- RANDOM COMBINATIONS can sometimes spark great ideas
- Working within CONSTRAINTS can lead to creativity
1. Clare Helen Welsh’s magazine collage idea-generating activity: Take a pile of random magazines and cut out any pictures or words that take your fancy. Don’t overthink. Make a collage and see what you can create. Look for the story – perhaps a character or a theme?
Here is the collage of words & pictures that I created |
Garry Parson's collage is so creative! You can definitely see the story possibilities right away |
Collage by Tita Berredo - a new twist on the frog prince story? |
2. Garry Parson’s Landscape Consequence Game (for this one, you will need at least one friend, child, or family member to play along – or be very good at role play with yourself):
Fold up a piece of paper into five sections. Draw in each section (see below), then fold it backwards out of sight, and pass to the next person. They should draw the next section and fold out of sight, and so on, until all five sections have been completed.
- At the top, draw a sky.
- Next, draw the horizon of your scene.
- Here, draw the mid-ground.
- Draw the foreground (you can include a hint of action, characters, etc, here).
- Draw a character in the near-ground.
The completed drawing has five random mini scenes that tell a story.
Pippa Goodhart shares one of the landscape consequences results. (Photo by Tita Berredo) |
Other examples of the consequences landscape game by PB retreat attendees (photo courtesy of Tita Berredo) |
The traditional (glued-on or integral) flap, as in books like Where's Spot? by Eric Hill and Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell, can be expensive to produce because it requires die-cut flaps that are manually glued-on. You can experiment with other types of flaps too. Fold over a piece of paper to work out your ‘reveal’.
Where's Spot? by Eric Hill is a classic lift-the-flap book | |
The flap reveal is the running joke - Spot isn't under the rug, a TURTLE is! From Where's Spot? by Eric Hill. |
Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell |
Different Sorts of Flaps
Pippa challenged us to think about different sorts of flaps and what might be possible:
- Shaped flaps
Peek-a-Boo! illustrated by Jane Massey |
The shaped flap is die-cut, and hints at the reveal. The book is the game. |
Over the page, the flap reveals the bunny! |
- Folded corner
- Folded edge of the book
What if we fold over the edge of the page? (photo by Tita Berredo) |
Here are some other examples of what came out of this activity at the PB Retreat:
Monster flap by Tita Berredo | |
Garry Parson's magician trick flap has a surprising reveal. What's the story there? |
Paul Morton's flap surprise — is it a snake, or . . . ? |
- Paper wastage (a relatively inexpensive option because the 32-page book block remains the same, but the paper is cut off and 'thrown away').
No Bath Tonight! by Harriet Ziefert & Emily Bolam |
This book is made up of a series of flaps that make the book grow and shrink as you turn the pages, revealing the animals who hop into the bath with the boy. |
Over the page, the whole dog is revealed. |
A Bit Lost by Chris Haughton |
4. Create a random character, place, action drawing: this is an activity that Garry Parsons does with school visits. It requires the children to collaborate by challenging him to draw the most difficult thing they can think of. In this case, the group at the retreat suggested:
- an armadillo—driving a tractor—in space!
WHY or WHAT is the armadillo doing in Space? Image courtesy of Garry Parsons |
The
picture was a fantastic jumping-off point for writing a story about why
the armadillo was in space and what was going on in the picture.
For The Crayon Man, I’ve used a similar idea, where we use the first eight Crayola crayon colours (red, blue, black, purple, yellow, orange, brown and green) to create a drawing that is the springboard to a story.
We used the constraint of eight primary Crayola crayon colours to create this fantastical picture — random elements together are a great starting-off point for story creations. |
5. Do the Doodle: draw
a line, a squiggle, a doodle on a piece of paper. Turn it around lots
of different ways to see what shapes, characters or story possibilities
you can see. Now join up the lines, add elements or create new ones to
develop the visual story you see.
This picture started with the blue squiggle, then someone suggested it could be a ski piste . . . and the chicken was added as the main character. Image courtesy of Garry Parsons. | |
It was very freeing and fun to allow ourselves time to play with ideas and see what happened.
BOOST your CREATIVITY!
* Logo of animals cooking: by kind permission of Lizzie Finlay
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