Signifiers - Tools to use when creating a children's book

Signifiers: identifying marks and features that resonate within a developing child's memory. These are employed by children's illustrators in order to connect as fast as possible with the young reader, and convey the message of the story without overcomplicating the scenery and therefore losing the child's interest in the plot.

For young children, detail is often lost in favour of bolder, more obvious illustrations. Complex animals are reduced to simplistic concepts with strong features that are most commonly identified with by the general population.

In class, we formed a list of signifiers for 10 animals, before sketching them onto ellipses'.
1. Dog - tail/legs/ears/nose/muzzle/tongue/fur
2. Cat - tail/whiskers/ears/cat eyes/fur
3. Penguin - black/white/beak/egg/webbed feet/flippers
4. Elephant - tusks/trunk/ears/grey/fat/short legs/wrinkles
5. Parrot - beak/colour/claws/wings/tail/perch
6. Lion - mane/teeth/nose/tail/fur/paws/jaws
7. Fish - scales/gills/fins/lips/colour/pattern/eyes
8. Frog - tongue/feet/legs/green/eyes/wide mouth
9. Panda - black/white/bamboo/fluffy/fat/claws/ears
10. Crab - pincers/6 legs/small eyes/shells

These ideas were all put into play when we created our animals. Here are mine.

I have to say, my ability to look past my drawing skills (or lack thereof) improved on the second page.I decided to enhance these by scanning them into the computer and edit them on Illustrator, though I left out the crab.

This exercise meant that we all focussed our attention on drawing the signifiers, instead of the quality of the sketches. I realised that I had no problem with drawing signifiers on animals, and that if I chose to stylise my images and characters, that it wouldn't be a difficult task to use animal characters.

Creating Characters

This morning, we focused on creating a simple, appealing character using a tutorial on Adobe Illustrator.

The main tools we used were Pen, Intersect, Gradient, Ellipse and Paintbrush.

On a simple A4 page, we created the colourful snail, using shading, transparency and a gradient effect to make it a recognisable character.

This is William, a sea-faring snail.

My end result isn't perfect, as I feel the outline of the body could be smoother and more rounded, but I am very pleased with the progress I made.

The tutorial was created by Iaroslav Lazunov on 'Vector Tuts' (click here to be taken to the tutorial)

This tutorial has given me new ideas about the ways in which I can publish the book I intend to make. It has inspired different approaches to characters and has honed my illustrator skills.