Following my tutorial with Jonny yesterday I've spent today continuing to plan and adjust the layout of the scenery in my book.
The main issue was needing to use more angles and view points so that the pages weren't too repetitive, so this morning I got to work on figuring that out.
I drew out a very rough version of the layout I had come up with yesterday (with a few tweaks) onto A2 card. I photographed this a few times, cropping in on certain areas that I need for my book, but obviously these were all from the same angle.
So next up I cut around the tops and sides of the buildings and other elements of the scene I had drawn, and folded them up from the bottom, to create a little 3D version of the world:
This then enabled me to photograph it from different angles to use as reference.
I used these photos to create a rough plan of the layouts for each of the 12 pages (referring back to the plan I had made for what each character would be doing and where they would need to be):
The blacked out areas in the above images show where there will be a cross-section of a building and the characters will be inside. I've tried to vary these as much as possible across the 12 pages to further help with the repetition issue.
I also wanted to vary the colour in the pages without just changing it for no reason, and I've come up with a solution for that too. Jonny mentioned yesterday the possibility of changing seasons but I dismissed it to begin with as the stories are all taking place across one day. However I've though about it since and realised that I can have all four seasons in one day, because after all this is a fairytale world! Its worked out quite neatly that there are 12 double pages and 12 months in a year. I'll be starting in September in the Autumn, and ending in August in the Summer (and including every month in between). That will mean that the colours, nature, weather etc. will all change on each page (the characters and their clothes will remain the same).
In terms of colours I will be using a simple 5 or 6 colour palette throughout the book, with an addition of 3 more colours that vary depending on the season.
I need to hear back from Jonny to confirm if these ideas are suitable, and after that I'll be getting on with drawing the final images of the scenery over the next week.