As an illustrator, when
you hear the word thumbnail, you
probably think of a rough, miniature doodle. It's always been a tried and true way to flesh out
an individual piece or an entire storyboard. And... while I do start each new illustration with
a small, rough sketch, over the years, the idea of "thumbnail" has
become so much more a part of my entire,
creative process.
I generally start every illustration with a rough thumbnail. If I'm working on a group of
spots for my portfolio, or a book project, I eventually end up with a series of
these rough little drawings in the form of a storyboard. I've also been using thumbnails to
write out the text with illustration notes for myself. But, for me, their usefulness doesn't end there.
I like to work on the entire series or book project all at once to keep everything consistent, but
tracking all the details while working
that way, can be a bit overwhelming, especially now that I 'm working more with
digital tools and layers. I tried many different ways to keep track of what I
did, but being a very visual person, I kept coming back to those simple little
rectangles with the line down the middle.
So...now I use the thumbnail format for everything from tracking how many of the
main elements have to be rendered in separate
layers, any revisions that need to be done, to mini color studies to give myself a full
color overview and pretty much everything in-between.
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| Color Tracking - Little Dragon Sky Pony Press-2017 |
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| Color tracking thumbnail, close-up - Little Dragon Sky Pony Press- 2017 |
I find that the "at a glance" of the entire book,
at different critical points in my process, really help me to keep tabs on all
aspects of the project. And, I always have the thumbnails close by, so I can
look them over with fresh eyes from time to time. Kind of like occasionally
stepping back from a painting, only in this case, it's the whole project. When I
do that, I can see things about the project that I couldn't, by just looking at
one piece at a time, for hours on end. If something jumps out, I jot it down on
the thumbnail sheet and mark it off when I address it. It all becomes part of
the documentation for my project and they're nice and small, so easily put in
the file.
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| Overview thumbnails - Little Dragon Sky Pony Press-2017 |
I had always just printed out my own thumbnail sheets, but
we all know what happens to loose sheets of paper, despite our best efforts to
keep everything together. So,
I'm happy
to announce that one of my blog buddies,
Diana Delosh, came up with a small portable book, with lots of pages of my
favorite little rectangles with the line down the center.
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| ThumbNailer / interior- created by Diana Ting Delosh |
It's lightweight, portable, feels great (I'm also a very
tactile person), has 51 pages with 8 thumbnail boxes per page and best
part...it's totally affordable ! It's called
ThumbNailer and you can get your
book through Amazon.
I have Prime, so I
got mine in 2 days and no shipping!
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| ThumbNailer /cover - created by Diana Ting Delosh |
I think this is going to work out really well, not only for the beginning sketching part, but also for keeping
all aspects of my book projects together in one place. For the price of a big, fancy cup of coffee, I can get one book for each project,
as well as have one in my purse at all times in case inspiration strikes.
I'm just about done with the art for
Little Dragon, but I always have another couple of book projects in the works that the
ThumbNailer will be perfect for!
