One of the big unknowns out in the world of books, whether they be novels, young adult, or children's picture books is; where is publishing heading? How will digital formats influence and change what we've grown accustomed to? Those and other questions were a part of the morning session and became the topic of one of the three break-out sessions I attended.
Rubin Pfeffer, an agent at East-West Literary Agency gave a great presentation about Ebooks, Enhanced Ebooks, and Apps and how new technology always creates new content and how we as illustrators fit into it. The general tone is that the genre is expanding and there will be new opportunities for the story to be developed and visualized. Just like when animation went from 2D to 3D, the question of the role of the illustrator came up. NOW where do we fit in the development pipeline? The technology changed and the role of the visionary changed. It didn't go away, it evolved. Pfeffer's comments stated the current evolution of things as truly revolution(ary).
It's all about STORY! Always was...always will be. But there are changes occurring that will expand the methods of delivery. Interesting times.
I'm going to go now and meet with some of the other illustrators at the conference. There's almost 500 of us here. Shouldn't be too difficult to find some...
More later.
Scroll down and see some pieces I'm bringing with me to the SCBWI Conference in NY this weekend along with some other samples of my work. The first image is piece I did when I realized I didn't have a goat in my portfolio.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
SCBWI Conference Update
It's been a busy morning already and I'm getting ready for a busy afternoon. Keynote speaker Chris Crutcher gave an inspiring talk based on the theme: Turning Real Life into Fiction. He writes YA novels which I'm not particularly familiar with, but you really can't go wrong with the advice to "write what you know".
The first breakout group I attended was lead by Cathy Goldsmith from Random House where she is an art director. She talked about portfolios for children's book illustrators and offered a lot of good information on everything from the process of developing a picture book, ways to submit samples, to more technical information about printing and binding. I came away with some new insights and her talk also confirmed (at least in my mind) that I've been teaching Children's Book Illustration "correctly" all these years!
The first breakout group I attended was lead by Cathy Goldsmith from Random House where she is an art director. She talked about portfolios for children's book illustrators and offered a lot of good information on everything from the process of developing a picture book, ways to submit samples, to more technical information about printing and binding. I came away with some new insights and her talk also confirmed (at least in my mind) that I've been teaching Children's Book Illustration "correctly" all these years!
Friday, January 27, 2012
Made it!
After a bumpy ride on Jet Blue (though no fault of their own) I made it into JFK and am now settled in my hotel room 18 floors above the SCBWI Conference. The big day is tomorrow when I'll be attending a morning of presentations to be followed by three workshops. I'm here to absorb info and insights and I'm looking forward to sharing them with the Next Step participants at Ringling as well as students interested in Children's Book Illustration.
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