Keeping Continuity

I met with Don today and laid out all my latest drawings in a row for him to look at.  He approved of the art, then took anther walk through saying, "Okay, now to look at continuity."  He pointed out several things I totally forgot about/missed!  Which is funny because just last night I realized several things I'd forgotten til near midnight, I realized I only drew croc with his bandana maybe twice and forgot the bandana on all the rest, and a few other things.  I thought I had everything til this morning when Don says, "Uh... how come the monkeys on this page aren't wearing ties?  Where is the lizard in this page?  You forgot flamingo's bow-tie here..."  Ha.  Oops.  Looks like I still have more drawing/editing to do before I can scan.  So, I thought I'd take a second to talk about the importance of continuity.

We must pay close attention to keep our characters, backgrounds, and details consistent.

 Important items to keep in mind when maintaining continuity:



~Make sure characters look the same throughout:

• Clothing  (if your flamingo is wearing a blow-tie, remember to keep drawing the bow-tie on every page)
• Facial features  (round eyes? slanted eyes? square face? big or small ears? pick one and stick with it)
• Accessories
• Hair/Fur
• etc!!

~Behave the same

• (eg: teetering flamboyant crocodile.... lanky awkward flamingo with high rising footsteps and snake-like long neck.... bouncy energetic monkeys who want to play.... pretty and sweet little bird... shy uncertain hippo whose head is often hung low... etc)

~Make sure backgrounds don't change

• Make sure your clouds, mountains, trees, grass, etc are stylized the same through each page.  There are several ways to stylize a cloud - round soft and billowy, flat shaped, whispy with swirly edges, etc.  Pick one way and keep it.  Be deliberate.

Feel free to comment if you have more to add!  I'm still new at this ;) and learning as I go.  So basically, make firm decisions about everything in your illustrations, and once you make them be sure to stick with them.  My story got complicated and tricky because I've written 9 characters to give individual personalities and keep track of.  Which I love personally.  One of my fav characters is the little lizard who is seen throughout the story, but isn't actually written about in the text.  He just kinda follows hippo around and keeps showing up doing random funny things, providing an additional layer of humor to the story.  :)

Let's go make art!