Why I created The Story Activity Kit

The following Essay was what came out of my pen when I set off to write a guest post for the local Toy Shop Dilly Dally where my line Draw Me A Lion is available. I thought it would be neat to talk a little bit about why I created one of the items in the shop. The Story Activity Kit. The outcome of the kit is that you end up making your very own mini Picture book/illustrated story that you both write and draw.

While I ended up writing something (not entirely) different and most importantly a lot shorter for Dilly Dally's blog, I thought that I should post the original essay here for all of you interested in Picture Books to read. I think it fits quite nicely on this blog;)

Hope you get something out of it.

:)

Lisa

JUMP START YOUR IMAGINATION!

-How and why I created the “Story Activity Kit”-

By Lisa Cinar, creator of the Draw Me A Lion Story Activity Kit.

People often think that all children are chock-a-block full of imagination just by way of being … a child. In my experience this is not the case. Sure, children can have a much easier time grasping the boundless freedom that imagination can provide. Once discovered they may develop and grow their imagination faster, (just like children learn ANY new task faster and easier), but they often struggle just like their adult counterparts to get started. Both children and adults often simply need someone to hand them a little key to their secret super power…their imagination!

It’s pretty simple really. If you don’t read your child stories and picture books and if your child isn’t exposed to stories on a regular basis in any other context, they are probably not going to be making up any stories of their own. Just like we learn any new thing, we start with imitating that which we already know. A kid who gets read a lot of fairytales might make up a story about herself being turned into a frog or a cat by a witch because she remembers and fancies a similar story. A child who reads comics might make their own comic titled “super-dog” where the main character wears a red cape and fights crime, but happens to be a dog rather than the well known comic book character Super Man.

Both of these kids have grown up with stories. To them it’s no big deal to come up with a whole bunch of different story lines and ideas just off the top of their heads. Sure, they’re probably not perfectly thrilling stories, and the stories might often resemble one another quite a bit, (ie. next comic is ‘Super-Armadillo’) but still they differentiate from one another and will soon get more and more sophisticated as well as removed from the original story they were derived from to begin with. For example, all of a sudden the comic will be called ‘Armadillo and Frog’, which is now it’s very own story and nothing in it immediately reminds back to the origins of the childs inspiration for making comics in the first place, mainly Super Man.

Long story short, I think that a lot of times we rely on children to be creative individuals just because they are children. But children are not necessarily creative by nature. They have to be surrounded by creativity in order to grow to be creative themselves. Creativity needs to be encouraged whenever an opportunity presents itself.

I have written and illustrated two children’s picture books and I teach illustration and writing for children’s books. I teach adults, not children. But I have also taught workshops with young kids and visited many elementary schools on my booktour that was sponsored by the BC Bookprizes a few years ago.

A year ago I started teaching a companion class to my introduction to illustration for picture books class that I teach at Emily Carr. This second class focuses more on the writing aspect of creating a picture story book. The end result being that students complete an entire ‘Dummy Book’ (ie. sample book of a story they have both written and illustrated) ready to submit to a publisher.

I noticed two things right away. 1) Adults who do not usually write as well as a lot of adults who do are intimidated by the concept of writing and often had a hard time setting their imagination loose to get started. 2) These same adults would write really great stories when presented with some very basic prompting questions 3) A lot of these same adults had an even easier time getting started when I combined the prompting questions with an image I would provide for them.

Here’s what I did. I would print out a funny image from the internet. Something that has potential to be part of a story, for example a dog sitting in the drivers seat of a car with sunglasses and a hat on. Then I would ask my students questions like: Who do you think this is? Where do you think they’re going? What city do they live in, etc…

From just a few of these ‘prompting questions’ presented along side the image the most diverse stories were spun by my students. And most of all, they loved it! All of a sudden writing was fun and easy! And once it’s fun the gates are open. If you use prompts as often as you need to get started, soon the idea that writing can be intimidating is lost. Instead you will learn to associate writing with fun and play.

After teaching a story-workshop with kids who were in grade 1 and 2, I realized that the same was true for them! If I asked all of them to come up with a simple story out of the blue, there would be some kids who had no problems but there were a lot more that were moaning and groaning. ‘Excuse me! I can’t think of anything!” I came over to one girl and said, “Ok, you can make up anything you want!” Then, knowing that making a more specific request might be helpful I said: “How about a fairytale?“ She nodded and seemed relieved to have a more narrowed down task. She started:” Once upon a time……………………….uhm….Ooooonce upooooon a tiiiiiiime….” she stopped again. “I just can’t think of ANYTHING!” she said and seemed a bit perplexed. She was not alone.

These experiences lead me to creating the Draw Me A Lion Story Acitivity Kit. I created a Kit that’s fun enough for kids (and smart enough for adults) who just need that little extra push to jump start their imagination. I put a lot of work into creating it and tested it out with children ages 4-9. I gave them the kit, and asked them questions about how it could be improved so that it would be more fun and helpful for them the next time around. Kids have the fantastic quality of being brutally honest about things when asked to be and so it was great for me to see the kit evolve into what it is today. The input of the kids helped shape the way the activity book was designed in a big way. The kit contains a purposely quizzically designed poster print, an activity book designed to make it fun and easy to write and draw an accompanying story and a little booklet to write and draw your finished story. The result is your very own illustrated storybook to accompany your poster! Now the poster is not just a poster anymore, it’s part of a story that YOU created!

The end results of the kit are always great! Sometimes you can definitely relate the story back to the poster print, but sometimes the kid has veered into a completely different direction. For example I remember a story a boy came up with about a guy swimming through a shark invested water and then encountering a stop sign in the middle of the ocean. There is no trace left of the starting of the story to the poster print. The activity book and prompting questions were merely a jumping board for him to dive off into his imagination and create this fantastic story of his own. All these kids and adults needed was a little push. A key that helped them open up that little hidden door inside themselves and fire up their imagination! After that anything is possible!

Matthew Forsythe

Do you know who Matthew Forsythe is? You do?! YAY! Isn't he great!? You love his wordless comic Ojingogo? I do toooo!

You don't know who he is and you like comics? Well, then you have been doing yourself a huge disservice.

Please read the following post if you fall into either established category above:

When I picked up Matthew's book Ojingogo some years back now I loved it immediately. It approaches story telling and the usual notions of story telling through pictures in a very fresh and unusual way. In fact I am pretty sure that in terms of the way that the story was structured I had never seen anything like it. While there is no just one 'rule' in terms of layout per spread they are all seemingly easy on the eye in order to make way for a refreshingly complex story. I love the book because you actually need to use your noggin for a change and don't have the whole story spelled out for you piece by piece. How nice! So yes, Ojingogo, very cool, go check it out at your local comics books shop!

He has also just released a follow up for this book by the name of Jinchalo. I have not seen it yet and just put in a request at Lucky's Comics for it. Excited!!!

The book I really wanted to talk about though was his also newer book "Comics Class" which I bought around Christmas time (and was actually recommended to me by Gabe the super cool owner of Lucky's- Thanks buddy) It's quite hilarious while addressing some very real problems that teachers of comics and visual story telling (and students) may encounter in a class on the subject. As it says on the back of the book's cover, it's "Kind of based on a real class! ...But mostly untrue!" Ha ha. Forsythe of course also passes on some wisdom, including one of the most important things to consider when it comes to comics, picture books of any kind and illustration in general. The relationship between text and image. The concept of "Dialectial opposition between panels' ... or-Image and text don't say the same thing..." As Forsythe puts it. Super quick, fun and clever read and hey, it's only 5$! How can you go wrong?

On a last note, I recently saw that he has also illustrated a Children's Picture book called' My name is Elizabeth!' Yikes! Two books by someone totally amazing that I haven't even checked out yet. Better get on that Cinar!

Brain Picking's Picks

I came across this post a while ago and thought it would be just plain silly of me not to post a link to it here. It's Maria Popova's (aka Brain Pickings) list of the '11 Best Illustrated Children's and Picture books of 2011'

I have not yet watched the featured posted interview clip with Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer who created the awesome 'The Phantom Tollbooth' but I am sure PLANNIN ON IT! And so should you!

Just this for now

Soon I will start teaching again and so very very soon I will be able to give this blog it's needed attention again. For now I like to keep my life a bit split up as it is. Run my business Draw Me A Lion for two months full time, then teach for two months and have the business take a backseat.

So starting later this week there will finally be regular posts again (at least for the next two months) and I will also update and add links of interest, including some of my fabulous and talented students!

I found this image here via a link from a blog which I truly love. That of the Vancouver Locals' Banquet Atelier. Click here for the original entry. Their whole blog is amazing, but these photos they found really made me think.

WildWood

Well, I have taken long enough of a break from this blog of mine that I love. But in order to keep loving it, I sometimes must abandon it and then come back, fresh. And so now, it is once again time to write something about a book who's illustrations I love.

From time to time when the owner is out of town and all the other employees don't feel like working, I get the chance to work at this little gem of a comic book shop we have here in Vancouver. I'm the 'holiday help' so to speak. It's called "Lucky's Comics", but really it should be called "Lucky's Books", because there are many great books, half of which aren't comics at all. Every time I get to be the 'holiday help' I leave with a heap of books and this time- it was just before Christmas- I picked up a book by the title of WildWood.

The cover of the book was enough to draw me in but I have to say that the whole story itself was really pretty great and somehow reminded me of books I used to read when I was little, and that's a very good thing in my book. No pun intended. Just by picking it up and leaving through it you can tell that the whole thing is a labor of love. The design is perfect from the beautiful cover and endpaper map illustrations by Carson Ellis to the actual paper used for the pages and the way they are left uncut. There is something about a book that is so beautiful and so well made that let's you know almost immediately that there is pretty much no way the writing is going to disappoint you. If the book was just so so this kind of effort and attention to the overall book would be very unlikely.

The story is a modern fairly tale that start of pretty light hearted and then gets surprisingly darker and darker. The story is illustrated by Carson Ellis (illustrator of all the Decemberists flyers, etc) and written by her husband who also happens to be the lead singer of said band The Decemberists. I would have liked this book a lot already but there is something so so special about the fact that they made it together. That part of it is the part that makes it perfect. It's already really great, but add the husband and wife aspect and I almost wanna puke it's so cute. (But I don't puke and just totally love it) Yay for cool people making stuff together!

Ok. bla bla bla when are you going to talk about the illustration more Lisa?

Well, I think that the reason this book reminds me of the books of my childhood is that a) it's overall good craftsman ship and writing, b) it's a good story and c) the illustrations are perfect for the text and the book as a whole. They help draw you in, and piece together this magical forest that the story takes place in. But they don't take OVER your imagination. They are simple enough to leave you imagine and detailed enough to help you along. It's hard to put a finger on exactly how but they do. It's something that's hard for an illustration to do. Perhaps they do this most by immediately emitting a certain kind of mood. They seem to say, " You're inside of a world of magic and it can be very beautiful, but be careful, it can also be very very dangerous".

If you're interested in illustrated books (not picture books/ they are different) I really suggest picking this one up. Ellis employs various different illustration techniques, throughout the book. Some are black and white only, a few are full colour, some are drawn to resemble old scissor cuts and some are mere line drawings to grace the beginnings of chapters and foreshadow of what might come. The effect is a varied and yet cohesive look and feel of the book.

In closing I just wanted to say that never before have I read a book where every once in a while I felt as though I was already watching the movie for it. It is written very much like a movie and though sometimes this can be a not so good thing when reading in my opinion, in this case it was really pretty cool. The only trouble I guess would be if they were to make a movie out of it(and I'm preeety sure they will) since I feel as though I have already seen it. Unless they would let Carson Ellis animate it with a team. That would be amazing!!!

Last but not least. Here are some pics from the book and some that did not make it into the book too.

Here is a really great blog post on Carson in her studio. Jealous much? ;)

Pic cred from above. Got the first pic from Lay-Luh's photostream on flickr. thx!

DRAW ME A LION! The Shop Has Launched!

Happy New Year of 2012 to you all! So crazy that another year has gone by.

Of course I know that I have somewhat neglected this blog, but it was not due to laziness my friends. No nooo! It was in fact the opposite!

I have been busy for the past few months working away on a project of mine and then in the last months of 2012 it was finished..., or rather, it was started!

In November I opened up an online shop called Draw Me A Lion! There are currently 9 items in the line I created. They are all dreamed up, illustrated, designed and put together by myself. The shop sells limited edition prints, colouring posters, postcards, cards and a "Story Activity Kit" that I'm especially proud of. There is a very strong connection between my love for Children's books and the items I've created. And while for the sake of specificity the shop is advertised as for Children, all items are really for anyone who appreciates imaginative art, colouring and cute cards.

I was recently asked to write a guest blog post for the local blog vancouver mom on the subject of "Instilling a lifelong love of the arts" in children. I like how the article came out and I think it really gives a good insight into why I created Draw Me A Lion. Check it out if you like.

One last thing.

Draw Me A Lion has just launched a couple of months ago. The shop and me need your help to grow and to succeed. Please take a minute to click the like button on the Draw Me A Lion Facebook page if you can. If you do it soon you might even win a prize because to welcome the new year I'm giving away three items to the 112th person to like the page. Please help me spread the word and win some pretty sweet things! Pass it on?