I think when I make illustrations I find things out about characters. When I first start working on an illustration, this also changes from when I’m first working on a book to when I’m at the end of the book and that changes in a really similar way in the drawing and in the writing.
At the beginning of the book I’m just trying to figure out who people are. And then I reach this point where I know who people are, and at the beginning I’m kind of cobbling them together out of little bits and pieces of things that I think I want them to be like. And this really interesting thing happens where they take on a life of their own.
I usually say it’s like having an improv troop at my disposal and I say okay, I’m going to put you and you in this situation and see what happens. And then I just get started and I kind of wait and see and visually I sort of know more then about what they look like or what kind of, a pose they might strike or body language or something.
My drawings at the beginning, it reminds me of, I was talking about something I don’t know a lot about but when they first start blocking a play in the theater and people are just reading their lines and standing here and that’s what my first drawings look like, they’re very stiff and it looks like you know three mannequins standing in a room and it takes a while for them to come alive.
I have to do those first drawings multiple times to make it feel like a real thing. But I learn about the characters while I’m doing that, which is really fun.
