Visual Narrative for Picturebooks: Create a Playful World

Meet Renata, discover her journey towards becoming a published author and illustrator, and get some advice on bringing ideas to life. Explore the artists and myths that inspire her stories.

Learn about the characteristics of a picturebook and understand how visual and verbal elements work together. Start defining your character, seeing the different ways to build its personality. Use the base of a familiar story to explore the many possibilities to build yours. Learn the basic three-act structure and apply it to your story.

Experiment with different visual storytelling techniques such as the vignette, the spread, the panel, and more. Learn how to create a visual language through framing and angles, seeing how they are used for picturebooks. Then, create a mini dummy to analyze the flow of your story. Move on to the final illustrations, going from sketching on paper to adding color and final adjustments in Photoshop. Create your cover design with Renata’s guidance along the way.

Prepare your dummy on InDesign, exploring important layout and print parameters before exporting for print. See how to cut, paste, and fold your pages to build your final picturebook dummy. To finish the course, get Renata’s expert advice on how to get your story published.