Breakout Session: Creating Memorable Characters with Shamar Knight-Justice

Shamar's bio: Hi! I'm an author/illustrator based in Atlanta, Georgia. My artwork focuses on mixed media, and unique textures. I've illustrated Ari J.'s Kinky, Curly Crown, which was written by Ain Heath Drew, Big Tune: Rise of the Dancehall Prince written by Alliah Agostini, Repeat After Me written by Jazmyn Simon and Dule Hill, Ari J.'s Firefly Adventure written by Ain Heath Drew, Forever and Always written by Brittany Thurman, and Dante Plays His Blues written by Allen Wells. I work full time as the principal of Ethos Classical, and am entering year 15 in education. In my spare time, I hoard collage materials and take long walks with my wife, dog, and three year old. You can see more of my work on Instagram at @shamarknightjustice, or my website www.shamarknightjustice.com.

Shamar's intro slide:

We start with character study: 

Essential Questions:

1) Who and what does this character represent?

2) How is that reinforced by the artist's character design?

3) What does this character say about the artist as a person? What do they value?

Shamar walks us through some examples of characters in picture books--and what makes them memorable, including Peter from A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Big by Vashti Harrison.

Then Shamar walks us through the process of his developing the character Shane from Big Tune, written by Alliah Agostini. We get to see reference photos, notes, the original manuscript with art notes, research materials, and early sketches of both setting and character.

Shamar explains that he appreciates art notes and actually likes to talk to the author before starting the illustration process! (Note: this is pretty unusual for traditional publishing. Often publishers and editors don't want authors talking to illustrators, because, as it has been explained to me, they want the illustrators to be working in service of the story, not in service to the author.)

There was much more, as well as an engaging Q&A session.

Super interesting data point: One of the questions asked about how amazingly productive Shamar is, with the illustration work and a full-time job as an educator, and Shamar told us that it takes him about 300 hours to illustrate each picture book!

Even as an author (and not an illustrator), this session gave me lots to think about regarding my picture book manuscripts and characters!

Check Out the Portfolio Showcase: Lee's Highlights

When I asked the illustrators on SCBWI Team Blog (Debbie Ohi, Don Tate, Jaime Temairik, and Justin Campbell) to check out the 150+ illustrator portfolios from this Summer Conference and share a few that caught their eye here on the blog -- so we could encourage you all to explore the art there -- I apologized to Jolie Stekly that as she and I weren't illustrators as well, I thought it was something just the illustrators should do. 

To my surprise, everyone thought the writers of the group should participate as well -- and when I thought about it, in my own experience (two out of four of my picture book editors) sometimes we writers get asked if we have any illustrators we want them to consider for our picture book. So, I happily went to the online portfolio showcase to explore...

(you can go now: https://www.scbwi.org/submissions/summer-virtual-conference-2024-portfolio-showcase)

Because I imagine most folks are going to start with page 1 and make their way through to page 14, I did the opposite. There were certainly many accomplished and beautiful pieces in the show, but not all of them told a story, and I'm really drawn (pun intended) to story. Please note that as with everything in publishing, this is really subjective.

Okay, with no further ado, here are 11 illustrations that really captured my eye and imagination:

Jason Crowley

Jason Crowley's illustration

Heather Bell

Heather Bell's illustration

Hollie Michaels

Hollie Michaels's illustration

Shannon Brady

Shannon Brady's illustration

Kate Phillips

Kate Phillips's illustration

Pranami Bora

Pranami Bora's illustration

Nyrryl Yrrah Cadiz

Nyrryl Yrrah Cadiz's illustration

Sarita Rich

Sarita Rich's illustration

Danielle Heitmuller

Danielle Heitmuller's illustration

Sy Brontide

Sy Brontide's illustration

Katie Mazeika 

Katie Mazeika's illustration

It's so fun to check them out. Go now while the portfolio show is still online!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Making A Living as an Illustrator: Balancing Career, Values, Income, & Play with Susie Ghahremani

Susie Ghahremani is an award-winning artist whose work is licensed, exhibited and sold internationally under the brand boygirlparty. She's also a RISD alum whose children's books include STACK THE CATS, SHE WANTED TO BE HAUNTED, as well as many others. 

In Susie's session she shared examples of the many streams of income she's set up and how they do or do not fulfill her personally, professionally, financially and creatively. This was such a helpful way to think about prioritizing and assessing one's own potential income streams. Susie shared a ton of great, personal career information while walking us through how and what she works on. 

Besides making children's books Susie also makes her own products, takes part in art shows, does editorial illustration, takes commissions, runs an Etsy shop, licenses her art, teaches, and on top of all that makes things just for the fun of it! Susie has a Patreon where she's graciously set up a blog post answering all the Q&A audience questions from her SCBWI conference session. (I've already asked (demanded) she consider hosting a class series expanding on this session, so whenever that happens I will update this post with that link here 😗). 

Susie's books

A sample of Susie's latest products

Susie broke down how each income stream positively or negatively impacted her career, values, income, or opportunity for play and creativity giving attendees an excellent framework to use for themselves. 

Here Susie shows how personal work and public events align for her:

Susie gives some tips on working on your own products vs. working with a team/publisher/collaborators. There are a lot of risks with making your own products and work, but it's also full of really big joys and unexpected wins. Making books with a publisher lets them take on more upfront risk and can also be full of big joys and unexpected wins, but most books do eventually go out of print and that's sadly not in your control.

Self care for long-term career and physical longevity (Ott lights!), taxes, and so many great tips in general are touched on!! Susie has had to battle copyright infringement (she was interviewed on NPR!) and does an amazing job in the session of helping attendees understand how to protect their work and themselves (this could be a standalone class all on its own).

Susie touched on overwhelm with juggling so many different income streams. She has found a balance that energizes her, but doesn't expect anyone else to follow that. She recommends knowing yourself and accepting where you are at—everyone has different physical, emotional, and mental capacities to consider when figuring out life and career goals.

Susie’s next release will be the picture book MEMORY GARDEN written by Zohreh Ghahremani (her mom!), publishing in 2024 with Godwin Books / Macmillan. 

Art Director and Agent Panel: Zejun Yao

Zejun Yao is an Artist Agent normally based in the UK for Yeon Agency where he continues to explore new talents and collaborate with other illustration agents from Yeon and its sister agencies (and wherever he currently is it's ¡5am! during this panel session!).

Where does Zejun find new artists? 

He echoes what the other panelists have mentioned — how much they look on Instagram for finished and sketch work. But Zejun points out when you're looking on social media it's all the same, universally-sized thumbnail shape and Zejun is always asking himself What if I miss some fine details? 

Finding ways to share your work outside of Instagram's cookie-cutter set up is one way to stand apart. For Zejun he loves meeting people in person at events or portfolio review opportunities. Even with a short window of time, like at Bologna you may only get ten minutes for a face-to-face meeting, but even that sliver of time makes the greatest impression on Zejun for understanding an illustrator's work and personality, anything to find ways to stand out inside the ocean of instagram thumbnails.

Submission best practices? 

Zejun recommends customized communications when illustrators are submitting to agents or art directors, so fancy AI or the same email to everyone your approaching is not going to cut it, make sure your first reach out is in your voice and personalized.

Panelists all mentioned wanting to see 'enough' pieces and that if you find yourself asking if you have enough, it's probably not enough. Zejun goes further to say it's not about just sheer numbers in a series, it's about how they work together. And after that personalized query letter, your images should speak for themselves.

Portfolio Show: Sneak Peeks and Unsanctioned Predictions

Not to toot my own horn* but having seen SCBWI portfolio shows at least twice a year since 2008, without fail one of my favorites from the show has ALWAYS also happened to be a winner of something in the official portfolio awards.

Like the art directors, agents, and editors attending the show I grab a promo piece** of whatever illustrator's work really jazzes me up to remember them by and this year is no different. 

Though not as clairvoyant as the octopus who predicts the Super Bowl***, all the artists below are new to me but I do feel like they stand out to anybody as kickass children's book art. Happy to take bets if any of these picks are winners tomorrow****. So with no input from SCBWI HQ or the anonymous judges my favorite portfolios for SCBWI Winter 2023 are below in no particular order*****. And congratulations to everyone who put their work out there this weekend, that's a big deal in and of itself! 

If you attended the show last night share your favorite portfolio names or links below in the comments!

* A poorly played French Horn in junior high if you must know.

** It's so important for in-person shows to make promo pieces that people can take with them! If you don't have the budget for promo pieces consider printing your name/website as a footer on your individual portfolio pages so someone can at least snap a photo of the art and your name in one go.

*** Eagles all the way, Go Birds

**** Send all my winnings to Venmo, thx!

*****Did not look to see if the illustrator was agented when picking out my favorites, a reminder SCBWI has two categories of winners for portfolio shows so agented and unagented are not judged together.

Brizida Magro

Martin Saavedra

Anden Wilder

Abigail Rajunov

Andrew Lozano

Kelly Anne Dalton

Yuki Murayama

Maria Elias (Rise): Art Directors Panel #scbwiWinter22

Maria Elias is an art director with Rise by Penguin Workshop which she co-founded in 2019.  Rise's mission is to engage, empower, and evolve the youngest readers (ages 0-5) with authentic, relevant, and elegant books. With that age group in mind Maria's recipe for a successful illustration portfolio involves KEEPING IT SIMPLE.

Don't overthink it, don't try to illustrate things you perceive are more marketable if they are wildly not in your style. Maria advocates for keeping your personal style even if you think it might be too 'old' for the 0 to 5 crowd. When Maria is looking at portfolios she's looking for work that fits a book's tone, and a biography with lived or learned experience as found in the manuscript that will help bring truth and reality to the final work.

She hires great artists, period. She's looking for illustrators with uniquely individual styles showcased in portfolios with a diverse cast of characters. 

Maria shares a number of illustrators portfolios and then compares and contrasts that work with their final work for the young audience of Rise. All of the styles are different, but all still manage to convey warm, relatable characters suited to that age range. 

Maria also asks illustrators to examine if their characters' diversity is only in skin color and not also diversity in hair styles, nose shapes, lips, body shape, etc.

She shares sketches of one of her favorite collaborators, Anne/Andy Passchier. Passchier's initial round of sketches for the book, BEING YOU. Maria wondered if they could make the designs even more personal and diverse. While still working in Pashier's style, the round 2 images contain more unique details making the character group mirror our more inclusive, realworld diversity.

Cecilia Yung: Art Directors Panel #scbwiWinter22

Cecilia Yung is executive art director and vice president at Penguin Books for Young Readers, where she oversees illustration and design for two imprints, G.P. Putnam's Sons and Nancy Paulsen Books. 

The majority of Cecelia's work is on picture books, so that's where she'll focus. Picture books are a very particular art form. A picture books is usually 32 to 40 pages long, typically for 4 to 7 year olds--readers who are also learning about life. Books can hep us make sense of ourselves and our world. Pictures become mirrors. We can recognize ourselves and the characters and their situations. Pictures become windows when they portray new characters and new situations and are authentic and believable. And books can introduce new ideas. 

Ceclia shares, "You have to see the story and feel the story." And she takes us through the beauty of the following books. 

WONDER WALKERS by Micha Archer 

IN A JAR by Deborah Marcero

THE CAT MAN OF ALEPPO by Irene Latham and Karim Shamsi-basha, illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

NINA by Traci N. Todd, illustrated by Christian Robinson

"Powerful picture book illustration help the reader SEE the idea behind the story FEEL its mind-altering world-changing possibilities."