Anyone had a inspiration from weird sources?A while back my local library was giving away a children's book and the art infuriates me. Maybe it's jealousy? But the art for this set of books is so frustratingly bad it made me draw a bunch of animals
>>7976221Children's book art is often atrocious. Some people assume children don't have any aesthetic sense, and think poorly-produced garbage is suitable. You can totally judge children's books by their covers. Saves an awful lot of time.That said, the art in the 10% of children's books that are bearable can be quite marvelous.
>>7976221Illustrated children’s books are made by some sort of weirdo money laundering cabal. It’s literally impossible to break into that market in NA even if your art is good. You unironically have better odds of getting published with a graphic design degree and terrible skills than being able to illustrate like doctor seuss or Quentin Blake. So that’s why they all look like shit. Pick up a well illustrated children’s book and I can almost guarantee it’s published in the early 2000s at the latest.
>>7976237The "10 minute to bed" series is really appealing and cute - though their issue is that they have some really dark (as in lighting) scenes, and use black text with no outlines. Which means you need a damn spotlight to read them sometimesthey where published, according to google, in 2018
As an aside, anyone else get pissed off by children's books authors who do the work digitally? Something about it feels like they're missing the point of what it is to illustrate for children; like you're meant to be showing the kids something that they could feasibly make too, given the effort.Children's books that are made digitally are always so fucking clinical and clean looking, if not outright looking like stock art (the shit kind).I'm reminded of a quote my Craig McCracken, where his philosophy for designing characters is whether or not he feels children can draw those characters.I feel like a similar philosophy should be applied to children's book art, if not with the actual drafting ability (because there was some sick children's book art out there), then at least with the medium.
>>7976245That doesn’t really disprove what I was saying. That was clearly made with graphic design tools, not a freehanded line in sight. It assumes children are stupid and that their media shouldn’t challenge them, all the shapes are simple, refined, and within guidelines set by the people who approve children’s books for publishing. Children’s books used to look far better.
>>7976263simple shapes, sure - but the colours and backgrounds genuinely look lovely in this seriesIt would be the stuff that, as a kid would make me want to draw.
>>7976276>>7976263compare this to the book I'm referencing, which the NHS (the UK's government Medical orginisation) distribute
>>7976255It's an interesting quote considering the powerpuff girls are deceptively hard to get rightBut this totally resonates with me, because I got into drawing as a kid drawing things like Dexter's lab
I like Peter McCarty's illustrations for his children books, really cute.
>>7976221I don't know if jealousy is the word you want, cause that shitty slop art is not better than your doodles, OP.Classic children's books, roughly from the 1980s/(a bit of the 90s) and before going all the way back to the 1940s, have godly artwork in them. Now those, you'd be jealous of.
>>7976307Wow that’s disgusting
>>7976436I like it, they feel like something out of a dream
idk childrens stories can be pretty peak
>>7976644Ah yes body horror a children's favorite What the fuck is this story called anon?
>>7976221>Maybe it's jealousy?It's not.You can hate things that are bad and you don't have to put any effort towards them.
>>7976643I see loli fetish, feet fetish, tickle fetish, generally being touched/groped all over fetish, and uh...different patterns fetish?
>>7976686Uhhh a "A Bad Case of Stripes". As a side note and kind of related to how kids stories and their art stay with us, for some reason reading this book is like a core memory for me. I don't know why but they'd call me to this quiet room with a lady who'd just be at her desk while I sat on the floor looking at stuff. She had a shelf full of books and this was one of the ones I'd always be reading. I can't remember if it's because she gave it to me to read or because I enjoyed it myself, but I do remember reading this book repeatedly in that time frame. Looking back maybe she was a counselor, I'm not sure. It all feels so liminal in how I'm recollecting it. A bunch of vague yet very clear memories from that time of my life. Playing with plastic monkeys in a barrel while sitting on a cold tile floor in a room with a cold sterile light and some lady looking down at me asking me questions I thought were pointless or so obvious they were stupid. My mom being somewhere behind me as they talked about shit I didn't care about. Having to take lots of tests, being brought into rooms that were located outside next to the playground and being made to listen to noises with large headphones, drinking stuff. Etc etc.
>>7976982I was also "gifted". I wonder if anybody else here had similar experiences? I had stumbled upon a side of TikTok that had a lot of people with eerily similar stories and even dreams (like being in this large mall, but the illustrations and descriptions I saw were damn close to the ones I remember traversing in my dreams) which at the time I attributed to just being how children's brains were processing life, but idk, for some reason rn I can't help but feel like maybe there was something more to it all
>>7976307this feels inspired by really early AI art. like google deepdream when it kept turning everything into dogs. I like it though.
>>7976984I thought maybe they just thought you were autistic for a second. Lmao. But since you tested gifted, that program was called GATE. You should check out the Gateway experience audios now that you're an adult. There's a theory that GATE was connected to the government's intelligence program for remote viewing and consciousness. I wonder what happens if a kid that went through all that listens to those audios as an adult. I wonder what'd happen if you listened to them on acid
>>7976982I took a test in an early grade (likely first). It wasn't the usual purple mimeograph mess, it was a nearly printed exam like the sat or ctbs. Much or all of it was drawings of flat shapes, and they'd ask what form they folded into. It wasn't so much easy as logical, and all the answers seemed straightforward. I remember the test stuck out as atypical but I enjoyed it.Some time after that two men who weren't part of the school came to talk to me during class. They asked me questions about the exam and I never saw them again. They didn't talk to anyone else in my class. I wondered about it for some time afterwards, but nothing ever came of it.I don't have weird or suspicious feelings about it. But /x/ style gifted threads remind me of it sometimes.
