"Sanna" #5 - Story and main character

(Click here to go to the first blogpost about this project)

The client contacted me a few days ago and said she had been working on developing a story based on a story about a mediteranean girl who washed ashore in Traena. The story goes more or less like this:

"Sometime during the 1700's, there was a little girl aboard a ship that sailed to Norway. This was either a boat of immigrants or a trade boat from souther europe, although it was unusual for women and especially children to be on board ships. During a terrible storm, the ship went down outside Traena, and the whole crew drowned. The ship was shattered to pieces, and the biggest piece that was left whole was a little chest that drifted ashore in Sanna. Some people who were out looking for driftwood found the chest, and inside was the little girl, huddled and afraid. An old childless couple took her in and raised her, and eventually she married and got children herself. It is said that today, a few people with lineage far back bear her characteristics, like black curly hair, dark eyes and olive skin."

(this is a summary I've put together myself, based on several versions told by several different people. Note that having black curly hair, dark eyes and olive skin was very rare and exotic in this otherwise pale, blonde blue-haired culture, especially before society became as globalised as today)

Based on this new knowledge, we know that the main character is going to be a mediterannean girl. I was right away thinking of the (perhaps stereotypical) spanish flamenco dancer, and did some sketches. We also know that the main character will be quite young, so I also looked at some west-european paintings from the 1700's, to see what children wore at this time.

Costumes and characteristics of spanish flamenco dancers, and some miscellaneous children, from poor to posh.

One of the most important characteristics of the girl is that she will have to look different and darker than the other Norwegian characters. She will have dark, curly hair, and possibly wear clothes with bright colours, especially red. She will also look different before the ship sinks, after she's drifted ashore, and when she's been taken in and integrated into the Norwegian society.

One of the most striking differences will be her eyes. They could look green, but that might be too close to the typical blue/grey nordic eye colour. I will be consulting with the client, but my personal favourite is the honey/dark brown colour.

The design of this character will be a difficult challenge. One of the main points of the story is that there are families in Traena that look different, yet have lineages far back. This is all because of one girl, and the strength of her genes are thought to reflect on the strength of the girl in life.
I will have to be careful to not make the story and designs come off as racist, but still keep the conflict and characteristic of the story alive. This could be an interesting theme for the narrative, and could lead to a good moral for the story suitable for children.
The client mentioned that she was intrigued by the eagle in my style concept, and thought the little girl might befriend the eagle and talk to it. Eagles were as mentioned considered pests, so this could be a forbidden friendship between to "outcasts".

I will have to hear more from the client about where the story starts and ends to know exactly what to do next. Until I hear from the client, I will be researching more about boats, both norwegian and south-european. I will also try and make a finalised drawing of the girl, at different ages and in different clothes and states. I might also suggest some character designs of parents (both biological and adopters)

<---#4 Artistic Style

#6 Structuring the Narrative --->

"Sanna" #4 - Artistic style

(Click here to go to the first blogpost about this project)

Style is quite a tricky one. I will be aiming for children who are 6-10 years old, and it should fit the culture in the region to match the narrative. I will also need to keep in mind that parts of the image will be animated - so it should not be exessively detailed.

A style I enjoy myself is used in the movie "The Secret of Kells" - although I can allow myself a little more details since this is a fully animated film and I am just making a (partially animated) book.

"The Secret of Kells"-style is inspired by celtic patterns and traditional art - which is often quite similar to old Norwegian art.

I'm also quite inspired by the style in the Disney movie "Hercules", which also uses a lot of simplistic shapes. It also uses a lot of typically greek borders and shapes, which is a good way to show the typical art culture in greece - I could do this only with norwegian woodcarving-patterns.

Screengrab from "Hercules" - which uses a horde of greek references, but in a fun children-friendly way.

boat-carving, photo from the viking ship museum in Oslo. Patterns like this could be used subtly to create a traditional and interesting style.

With these things in mind, I go ahead and sketch a character. This is just a hypothetic character, which wil most likely not be used in the book. 

After some doodling I've ended up with a character called "Sanna", one version that is more realistic, and one which is more cartoony.

The main inspiration for this is: The sea-eagle on the "eagle-staff" - sometimes people can find crooked, white staffs washed ashore.
The clothes are inspired by the traditional clothing "nordlands-bunad". The shoulderplates and belt is more viking-inspired, and women are well known to have belts with tools on them. Her hair and horns are inspired by wild norwegian sheep.
I have also made her quite elegant and intricate, perhaps godess-like, to associate the design with classic mythology.

Before I consulted with the client, I went online and asked for feedback online. I got quite a few helpful feedback, some you can see below (click to view bigger version):

This is two of the many comments I received - and they were all very helpful!

After reading through a lot of comments, I went ahead and made a finalized version.

Final style concept.

I kept the more cartoony style, the important features have been made clearer, and the colours helps bring out more detail and shape. The client really liked it, and this will be the style we'll be using! I'll have to be coming back to background design, but it should fit the style of the character.

next time - I have had word that the client has decided on which myth we shall be basing the story on! Based on this I will be doing a bit more character research.

<---part 3 "research"

part #5 - main character research --->

"Sanna" #3 - Research

(Click here to go to the first blogpost about this project)

Time to do some research! I love research. I just like getting to know about my subject, finding things I like and put it into my own work. It's interesting, it makes any project feel more genuine and it saves me a ton of time later on. TRUST me.

Luckily for me, I am quite familiar with everything about the history of Traena and the geography, people and culture there, because I grew up there. I know the stories, and even better, I knew the stories when I was at the age of my target audience. Which is definitely going to come in handy. Still, I need to figure out what will be more important for this project specifically. First, I have to make a plan of what I'll plan. Not just go and research anything about Traena, but be specific.

What do we know of the story? We know that the setting is going to be the island Sanna, and that the narrative will be taking place around the 18th or 19th century (This seems to be the time where all of the folk-tales are taking place, pretty much). The story will be aimed towards children in elementary school.

I have to know more about Sanna around the 18th century. What did the houses look like, and the people, what did the people do and talk about? What superstitions were there? What did children do? What was the wildlife like? It will also be worth it to look at the situation in the rest of Norway.

Setting: In children's books, one of the most important things is to make an engaging world, which is both familiar and interestingly different. Sanna is a very small, isolated island, surrounded with thousands of smaller islands and then miles of sea in all directions. The polar circle cuts right through Traena, which means the winters are long, dark and cold, and summer is brief, but sunny both day and night.


The midnight sun over Traena, 33 miles off the mainland.

Culture and people: Northern Norway was very different if we go back 100 years or more. It was quite poor, and the people worked as farmers, fishermen or miners. Communities were small and isolated, making societies intimate and the outside world very alien. The classic scandinavian myths of trolls and goblins are present, but people on the coast are especially concerned with the sea, boats and marine wildlife. This can be a very useful point of interest for this book - bringing forward the lesser known mythology of Norway.

From my sketchbook - Houses are buildt from wood on rocky terrain, often sheltered from the north/western wind behind a hill, quite close to the shore. The landscape is quite barren, trees and gardens are pretty much nonexistant.

Mythological beasts are often humanoid with a touch of sealife. Here's a few of drawings of Draugr, earthdwellers and the huldra, based on descriptions in folklore.

Animals was an important part of life on Træna as nearly all work people did was based on keeping animals or hunting and fishing. Marit, who I am working with, has also mentioned that she would like the human characters to be able to talk to animals - which is excellent for a children's story.

Some animals the characters are sure to meet are dogs and cats - there are few norwegian breeds but here I have drawed a Norwegian forest cat and a Norwegian Elk Hound - and a few chickens!

Otters are the largest land mammal in Træna, although there are huge seals and whales at sea. There's an extremely rich birdlife, and the white-tailed eagle (sea-eagle in Norwegian) is symbolic for Traena. It's worth noting that otters and predatory birds were considered pest-animals at the time the narrative will (probably) be taking place.

Since the client has not yet decided on what we will be doing for the narrative, it's tricky to say exactly what I should research. As I get news I will keep sketching, to make a convincing setting.

sources:
I have contacted a few people in Træna asking for old photos, and have found an archive that is chuck full of useful images. This has been very useful in researching people, clothes and architecture, and I must keep using the page as we sort out the narrative.

For myths and creatures, I found this website(norwegian) to be very helpful, it has a big amount of folklore written down in different versions.

While I am waiting for the script, I shall be looking at style choices. This is a tricky one, as the book needs to appeal to children, but also fit the setting and story style, and look cool, of course!



<---part 2 "numbers and details"

part 4 "style choices" --->

"Sanna" #2 - Numbers & Details

(Click here to go to the first blogpost about this project)

For the sake of organising things - here's some essential numbers we'll have to keep in mind.

Target Audience
Fairy-tales, myths and legends have been used in books and movies many times before and in many shapes. Disney, who are perhaps the most known company for making movie-adaptations of well-known folktales, generally have a primary target audience of 4-12 year old. (x)
Disney has a friendly and popular style of storytelling, and this seems to be a safe and suitable route for ourselves to follow for our book. We are aiming towards both boys and girls, but will focus on adapting the story and style for children between 6-10 years old. The style should be suitable for children older than pre-schoolers but younger than pre-teens, and have visuals that appeal to both boys and girls - and none of them exclusively. It should also be entertaining, friendly and familiar for parents. Although the setting will possibly be of most interest to people in the same geographic region, it should be enjoyable for those who are unfamiliar with the setting and story.

Book length & format

Print-formats are flexible and can be cut into pretty much any shape. Electronic tablets, on the other hand... not so much. Which is why we are using the friendly format of an iPad for our book. The pages will be made in a full 2480x3307pixels for print, which is the same width as an A4 sheet of paper but slightly shorter. This format it can be downsized to fit into an e-book for tablets perfectly. We are aiming to have around 25 full page illustrations, all double-page but with large neutral spaces where text will be overlaying the illustration (see setup example). 

Example of one double-page with nearly maximum amount of text(more on this below). Note that the illustration's focus point and the text-areas should be moved around from page to page for the sake of variation.

 Picture: Sonja Langskjaer.

Words/timing:
Obviously the writing style and pacing should be adapted so that the target audience can easily read and understand the story themselves. Each double-page should have no more than 90 words, with about 7 words per line (up to 20 lines) this is for easy readability (this is modeled on a handful of Roald Dahl books published by Puffin Publisher UK - with a similar format and target audience.)
For reference: It should take an adult less than 50 seconds to narrate the text on each double-page.

In total: With an average of 60 words per page and an approximated 25 pages, that means the script must be a maximum of 1500 words and fit into less than 450 lines (again, maximum!) 
The amount of text per page depends on how much is happening in the narrative - a slow paragraph will not need to be illustrated as much as a fast-paced paragraph. Also illustrations alone can be used to emphasize certain events - for example a big event might have an entire double-page to itself and only one single sentence of text.

Text from "Tuftefolket på Sandflæsa" from Asbjoernsen and Moes Norwegian Folk Tales from around 1845. Text is not suitable for target audience - too old-fashioned!

This example is of a single page with maximum possible amount of text for one double-page. This is 127 words on 19 lines. Font (Arial) is a placeholder. Font size: 26. Line-spacing: 36

As you can see this can quickly become difficult and boring for a young child to read. So because of this there should preferably not be much more than half this amount of words, and even then there should be plenty of line-breaks and pauses.

Next time - research. Looking for inspiration for the setting, characters, story, history etc.

"Sanna" #1 - Introduction

This is an introduction to a project I will be working on, starting from october 2014. The final goal is to make a children's book based on local legends from Træna in Norway. "Sanna" will be the working title for the project and is named after a characteristic outer island with the same name - which will be the setting of the story.

Contents of this series:

Part 1: Introduction (here)

Part 2: Numbers and Details

Part 3: Research

Part 4: Artistic Style

Part 5: Story and main character

part 6: Structuring the Narrative (coming summer 2015)

The Island Sanna with it's characteristic peaks.

Photo by Ingeborg S. 

I (Sonja Langskjaer) am working with Marit on the project, and we will also be communicating with the local museum in Træna to develop the story. I will be in charge of the illustrating the story and optimising the format.

Besides the setting. little is so far decided about the project, so I will be using this blog as a journal to write down things as we decide on them.