BEHIND THE SCENES: PART 3

Step 7: The Dummy

You must be asking yourself, “What the heck is a dummy? Is this guy going to build a puppet for some reason?”

No, It’s not that kind of dummy. A dummy, or galley, is a sketch version of your book. It’s like a rough draft in book form. I do my dummies with loose drawings in black and white. There’s just enough information that my editors know what I’m trying to convey.

This whole time I’m also taking notes from my editor and art director and incorporating them into new drafts of the dummy. By the time we’re done I’ll have a complete guide for the finished book.

Step 8: The artwork

Now that my dummy has been approved it’s time to get down to making some finished artwork . I start by refining my sketches and drawing all the final line work in black and white. From there, I can move to the painting stage.

I work with all sorts of materials like watercolors, acrylic paints, colored pencils and digital tools like photoshop. All of these elements eventually make their way into the computer where I put them together and add finishing touches.

I work with my art director and make changes and revisions during the entire process. Once the artwork is done it goes off to the publisher where the art department will do all the typesetting and design work that goes into a finished book.

Step 9: The finish line

The artwork is done, the text is on the page and we are ready to print some books…almost. A few final checks have to be done to make sure the book is as good as it can be. The book will go to the copy editors who make sure I didn’t misspell anything or improperly use a semi colon (spoiler alert: I did).

The publisher also prints up a set of proofs which are the individual pages of the book printed out actual size so we can check the color and composition of the pages. After everything is double and triple checked the book is officially ready for print!

Thanks for taking the time to read about how I made DINOSAURS ARE NOT EXTINCT. The team at HarperCollins and I worked really hard on it and we hope you like it.