Art for your Fun and Games
Kids book illustration, animation storyboards or artwork for board games, toys and brand development is what we specialise in. Screen and Pencil is a freelance agency that provides art and writing services for projects that make kids smile. The more fun the better. We’re all about fun. And nachos.
The awesome creative power of Screen and Pencil is held at bay by head illustrator and ideas guy Simon Turnbull (about whom you are about to read).
About Simon:
Simon Turnbull is an illustrator, writer and IP developer who hails from the shady side of Australia. He is obsessed with the culture of kids books, toys, games, cartoons, comics and all that good stuff. When not drawing, writing or making toys he spends his time being a ninja (he’s a real black belt!) and growing things in the garden. Most days he can be found doing storyboards for kids cartoons, illustrating or messing around in the yard with his padawan apprentice.
Simon Says:
I put pictures to your project. Whether it’s for a kids book, a game, a toy brand, storyboards for an animation or something we haven’t figured out yet you can be sure I’ll bring the passion your project deserves. Freelance illustration, storyboards, comics, brand development, kids screenwriting. If there is anything I can help you with, or you would like to discuss your needs, reach out here.
If it isn’t the right project for me, one of my network of trusted colleagues can probably get you moving. I do this because I love to put projects together and watch them bloom. If I can touch something creative, that will go out into the world and make people happy, then I’m good.
illustration
Illustration is the practice of creating images to accompany a text. They may elucidate detail, add depth and richness or draw the reader in. And yes, sometimes they are just really cool.
Good illustration juggles content, composition, storytelling, appeal, rhythm, style and shape language, subtext, story enrichment, audience engagement and printing considerations. That’s without even stating on raw drawing skill involved.. Illustration is a way to take dry words and pop them up in front of the audience in a way that can take their breath away. Words and pictures: a winning combination.
Brand Development
Developing a brand is the key to putting a toy out into the market. You can have a great idea, awesome play patterns and solid engineering but you still need some narrative concept for kids to hang their imagination on.
Branding is a complex art, and an art is what it is. Branding for kids is even trickier. A fine balance of story, art, consumer psychology and media design is the least that is needed to go to market. With those elements in place you then need to find a certain ‘it’ that can just catch at the imagination and bring kids in. Like a lot of things it is hard to describe, but we know it when we see it., even it takes an exhaustive process and lots of iteration and feedback. Branding and IP development: the very acme of art for kids.
Storyboards
Storyboarding is the craft of drawing a visual narrative before it goes into production. A storyboard is a series of images that represent what the project will look like on completion so that key creatives can make decisions and revisions cheaply and easily. Many people think of storyboards as a contour map for production.
Some core concepts that storyboard artists address include framing, angle and lighting, staging, rhythm and pacing, story focus and subtext, production design and appeal and so much more. And they manage to balance all that while drawing complex scenes and nuanced characterisation. Whew.
Storyboarding is an expensive writing tool , but one of the cheapest production techniques around.
