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Monday, February 13, 2023

Book Creator Pen Tools - Let Your Inner Illustrator Come Alive!

Book Creator is a fantastic tool for students and teachers to create and share digital books. Not only does it help you write a book, it also makes it super easy to illustrate your creation.

Book Creator has a powerful pen tool that includes:
  • a marker, paint brush, crayon, and highlighter to draw and write with
  • the magic ink option to draw, write, and fill with colorful patterns
  • a fill tool to color items in with colors or patterns
  • an emoji tool to search, find and insert emojis
  • and (best of all) the AutoDraw tool
These simple but powerful tools can bring out the inner illustrator in any student, and help them make a colorful and engaging book.

See below for a tutorial video and written directions on how these tools work. And thanks to Book Creator for sponsoring this post and video! All opinions expressed are based on my personal view.


▶️ Tutorial Video (15 minutes)




📖 Sample Book

So for our example today we are going to be illustrating a short little book I wrote called "Don't". This is a poem about all the things we tell our children not to do. And believe it or not, this poem was written from personal experience and is filled with actual things I had to say to my children over the years.

In this example, I have the text for the book, but no illustrations. Let's see how we could use the Pen Tool to bring this book to life.



🖊️ The Pen Tools

You can access the Pen Tools in Book Creator when editing a book by:
  1. Clicking the "+" plus button in the top right corner
  2. Choosing "Pen" from the drop-down menu.



🛠️ The Tool Picker

The "Tool Picker" menu includes:
  • Marker tool
  • Paint brush tool
  • Crayon tool
  • Highlighter tool
  • AutoDraw tool
  • Size selector



🟢 The Color Picker

The "Color Picker" menu allows you to:
  • Choose a solid color
  • Or choose a pattern from the "Magic Ink" section
  • These colors can be used for drawing or filling.



😀 The Emoji Menu

The "Emoji" menu allows you to add emojis to your book.
  • You can browse through the emoji categories
  • Or you can search by keyword
  • You can also use the ✋ hand emoji icon to change skin tone




💧 The Fill Tool

The "Fill" tool can be used to fill in any area with color.
  • Choose the color or color pattern from the "Color Picker".
  • Then use the "Fill" tool and click on an area to color it in.



🤖 The AutoDraw Tool

The "AutoDraw" tool helps you to draw a picture for your book.
  • Start by drawing the image as best as you can.
  • AutoDraw will try to guess what you are drawing.
  • When you choose an AutoDraw image, it will replace your drawing.



👀 Read the Finished Book

At any point you can read your book to see what the finished product will look like.
  • From your library, click on the "Play" button below the book.
  • This will open the book in reading mode where you can click on the arrows to turn the pages and read through your creation.


To read my finished book in Book Creator, click the published link below:



🔗 Publish and Share the Book

If you want to publish your book for others to read:
  • From your library, click on the "Sharing options" button below the book.
  • Then choose "Publish online" from the menu.
  • This will open the "Confirm Book Details" window where you can edit the "Title" and "Author" and "Description" as needed.
  • You can also choose if the book will be "Private" or Public".
  • Private - Your book can only be found with a private link. You choose who to share this book with and you can unpublish the book at any time.
  • Public - Other teachers and students will be able to find this book through Google and other search engines.
  • And if you want to "Allow remixes" which allows other teachers and students to download and edit a copy of this book.
  • When done, click "Publish online".
  • You can now click "Copy link" to get the link for your book to share with others.



💰 Free and Paid Versions

Everything we have looked at is part of the free version of Book Creator, which includes even more tools and features then we explored.

In addition to the free version, there are even more creative tools in the premium version. For a detailed breakdown of the differences between the free version and the paid version of Book Creator see: bookcreator.com/pricing

Now if you would like to try out the full premium version of Book Creator you can get a 3-month upgrade with:

Promo Code: ERICCURTS

For full details on how to redeem this promo code, see here: Promo Code Directions



🏁 Conclusion

And that's it! With the pen tools in Book Creator anyone can bring their inner illustrator to life, allowing them to add colorful and engaging images to their awesome writing.

If you or your students create a story with Book Creator, I would love to see what they make. Please feel free to share the links to their published books.


Post by Eric Curts
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