Last year I did some really fun freelance for Klutz Books – you probably remember them from your childhood as those wacky interactive educational activity books. I used to love them and was really happy to get a chance to contribute to “The Book of Impossible Objects” – all about optical illusions. Here are a couple of the illustrations I did:
If you haven’t read Part 1 or Part 2, check ‘em out. Now, on to Part 3…final color and cover design! When I first started this project I had hoped to be able to do most of it traditionally. I really like the idea of having a physical piece of paper with your art on it. Unfortunately because of time constraints this was not possible. I made use of the new lifelike brushes in Photoshop CS6 for the watercolor and ink effects. here are some of the final (untrimmed) page designs:
The cover was the last thing I did for the book. I had a few different ideas based on Nick’s original concept:
Nick liked Design “F”, so we went with that one and made it wrap all the way around the book:
The colored art:
The final book cover, with title design by author Nick Daze:
Roger Nix, President at Six is available for sale from Three Bean Press or on the iBookstore if you’ve got an iOS device.
For me, page layout is probably the hardest step of putting together a book, but also the most rewarding. To be successful here you have to balance a number of things:
Before I start any drawing, I like to break down the manuscript into the right number of pages. In most cases for a kid’s book this is 32. (Gwendolyn is 64 pages, cause we are dumb and overambitious.) Sometimes the writer or publisher will provide you with a page layout, and even descriptions of the imagery they’d like on each page. I usually take that with a grain of salt and provide my own alterations if I think it could be arranged differently. Here’s what the text-only layout basically looked like:
Once the text layout has been approved, on to thumbnail sketches for each page:
You can see that I dropped in models of the main characters in the center for reference. I also write a lot of text notes and ideas here. These thumbnails often change significantly in the next step, which is the “rough” page lay in phase. Here are a few examples of page roughs:
You can see in the first couple images that I usually keep the characters on one layer and the backgrounds on another. Sketching in Photoshop makes this easy, and allows me to edit character placement and design quickly without messing up the background. I will also sometimes lay in tone, if it’s essential to making the image read well, as in the image above. The next step in this project was “tight pencils,” which I ended up doing digitally as well. Because I have already laid out the text and figured out the poses and acting, I can focus solely on making clean, appealing pencil drawings here.
Previously – Part 1: Preproduction —— Next up – Part 3: Final Color and Cover Design
Roger Nix, President at Six is available for sale from Three Bean Press or on the iBookstore if you’ve got an iOS device.
One of the awesome projects I got to work on this year was a new kid’s book, called Roger Nix, President at Six. The book was written by Nick Daze, who I met through my good friend Meg. It was funded through Kickstarter, which was the same way I self-published Gwendolyn and the Underworld.
The first step for me in a kid’s book project is to design the characters. This makes every other step in the process easier, even if the designs evolve and change a bit over time. Here are some of the very early character designs I worked on:
Of course, after all those different tests, we ended up going with the first design! (Trust your instincts, they’re usually right.)
And then on to a final color illustration:
Roger runs for president against Old Man Plee, and these two were the most important to establish. I actually did this character work over a year before starting on the book and before Nick got running on Kickstarter. Once we had these two nailed down, I wanted to figure out what Roger’s imaginary friends Abe and Jack would look like. (An elephant and a donkey, respectively.)
After the characters were basically nailed down I did a full color “style test” for Nick to use to sell the project on Kickstarter.
When I finally got the text of the book a year later, a couple new characters had been added that needed to be designed. The first was Adrienne Dardenne, Roger’s kindergarten teacher.
Originally, I was leaning more towards a middle aged or old lady teacher, but Nick’s sister is a teacher and he wanted to base the character on her. That ended up being a great idea, because the young teacher provided a nice contrast with the old “Mother Plee” character. I went with a take on “B” and modified her to look a bit more like his sister.
Next was Plee’s mother:
I had a few different ideas here. Nick had mentioned Estelle Getty (the oldest of the Golden Girls) as inspiration, so that’s what you see in A. B was based more on a crazy Las Vegas-loving, RV-driving kind of grandma. C was because I had just watched Downton Abby and couldn’t resist a Maggie Smith take.
I really like the final design, though looking back on it now, I’m not sure the “big head” part fits into the world as well as it could. The next step for me was to create basic turnarounds of all the characters so I could get a better sense of their form and how they would look in different poses/angles.
The final step was to get all the characters in a lineup and make sure they felt like they were all part of the same world. Cohesiveness is key!
Next up: Part 2 – Page Layout
Roger Nix, President at Six is available for sale from Three Bean Press or on the iBookstore if you’ve got an iOS device.
You may have been wondering why there’s been such a lack of posts over the past year…aside from my full time job, I have been hard at work on a 64 page full color children’s book called Gwendolyn and the Underworld. It was written by the incredibly talented Ian Samuels, long time friend and author of M is for Mutt.
Gwendolyn and the Underworld is an illustrated storybook about a young Pet Reaper (think Grim Reaper + dead pets) who ventures to solve the mystery behind her Overworld roots. She uncovers a rotten conspiracy with her corpulent corpse aunt, a sidekick Peacodgehog, an army of Skellies, and slew of part-this and part-that creatures.
Work on the book actually started about four years ago, and was an incredible learning experience. (In the span of those four years I also illustrated two other children’s books on the side.) From the outset we knew that we were going to self-publish the book, possibly in just a small run for our friends and family. As the project grew and grew, we started to think a little bit bigger. When Kickstarter came on the scene, we saw an opportunity to raise money for a larger print run of 1000 copies.
We were blown away when we reached our goal of $8,000 in the first week! We’ve now entered the final week of funding, which is really just pre-orders for the final book. If you want to be one of the first to get your hands on a copy of Gwendolyn, head over to our Kickstarter right now! If you visit this page, you can see a full preview of the final book. Here are some images from the book:
Thanks for supporting our project! We look forward to sharing the book with everyone soon.
I’m really excited to announce my new children’s book, M is for Mutt and Other Tails. It is an alphabet book, with each letter representing a different dog breed. (And some very fun text written by my friend, Ian Samuels.) I will be premiering the book at the Alternative Press Expo this weekend in San Francisco. I will be in the back corner, Table 651. Come on by and pick up a copy!
Here’s a sampling of some of the pages:
I am very excited to announce the release of my first children’s book! I was contact last year by Little Brown Books, who was working in association with Universal Pictures to develop a few different kids books for their upcoming movie HOP. I was happy to hear that they were interested in having me illustrate a 24 page, full color, 8×8″ paperback for them. The story was a lot of fun to work with, and it was also a delight to illustrate characters designed by one of my favorites, Peter de Seve.
I’m not exactly sure where the book is available…I’ve heard it’s at Target and I know you can get it on Amazon here: Hop: Chicks Versus Bunnies
It even comes with punch-out easter egg stands! Fun for the whole family this Easter! Haha. I’m really not sure how much I can post of the inside of the book at this point, so for now here is an early sketch of the cover I did:
And the HOP trailer, for anyone interested:
I’m happy to present my piece for a new ABC book project for Tools for Schools Africa. A while back I was invited to participate by friend and illustrator Mike Boldt. I was intrigued to see that I got the letter “X” and had fun researching xylophones in true Ghanian style. (Did you know that xylophones were invented independently in both Africa and Asia?) All the pieces should eventually show up on the blog Mike has set up. (I love Alina Chau’s piece!)
I don’t usually post too much process stuff, but it might be fun for people to see:
First step: Rough sketch!
Step 2: This is where I decided to add a background, change the poses a bit, and start tweaking composition so your eye flows in a more circular direction.
Step 3: Laying in the background, working with my line sketch laid lightly on top and some palette ideas too.
Final piece! (After lots of painting, erasing, thinking I’m a fraud, and other artistic crises.)
This is a fake “Little Golden Book” that I just finished for my friend, Ian Samuels. He’s a grad student in the directing program at CalArts and this picture/book will be used as an important prop in a film he’s shooting this term. I will link to the final film when it’s ready for viewing! (I do think the toad is quite poised, yes?)
My Latest Work
Meowwww.
Not sure how they steer.
Gwendolyn’s graveyard.
