I was about to go bat-poop crazy if I didn’t do some art for myself today. So I drew a pensive bear with a skateboard.

Here’s a little behind the scenes work that will most likely not see publication. This is a character design and style test for a book series I cannot mention yet.

I’ve been making progress on my current children’s book project, “Monsters Are Go!” This is the book I talked about in my last blog post without referring to it by name. When this title was going to be a 96 page graphic novel, the design of the characters was fairly different. In the near future, I might post a ‘then and now’ analysis on why I changed the current designs from their original versions. For now, I’m just going to show the characters above in silhouette just to highlight that effective character design can all be boiled down to the silhouette. Its helpful to look at silhouettes when designing characters to make sure they stand out from one another without being hindered by detail. Not only does it add visual excitement in the dynamics between characters, but it is also the best way to make it easier for the reader to recognize characters without doing any hard work that might take them out of the story.

Picture Book Dummy Challenge!

I have been taking part in a challenge issued by the fine folks over at KidLitArt to create and submit a picture book dummy in 25 weeks. The challenge is in its third step right now, where we are tasked to create our character designs. The cool thing about that is that I already have them pretty much finished. 

Even though I’m just doing the challenge now, the seeds of this story go back to 2004. I had several false starts with the story and it was originally going to be a 96 page all ages graphic novel. Over the last couple years, the story has morphed and the idea of making it into a picture book instead had become more and more appealing. Then…BAM…this challenge is issued… perfect time to just get this story done and out of my head. 

I recently completed the final manuscript for this project and, many drafts later, it is unrecognizable from its original incarnation. It is way better though, in my opinion. I won’t say exactly what it is just yet, but if you’ve been following me for a while you can probably guess what it is.

Below is a sketch I did back in 2010 as part of the 30 Characters in 30 Days Challenge. Here’s the one tease I’ll give for now… the main character is based on this sketch. I’ll post more progress on this project here in the future.