Oprah

August 13, 2008

I just wanted to say thank you to my new friend Oprah Winfrey for putting Gerald Morris' book The Adventures of Sir Lancelot the Great on her kid's reading list. I don't know if she READ it... our g-chat got cut off... buuuut... even if she flipped through it, it'd be pretty rad that she looked at my illustrations. 

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Digby's Backpack

August 08, 2008

So I just wrapped up my first picture book called

Digby's Backpack. 

It was written by Alice Schertle

and colored by my good friend and fellow cartoonist, Alec Longstreth. I'm really excited about working on more projects like these... especially ones I write myself. My editor was awesome, and was very understanding of my take on the script, and changes I made that I felt would make the story move better.


Here is a sample spread that I'll share just to show how the process goes working on a book that somebody else has written.

The author wrote wrote this:

Frame: Digby falls into water.

Narrative strip (use graphically): SPLASH!!


Frame: Digby underwater, putting on swim fins.

Narrative strip: Digby kept his head. Luckily…

Digby dialog balloon (thinking): I knew these would come in handy some day!


Frame: Digby swimming upward, 5 crocs on his heels.

Narrative strip: Digby, an excellent swimmer, kicked for the surface. Five crocodiles, even better swimmers, followed him up.


Frame: Digby swimming up, crocs passing him by.

Narrative strip: As luck would have it, the crocodiles had just eaten a small rowboat and weren’t hungry.

Dialog balloon, one croc: burp!


Frame: Anaconda, in water, wrapping itself around Digby.

Narrative strip: The anaconda, however, hadn’t eaten a thing.

So... Then after reading that I submitted my take on it like this. I tried omitting things that seemed redundant and just quickly concerning myself with layout and gestures:

My editor really liked the way it was going and let me go to pencils. It was then that I realized I could have a little more voice in this project if I introduced another character to the story, so I gave Digby a little frog that would follow him around. It's never mentioned in the type... but it's my little voice in the story.

I did change some sound effects that the author wrote... I'm not sure if it was necessary... but I wanted the book to finally come out looking like something I had worked on, so I made changes as I saw fit hoping the editor would see what I saw.

So, this is the pretty close to final version after I inked and Alec colored. The editor and author were both really happy with the final project.

The day after Alec and I finished Digby, Alec drove off to White River Junction. He's going to be the fellow alongside Chris Wright this year. He's going to be working on finishing his magnum opus BASEWOOD... and growing out his hair. He is going to be missed here in Brooklyn.

Tonight I'm going to see my amazing friend Alex Holden be on of the 88 drummers in the Boredom's 88 BoaDrum show. I really have no idea what to expect... but with all of these members of all of these amazing bands... well... I'm hoping it'll be amazing.

Speaking of amazing, my good friend Gabrielle Bell has been away to Tokyo and Paris for the premieres of the movie she made with the imaginative director Michel Gondry. It's one of three Short films in TOKYO! It's Gabrielle's comic from Kramer's Ergot, Cecil and Jordan, which has been transformed into the short film Interior Design. Watch the trailer HERE. AND check out the amazing 3d flash website based on Gabrielle's drawing HERE.

I'm so excited to see it when it plays in the United States.

I think that is it! Walker Bean! Onward HO!

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